KANSAS CITY – Earlier today, the Big 12 Conference announced that this year's Phillips 66 Men's and Women's Basketball Championships being played here in Kansas City will have their own anthem paying homage to the best conference in college basketball.
 
The composer is Detroit native P.L., and the song is called "No Nights Off." It will be played in T-Mobile Arena throughout the men's tournament and up the street at Municipal Auditorium for the women's tournament starting later this week.
 
So, there's that!
 
New commissioner Brett Yormark is already beginning to inject his personality into what has become a terrific week of college basketball in Kansas City.
 
New York City has long been considered the mecca of basketball, and nothing will ever beat what happened in Madison Square Garden when the Big East was still the Big East – the media coverage, the celebrities and the overall excitement and atmosphere of the Big Apple.
 
Generations of West Virginians looked forward to making the trek to New York City ever since Dyke Raese's Mountaineers upset their way to an NIT title in 1942. In subsequent years, New Yorkers who made a few bucks off Raese's '42 squad adopted West Virginia as one of its favorite visiting teams.
 
Fast forward to the late 1990s, when West Virginia became members of the Big East Conference and began playing regularly in the Garden. Winning a Big East championship wasn't a realistic thought until John Beilein showed up, and it didn't actually happen until Bob Huggins led the Mountaineers to a 60-58 championship-game victory over 22^nd-ranked Georgetown in 2010.
 
Huggins still considers that among the most moving experiences of his 41-year coaching career.
 

"Looking around the most famous arena in the world and seeing a sea of gold, there were guys with tears running down their faces singing '(Take Me Home) Country Roads,'" he said. "It's hard to surpass that."
 
For sure, but what is stuck in Huggins' mind no longer exists.
 
Syracuse is gone. So are Pitt, Boston College, Louisville, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Cincinnati and West Virginia, leaving Madison Square Garden to the Big East remnants and the Midwestern schools recruited as fill-ins.
 
For West Virginians who used to follow Fairmont State and other West Virginia Conference schools out here for the annual NAIA basketball championship, Kansas City has long had great meaning, too.
 
And when West Virginia joined the Big 12 Conference for the 2012-13 season, Kansas City has really started to grow on Mountaineer fans as well.
 
Unlike New York, where there are so many other things going on outside Madison Square Garden, basketball is everywhere in downtown Kansas City. Red and black Big 12 banners adorn the light posts throughout the city, and the main street outside T-Mobile Center is blocked off for basketball fans from Lubbock, Texas, to Morgantown, West Virginia, to have some fun and fellowship.
 
The participating teams have adopted their own bars and bistros in the Power and Light District, making this a truly unique setting for college basketball.
 
Inside T-Mobile Center exists one of the most intense and passionate college basketball tournaments in the country. Every team here in Kansas City can win an NCAA Tournament game or two, and some are even good enough to win it all just as Kansas did last year and Baylor did in 2021.
 
Texas Tech almost did it in 2019, falling to Virginia in overtime in the 2019 national championship game.
 
"The opening day when everybody is playing, fans from everywhere are flying in and every school's fanbase is in the gym, sectioned off where you have different colors throughout the gym, and it's a beautiful sight," West Virginia senior forward Emmitt Matthews Jr. said. "I was fortunate to play in the final-four night of it my freshman year, and that atmosphere just gets insane the more you win and the more you advance."
 
"This is the most competitive, physical league in the country, barring none," Huggins said. "I didn't think anything could ever compare or come close to comparing to what used to happen in the Garden and playing the tournament in New York, but Kansas City has been a great place.
 
"They've created a very good venue, and I think our guys are looking forward to the conference tournament, as well as the NCAA Tournament."
 
Now coaching his 11^th Big 12 tournament, Huggins has become very familiar with Kansas City.
 
"I coached in a championship here when I was at Walsh College in the old place up the street (Municipal)," Huggins said. "It's kind of neat. You go in there and you're watching other games before you play and there's people in there bringing sack lunches and enjoying basketball.
 
"It's a great basketball town, and it's a great basketball state," Huggins said. "It's just basketball everywhere and this state is well thought of."
 
Huggins continued.
 
"You're talking about a city that is coming off the Super Bowl parades and everything else," he said. "We've been in a couple of different hotels but primarily in one, and the hotel people have been as accommodating as you can possibly be." 
 
West Virginia is hopeful Texas Tech is more accommodating Wednesday night when the two schools tip off this year's tournament in the 8-9 game. The Red Raiders have suspended coach Mark Adams, so assistant Corey Williams will be coaching the team.
 

Williams said earlier today that he hasn't talked to Adams since his suspension, and he's not sure if he will before Texas Tech plays Wednesday night.
 
Huggins said he is preparing for the same stuff his team faced in Lubbock, when an undermanned Texas Tech team without 6-foot-11, 245-pound center Fardaws Aimaq and with four-star freshman guard Pop Isaacs missing most of the second half, lost 76-61.
 
The second time around a month later in Morgantown, Tech overcame an eight-point second half deficit to defeat West Virginia 78-72, temporarily putting the Mountaineers' NCAA aspirations on hold.
 
Now three wins later, West Virginia is back on the right side of the bubble and would like to stick around here for a few more days just like it did during the "Press Virginia" years in 2016, 2017 and 2018 when the Mountaineers reached the finals.
 
Kansas City is a great place to experience some of the best college basketball in the country, just like New York City used to be during the old Big East days.
 
Wouldn't it be nice to hear "Take Me Home Country Roads" one time in T-Mobile Center, say right after P.L. is done singing "No Nights Off?"
 
ESPNU will have television coverage for Wednesday night's game, slated to tip off at 7 p.m.
 
Oklahoma State and Oklahoma will play the second game immediately afterward.