March Madness will officially begin this week for Big 12 conference teams as the Big 12 Conference tournament starts in Kansas City Thursday.Teams will be coming to Kemper Arena with assorted missions at hand. Some teams will be looking to improve their seeding for the NCAA tournament while others will be trying to impress the selection committee enough to get an invite to the dance, and finally the cellar dwellars will try to play spoiler.The conference regular season featured a tight race that Iowa State won by just one game over Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. The Cyclones finished 13-3 in conference play and will play either Baylor or Colorado Friday at noon.”We need to move on, the season is over,” ISU head coach Larry Eustachy said. “We have three seasons and the longest one is over, now we go to the second one which is the conference tournament, then is the NCAA tournament and we’ll see what happens.”The Cyclones earned the top seed in the tournament to try and successfully defend their title they won at Kemper Arena last season.

Kansas is the No. 2 seed, Oklahoma is seeded third and Texas will be the No. 4 seed.Oklahoma State and Missouri fought through tragedy and injury to also post winning records in conference play. The Cowboys finished fifth at 10-6 and the Tigers were sixth at 9-7.Nebraska, Baylor and Colorado were all competitive in the conference but couldn’t crack the upper tier of the league. Kansas State, Texas A&M and Texas Tech, who struggled from start to finish, bring up the rear in the conference standings.The Cyclones have defended their regular season title and have now set their sights on taking a second straight tournament crown. They will be doing so in front of legions of Cyclone fans that annually make the three-hour trip and turn Kemper Arena into Hilton South.

Having won the title last season, the Cyclones are confident in their chances of repeating.”We’re about to step into a new chapter and we got to take it one game at a time and put our game on the floor,” ISU point guard Jamaal Tinsley said. “We’re going to be very confident going down there. We’re going to have everyone against us so it’s going to be hard.”With the loss of three starters, including All-American Marcus Fizer, the Cyclones were targeted for rebuilding but balanced scoring, senior leadership and new faces powered the Cyclones back to the top.Tinsley, senior All-American, leads the Cyclones with a 14.7 scoring average, 17.7 in conference play. Tinsley is coming off a career high 29 points against Nebraska in the regular season finale.The Cyclone frontcourt has been solid with Paul Shirley and Martin Rancik posting scoring averages of 10.1 and 13.7 points per game respectively.The fourth Cyclone senior in the starting lineup is versatile guard Kantrail Horton. Horton can shoot, rebound and handle the ball well when Tinsley is out of the game.Freshmen Jake Sullivan and Shane Power have broke into the Division I ranks in a big way as well as junior college transfer Tyray Pearson. Sullivan has been one of the conference’s best three-point shooters but has been in a slump the last three games.If the Cyclones win their first round game, they will face the winner of Texas and Oklahoma State on Saturday. The Cyclones had a 10-game winning streak snapped by the Longhorns in Austin on Feb. 24.