The Cougars Coronation?: Houston vs Kansas 📅 Tuesday, March 5th, 4:00pm EST, Houston, TX 📺 ESPN

The team that wins the Big 12 is the best team in the college basketball. It's easy to overcomplicate a lot in a topsy-turvy level of the sport with unbalanced schedules and short seasons, but this one seems fairly straightforward. With a one game lead over Iowa State with one left to play, Houston can stake to their claim to be the country's best with a win against Kansas on Saturday.

Now the point of ShotQuality is to not just deliver an opinion that the Cougars are the best team in the country. Per our Adjusted ShotQuality ratings, the metric we have that best measures team strength, Houston currently sits at the top:

The Cougars defense gets most of the talk given how suffocating they've been this season, so instead of continuing to shine a light on that end of the floor, it's perhaps time at their elite offense. Houston sits sixth in adjOFF SQ rankings thanks in large part to the efforts of guard L.J. Cryer. The former Baylor player who switched his allegiances within Texas has been one of the more efficient players in the country this season.

Cryer leads Houston in total possessions used with 424 while sitting in the 95th percentile in ShotQuality Points Per Possession. More impressively is that despite that volume, the diminutive Cougar has only a 12 percent Bad Possession Rate, which essentially measures shots taken that rank in the bottom third of value across college basketball. Cryer has also been saving his best for last as this closing stretch has seen him author three straight 20-point games leading into the matchup against Kansas.

Now singling out Cryer isn't an effort to paint Houston's offense as a one-man show. It most certainly does not come down to the production of a single Cougar. Houston's offensive success isn't rooted in the "sexy" metrics that give an offense a high ceiling -- like Rim-&-3 Rate -- but rather the things that give the offense a high floor. The Cougars rank fourth in the country at limiting turnovers and fourth overall in Offensive Rebound Percentage. In simple terms, Houston does two things that guarantee them lots of shots, which is why their offense can be so efficient despite a Rim-&-3 Rate that sits 346th in the country.

The Cougars will need all the shots they can get because the Jayhawk defense has tightened up as the season went on. Kansas currently sits seventh overall in adjDEF SQ which amazingly is only the third best defense in the Big 12, a conference that boasts a whopping six teams in the top 12 of that metric:

The key for KU's defensive success is that there just isn't one key. The Jayhawks have built a solid defense based on being good at a lot of things rather than simply great at one. In fact, the highest they place in any defensive metric is their 14th ranked marking in opponent's SQ PPP in After Time Out or "ATO" situations. Kansas' Open 3 Rate allowed does leave something to be desired, as they sit just 191st in the country there, but it seems more like something that could rear it's ugly head come the tournament, rather than in this showdown against Houston.

To win against the Cougars on Saturday, the Jayhawks must do a better job of protecting the ball. Houston's predatory scheme has them third in Opponent Turnover Percentage. Kansas, meanwhile, is somewhat sloppy with the ball, ranking 177th in Turnover Percentage. That could be a recipe for disaster tonight as some excellent shot making in the KU's 13-point win earlier in the season hid the fact they coughed up the ball 18 times that game. Unless the Jayhawks can count on being white hot against one the country's best defenses a second time, they better take care of the ball.

A win for Kansas doesn't do much in the grand scheme of things as they are well out of the Big 12 title race. Yet given their recent slide, a Jayhawk loss, especially if it's by a wide margin, will sow some serious doubt into their tournament hopes. Both Kansas and all the fans of Iowa State are hoping that they can travel to Houston and find a way to take down a Cougar team on the verge of crowning themselves as kings.