Only three conferences in America can claim four top-25 teams as their own.

The first two should come as no surprise: The ACC is college basketball’s perennial darling conference, and upstarts like Virginia Tech and Clemson have joined the ACC’s Tobacco Road royalty — North Carolina and Duke — among the nation’s elite. Meanwhile, the Pac-10 has become the top power conference in the country, with Stanford and USC both on the cusp of making it six top-25 teams out of 10, a remarkable achievement.

The third conference is also considered one of the six high-majors, the so-called BCS conferences. The BCS label is apt in this case. When people think of the Big 12, they’re more likely thinking of Vince Young than any hoops heroes.

But the top four teams in the Big 12 feature many of the traits found in Final Four contenders. The teams’ combination of star talent, effective team play, and winning systems make them dangerous opponents come March.

Kansas is the class of the conference. Only North Carolina can match the Jayhawks’ murderers’ row of raw talent. Kansas’ top five scorers — Brandon Rush, Mario Chalmers, Julian Wright, Darrell Arthur, and Sherron Collins — were all top-tier recruits who could have had their pick of just about any destination they wanted coming into college.

But critics contend that the Jayhawk quintet arrived too recently in Lawrence to be contenders for the national championship. Sure, Kansas boasts a 19–3 record, the nation’s no. 6 ranking, and a spot atop the Big 12 standings. But the Jayhawks have struggled at times, losing to a talented, but hardly dominant, mid-major, Oral Roberts, and a Jekyll-and-Hyde DePaul team. With games under way, the Jayhawks have a tendency to drift during stretches, letting down against lesser opponents. They’re also largely untested in the conference, having gone 1–1 against two of the five other Big 12 teams above .500 in league play.

Still, the numbers don’t lie. After falling to Texas Tech, the Jayhawks have drilled each of their past three opponents by 20 points or more. Though Kansas owns a dazzling array of offensive talent, it’s the Jayhawks’ pressure defense which keys the whole operation. According to the excellent statistical ratings at Ken Pomeroy’s Web site, kenpom.com, Kansas ranks third in the country in adjusted Defensive Efficiency, trailing only Duke and North Carolina.

The Jayhawks’ next game Saturday should be an excellent barometer of the team’s strength, as well as that of its top challenger, Texas A&M. Coach Billy Gillispie has engineered one of the fastest, most dramatic turnarounds in NCAA history, transforming the once sad-sack Aggies into the no. 8 team in the country and a nightmare for opponents to play. A &M uses backbreaking defense of its own to make its mark, ranking right behind Kansas in Pomeroy’s defensive rating. But rather than keying fast breaks as Kansas does, the Aggies employ one of the slowestpaced offenses of any elite team.

A&M’s 65–62 loss to UCLA on December 9 was a nail-biter to the end, featuring two teams that don’t let opposing offenses breathe, and mixed with skilled inside-outside play with the ball. That Aggies Acie Law and Joseph Jones can draw favorable comparisons to UCLA’s Arron Afflalo and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (and A&M to last year’s national runner-up Bruins) speaks volumes.

Oklahoma State, as a team, doesn’t quite stack up to Kansas and Texas A&M defensively. But Cowboys forward Marcus Dove is one of the best individual defenders around, capable of guarding four positions and shutting down the most talented player on any team. Although he rarely scores, Dove is a spectacular dunker who punctuates his highflying jams by cupping his fans together and fluttering them, as his name would imply.

The Cowboys need that kind of shutdown defender, because they don’t want to overload their top two scorers with excessive responsibilities. Besides, Mario Boggan and JamesOn Curry will usually take those on themselves. Boggan is a 6-foot-7-inch, 235-pound bruiser who can bull his way to the rim, or hit from long range. A transfer from Florida, he weighed more than 300 pounds in Gainesville before reshaping his body. Now he’s a Player of the Year-caliber player who’s not getting enough recognition. Boggan averages 20.8 points and 7.8 rebounds a game, while shooting a blistering 57% from the field and 79% from the line. He played a preposterous 54 minutes in Oklahoma State’s triple-overtime win over Texas on January 16, potting 37 points in what’s been the game of the year to date. And yet Boggan doesn’t even lead the team in minutes played; that honor goes to Curry, the Cowboys’ ironman, who’s averaging 36 minutes a game while dropping 18.5 points per contest.

But the Big 12’s most intriguing team, and the sleeper candidate for a trip to the Final Four, is Texas. Teams coached by Rick Barnes typically have spotty track records in March, with some loaded Longhorns squads failing to live up to their potential. In that sense, Texas reminds people of Syracuse, before the 2003 postseason. That year, the Orangemen rode the unstoppable Carmelo Anthony, and dynamic freshman point guard Gerry McNamara, to their first national championship under Jim Boeheim.

Texas star Kevin Durant may be the best player in college basketball — and he won’t be able to drink legally until the end of the decade. Durant is averaging 24.4 points and 11 rebounds a game. These are off-the-charts numbers for a player on a top team playing in a glamour conference, let alone a freshman. Fellow frosh D.J. Augustin can’t quite match McNamara for shooting prowess. But his 6.9 assists a game rank among the game’s best, and his decision making belies his age.

Texas’ biggest question mark is clearly its age. If Kansas is young, the Longhorns are babies, with all eight of their top scorers freshmen or sophomores (four out of the top five are frosh). Still, the college game has changed dramatically this season, with high school seniors who would already be good pros — including Durant, Greg Oden, and others — making an instant impact on campus. If this is the Year of the Freshman, wouldn’t it make sense to see the best rookie of them all hoisting hardware in Atlanta?

Mr. Keri is a writer for ESPN.com’s Page 2 and a contributor to YESNetwork.com.