By JASON TARWATER
SportsRadioKC.com

The Big 12 season is over and this was probably the most competitive “Coach of the Year” award I’ve seen in awhile.

While everyone sees the race as coming down to KU’s Bill Self and K-State’s Frank Martin, I think Baylor’s Scott Drew should also have received attention.

At the start of the season, Baylor was picked No. 10 in the preseason poll and ended third – including beating Texas twice. While hindsight shows that beating Texas twice may not have been that big of a  feat, it is a big deal for the players and that university.

When you look at how far Drew has taken this Baylor program from when he took it over – a program with a murdered player, an accused teammate and a coach who was banned from coaching college basketball by the NCAA – it’s borderline miraculous.

Are there rumors of Drew not being well liked by other coaches? I’m not sure. You hear rumblings of this, but from people I’ve talked to, Drew’s a good guy and deserving of his success.

However, in the end, it came down to Self and Martin. Self came in as the preseason No. 1 team in the nation, the preseason No. 1 pick in the conference and the team with two preseason All-Americans.

Martin’s team was barely picked to finish in the top four in the conference, but ended the season No. 9 in the country and was in the running for a No. 1 seed until a tough home loss to Iowa State.

So where do you go with this - The coach who exceeded expectations or the coach who met expectations? It’s a question we hear every year around this time.

Let me start by saying I’ve become a Martin fan this year. He’s really impressed me with how he’s gotten these guys to play. I was banging the "K-State is a No. 1 seed" drum going into Saturday.

However, Saturday’s game kinda proves that Self may have been the right choice.

This year, the Big 12 was as good as it’s ever been. It was the top conference in college basketball – despite what the ESPN talking heads will tell you about the Big East. And Kansas was clearly the best team.

Coming into the season, though KU was the preseason No. 1 team, the Jayhawks weren’t a “clear” favorite to win the conference – not with road games against Texas and Texas A&M. There was a ton of talk that Texas could even be the better team, and run the conference table without a loss.

We saw what happened to Texas. We saw what happened to Kansas: Two teams with similar expectations, similar talent, but vastly different results.

In the Big 12 this year, it’s hard to live up to expectations of being the favorite. There are trap games around every corner. KU had a few. There was the overtime win in Colorado. There were the closer-than-expected home games against Iowa State and Nebraska. There was even the road trip to Texas A&M – and to be honest, I still to this day do not know how Kansas won that game.

But the Jayhawks did win, and won all but one conference game. This was the year the Big 12 was at its best, and the Jayhawks won the league by four games. There’s something to be said for that.

The point – a lot of times the conference champion’s coach is voted “Coach of the Year” just because his/her team won the title. And no doubt that’s where some of the talk for Self as the recipient probably came from.

However, when you look at the numbers and the circumstances in this conference, it’s clear Self did a very good job of coaching, keeping his players focused and managing the talent he had in the best way possible.

Or have we forgotten the Tyshawn Taylor Facebook incident, his questioning of his role and the way he found a way to be productive off the bench before returning to his regular starting lineup? Have we also forgotten just how far players like Taylor, the Morris twins and Brady Morningstar have come since last year? All of those things go into it.

Was Frank Martin deserving of the award? Of course he was. I also think he was just as deserving of his new pay raise – and he still may be underpaid. But just some food for thought – there’s much more to Bill Self’s coaching job than just rolling out the ball and seeing what happens.

While Martin did do a great job of coaching this year, it’s still a pretty safe bet that Self is truly the conference’s best coach. And KU fans – who I remember some calling for Self’s head after losing to UCLA in 2007 – need to remember how lucky they truly are to have him.