This year's freshman class is considered one of the best in college basketball history. Many of those top-tier players happen to reside in the Big 12 Conference.
Between BYU's AJ Dybantsa, Arizona's Koa Peat, Kansas' Darryn Peterson, and Houston's Kingston Flemings, the Big 12 has no shortage of young talent lifting their respective teams. Their standout performances — such as Flemings' 42 points against Texas Tech basketball this past weekend — have been the talk of the hoops world for days.
Lost in the shuffle of the young stars is the best player in the league, who happens to be a junior, back for his second season in the conference, and also led his team to the win over Flemings' Houston squad.
JT Toppin has been nothing short of sensational in his junior campaign. Opting to return to Texas Tech for another crack at the Final Four, there was a question about how much the 6-foot-9 forward from Dallas could actually improve his game in one year, especially with more teams having to find ways to limit him on the court.
Not only have teams found it even more difficult to contain Toppin than last year, but Toppin has also shown an array of new skill sets that add another element to his game.
Toppin isn't talked about in the same breath as Dybantsa or Peterson, mostly because they're battling for the No. 1 overall pick status in the 2026 NBA Draft. Toppin's draft stock, by contrast, is far more questionable.
But this is college ball, not the NBA, and overlooking what Toppin's done to this point has gone on long enough.
The case for Texas Tech basketball's JT Toppin to repeat as Big 12 player of the year
Kelvin Sampson wasted little breath when asked who Houston had at the top of their scouting report for the rematch with Texas Tech.
"Toppin," Sampson said. "Did a great job on him, didn't we?"
Sampson's tongue-in-cheek response was appropriate, given the damage Toppin inflicted on the Cougars' bigger, more physical interior. Toppin took the first possession of the game to the baseline, driving past Houston freshman Chris Cenac Jr. and finishing the reverse layup. That left Sampson incredulous on the sideline, hollering at Cenac for allowing the play to materialize.
Toppin spent much of the game going up against Houston's Joseph Tugler, considered by many to be the best defender in the country, regardless of position. Between the whistles, Toppin and Tugler spent their time pushing and shoving, working their bodies to the max, trying to find the edge, the angle to make the play.
After the whistle, though, Toppin and Tugler could each be found having friendly chats, patting each other on the backside, and helping one another off the floor. There's a mutual respect for the two pit bulls in the paint that has grown from their battles over the last two years.
"We just understand we're just both trying to help our team win," Toppin said. "We just got a lot of respect for each other, how hard we play. We play at a level of intensity that not really a lot of bigs play at."
Intensity and energy have never been problems for Toppin, whose second jump is second to none in the country. He showed off that skill against the Cougars, grabbing six offensive rebounds on his way to a 31-point, 12-rebound double-double in the 90-86 win.
Toppin's latest double-double was his 13th of the season after having 14 during the regular season all of last year (he added five more in Tech's seven postseason games). It was also his fifth game with 30 points or more after having three such games during the 2024-25 campaign.
With 11 more regular-season games to go, Toppin will easily eclipse his double-double total from last season. In all, he has 11 games this year with at least 20 points scored, and had 18 last season, including the postseason.
New skillsets enhancing JT Toppin's production
It would be one thing if Toppin were doing the same things he did as a sophomore. In some sense, he has, but it's the intricacies that have separated him this season.
As a lefty, teams have worked tirelessly to take Toppin's right-shoulder floating hook shot away from him. Even when that's the focus, Toppin finds ways to get to his bread-and-butter shot. More recently, though, Toppin has also shown a willingness to finish with his right hand, a skill he didn't really have in his first two years.
Toppin has also grown as an offensive initiator, able to take the ball above the 3-point line and drive to the basket like a guard. He showed off some nice handles in doing this against the Cougars, and his ability to read help defenders opens up the Texas Tech offense even more.
Another factor in Toppin's excellence as of late is his improved free-throw shooting. Never a great shooter at the line, Toppin started the year ice cold at the stripe, shooting just 45% during non-conference play. Since Big 12 action began, Toppin has sunk 16 of his 21 shots at the line, a 76% clip, and was 7-of-8 on free throws against Houston.
Has JT Toppin become undervalued?
The last few weeks have seen national media start discussing potential national players of the year and All-American candidates. The consensus is that Toppin and his running mate, Christian Anderson, are both excellent and both deserve to be All-Americans, but they may cancel each other out as teammates, preventing one or the other from reaching first-team status.
That could also be the case for Toppin's bid to be just the third player in Big 12 history to repeat as conference player of the year.
Grant McCasland knows Toppin deserves recognition for what he's doing on the court, but also wants that to include the intangibles that can't be quantified by stats.
And if Toppin is going to repeat as the Big 12 player of the year, it's up to the Red Raiders to continue being successful as a team.
"JT is impacting winning at the highest level, on defense and offense, on rebounding, on putting pressure on the rim, on handling double teams, on making the right play, on willing our team to victory, on talking in timeouts at halftime, telling the truth and telling (them) the fight that we need," McCasland said.
"To me, he's the MVP in regards to the fight that takes to win, but it's our job to keep winning so that we can put him in that conversation."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Can Texas Tech basketball's JT Toppin repeat as Big 12 player of the year?
