Kansas University will play 40 games this season if it makes it to the title game of the Big 12 tournament and the national title game, which means half a season is in the history books. Two things haven’t changed: Nobody looked like an obvious choice to win it all before a game was played, and nobody looked like a smarter choice than Kansas.

Still, the Jayhawks look as if they have less than a 50-percent shot to win it all, but good luck trying to identify a team that looks more like a national championship contender.

Here at the midway point, three teams have established themselves as slightly better than the rest: Kansas, Syracuse and Kentucky.

Texas? As Kansas has shown in building a 19-1 record, the most important positions on the floor are center and point guard. The Longhorns fall short of elite in both areas. Texas center Dexter Pittman is averaging 5.9 points in the past seven games. At the point, Texas is at once three-deep and too shallow. Dogus Balbay, averaging 22.2 minutes a game, has made one three-pointer in 10 attempts this season. J’Covan Brown scores 9.9 points in 21.4 minutes, but he has more turnovers than assists. Florida transfer Jai Lucas can score and take care of the basketball, but he’s 5-foot-10 and can be exploited defensively.

Michigan State has one of the nation’s top point guards in Kalin Lucas, but the Spartans don’t have the size they did a year ago. Villanova? Too small to play tough post defense.

It doesn’t look as if any team will enter the NCAA Tournament as nearly as strong a favorite as North Carolina did a year ago, in part because nobody has as much experience as those Tar Heels. A look at minutes distribution by class on this year’s three top teams reveals as much.

Defining underclassmen as freshman and sophomores and upperclassmen as juniors and seniors, North Carolina coach Roy Williams gave 81 percent of his minutes to upperclassmen. In contrast, upperclassmen play just 31 percent of the minutes for Kentucky (19-1), which lost Tuesday night to South Carolina. John Calipari gives 48 percent of his minutes to the nation’s top freshman class.

Kansas coach Bill Self uses upperclassmen 45 percent of the time (freshmen 24 percent, sophomores 31 percent, juniors 29 percent, seniors 16 percent). Brady Morningstar’s first-semester suspension skews the numbers slightly.

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim gives 55 percent of his minutes to upperclassmen. Junior Wesley Johnson, a transfer from Iowa State, makes good use of his 34 minutes per game and leads the Orange in scoring (17.9) and rebounding (9.0) and makes .446 of his three-pointers. Syracuse will be a tough out.

A look at recent champions shows that although experienced teams tend to win it all, that isn’t always the case.

Self’s 2008 national champions relied on upperclassmen for 70 percent of the minutes. Billy Donovan’s second consecutive Florida Gators national championship club won it with upperclassmen playing 82 percent of the minutes. A year before that, just 29 percent of the time went to juniors and seniors.

North Carolina’s 2005 national title was achieved with upperclassmen getting 83 percent of the playing time.