The men’s college basketball landscape by the numbers, 1 month before March

Here comes February, which in many ways is the taxiway for March. And anyone wanting a measure of this season in all its intrigue, uncertainty and goofiness, these numbers from the final weekend of January ought to do.

And there’s no better place to start than shark tank that is the Big 12.

15-33 — The current record in conference away games in the Big 12. Kansas and Houston — the mightiest names on the block — are a combined 2-5. A ranked visitor has been sideswiped by an unranked host 10 times. Life on the road in that league is a beast.
 
13-0 — Iowa State’s record in Ames. The Cyclones have trailed a total of 31 seconds in the second half of the 13 games — by one point.

45.75 — Points allowed per home game by the Houston Cougars in the Fertitta Center. No visitor has managed more than 55 points. “They may be the best defensive team I’ve ever seen,” Kansas State coach Jerome Tang said after his Wildcats were stuffed in Houston 74-52.

3 — Baylor just lost three consecutive Big 12 games by a combined nine points and four overtimes. The Bears fell in three overtimes to TCU, whose last five games have been decided by 14 points and four overtimes. That included an OT defeat at Cincinnati, who had just lost by three to Baylor and one to Texas, who then lost by three to West Virginia.

Atop all this untidiness is Texas Tech, who beat Oklahoma and Kansas State each by one point and is in first place with a 5-1 conference record, even though the Red Raiders were picked to finish eighth in the league and last year started 1-10 in the Big 12 on their way to 5-13. Now they have lost only one game since November and that was Houston, who has won its home Big 12 games by 22, 15, 23 and 34 but lost at Iowa State and TCU by four and one.

???????? How Kansas, Auburn, Oklahoma and Baylor fell this weekend

So it goes in the Big 12. Meanwhile elsewhere . . .

3 — Weeks Connecticut has now spent at No. 1. The Huskies spent zero weeks at No. 1 in 2011, 2014 and 2023, and won the national championship all three years. Their latest effort was a 43-point dismantling of Xavier. If you like close games, stick to the Big 12 because you’ve come to the wrong place with these guys. The winning margin has been at least seven points in 45 of UConn’s last 49 games.

9-0 — North Carolina has started that way in the ACC for the first time in 23 years to climb up the polls. The last coach to do it? Roy Williams? Dean Smith? Nah. Matt Doherty. While on the subject of the Tar Heels, they have also held the opposition under 70 points in five consecutive conference road games, and the last time they did that was 1982, with a freshman named Michael Jordan in the lineup.

3-2 — Duke’s record against power league opponents in the normally invulnerable Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils were beaten at home by Arizona and Pittsburgh (for the first time since 1979), had to come from 10 points down to put away Georgia Tech and…