BUFFALO, N.Y. - The question can almost never be answered on the floor. There are just too many teams and too many variables.

Still, players from both West Virginia and Missouri had fun with it on Saturday, anyway.

Which is better, the Big East or the Big 12?

The Big East put a record-tying eight teams in the tournament this year, the Big 12 seven. The Big East took a pretty hard hit in the first round, losing four of those eight - Marquette, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Louisville. Villanova fell in the second round, leaving just three Big East teams going into today.

But those are also the league's top three seeds from the Big East tournament - Syracuse, Pitt and West Virginia.

 The Big 12, on the other hand, lost just two of its seven teams in the first round (Texas and Oklahoma State). But then in a monumental upset, No. 1 Kansas was beaten Saturday by Northern Iowa. Baylor and Kansas State reached the Sweet 16 with wins Saturday, while Missouri and Texas A&M play for Sweet 16 spots today.

"What did we have, two teams in the Final Four last year? Every year is different,'' West Virginia's Da'Sean Butler said Saturday. "You can't really go and judge us basically off maybe one year that we had four teams fall out after the first round. It happens. It's basketball.''

 "I still think we're the best league in the country. Just because we haven't done so well in this tournament doesn't [change that],'' said West Virginia forward Devin Ebanks. "We're a good conference. We have 16 teams that are very strong, play against each other every night. There's no team in the conference that you can sleep on. It's still the best conference to me.''

Butler and Missouri's Zaire Taylor are both from the metropolitan New York City area, which is Big East country. Butler is from Newark, N.J., and Taylor from Staten Island, N.Y., so they both know a little bit about the league.

They chose to make it a simple numbers game.

"How many of the Big 12 got in?'' Butler asked a reporter.

"Seven,'' he was told.

"One short,'' Butler smiled.

Ah, but not so fast, Taylor said. If this is a numbers game, he wanted to talk about the natural disparity there. The Big East has 16 teams and the Big 12, well, 12.

"I say this every year. I've said this since I've been in the Big 12. The Big East has a lot of talented teams, some elite teams. But at the same time they got about 30 to 40 teams in the conference,'' he joked. "So when you figure the Big East brings eight out of 20 into the tournament and then the Big 12 brings seven out of 12, we're going over 50 percent. They're still around 30.''

West Virginia coach Bob Huggins has a unique perspective on the debate because he spent a year in the Big 12, and fairly recently. He was the coach at Kansas State for one season before returning to his alma mater three years ago.

He's a staunch defender of the Big East.

"When I was in it, I probably would have said [the Big 12 was better], too,'' Huggins said. "But now I'm not. I think you have to experience the Big East to appreciate what it is.''

And so these days Huggins talks about how coaches outside the Big East look at the conference and think that it can't be any tougher than what they go through in their own leagues. And then Huggins got to the Big East.

"I've told this story a bunch and for those of you of that heard it, I apologize. But a year ago we played three freshmen in our top six. We were scrambling, trying to win enough games to get an NCAA tournament bid,'' Huggins recalled. "We go to Georgetown, who at that time was 13th, 14th in the country. We get a big win in Georgetown. I'm usually not all that jovial, but I was pretty happy. I get out and get on the bus and I have a Jimmy John's sandwich sitting there. I can't wait to eat my Jimmy John's and watch a replay of the game on the bus on the way home.

"And then one of [the WVU assistants] walks up and drops like seven or 10 DVDs on my chair on the bus. I said, 'What's this?' They said, 'Come on, Huggs, we have Pitt on Monday.' Pitt happened to be No. 2 in the country at that time.''

In other words, there simply isn't a break.

"This year we had four teams in the Top 10. Other leagues don't do that,'' Huggins said. "If other leagues did that, they would hail themselves as the greatest league of all time. We were in a down year allegedly. It's brutal.''

Missouri's Taylor, though, went back to the numbers game, this time in a different way. He pointed out that the bottom teams in the Big 12 give the top teams in the league a battle. His own Tigers lost to last-place Nebraska in the Big 12 tournament last week.

"We lose to Nebraska, Iowa State beats Kansas State while they're still in the hunt for first place. I mean every game is a battle,'' Taylor said. "When you get more to the bottom of the Big East, I think they are still competitive teams, but I think the teams in the bottom of the Big 12 are better.''

The bottom line, though, is that today when West Virginia and Missouri play in the second round of the NCAA tournament, conference affiliation isn't going to matter. While there might be a certain league pride involved, there is a point where selfishness has to rule.

"It's Missouri versus West Virginia. That's where it stops. It has nothing to do with the conference,'' Taylor said. "I know personally I'm concerned about what we do. I mean if teams from the Big 12 win, hey, that's great. But at the end of the day, we want to win.

"I don't think we're going to be celebrating if Kansas or any other team in the Big 12 wins the national championship. I don't think we're throwing a party at Missouri's arena. I don't think [WVU] is going to be the most excited team in the world if Syracuse wins the national championship.''

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.