1. Less than 48 hours after Kansas and Duke played the game of the season to this point in college basketball, the folks at Rock Chalk Talk have provided a statistical breakdown of the game. Once you sort through all the numbers, one stat in particular jumps out: turnovers. When you consider that Tyshawn Taylor turned the ball over 11 times himself, it becomes even more remarkable that the Jayhawks took the Blue Devils to the wire. If Taylor fixes his issues, Kansas will have no problem competing for an eighth-straight Big 12 title.
2. For all the talk about the death of rivalries like Kansas/Missouri and Texas/Texas A&M, it is easy to forget that West Virginia, the Big 12’s newest member, will actually end rivalries of its own by moving from the Big East. With WVU set to take on Pittsburgh in the Backyard Brawl, the Mountaineers face the same issues as the aforementioned teams. The two schools have been playing for more than a century, but the football game between them appears in jeopardy. The same scenario may play out in basketball, where the rivalry is just as heated. Just as we have clamored for Kansas  and Missouri to work out their problems and continue the Border War, consider this a plea for West Virginia to do the same. Rivalries are just good for college sports in general.
3. In other news involving a future member of the Big 12… TCU‘s Craig Williams has just one more shot to get it right. The Virgin Islands Daily News sat down with the senior, a native of the territory, to discuss his time with the Horned Frogs. After transferring from Temple, Williams will now attempt to help coach Jim Christian turn the program around before it moves from the Mountain West to the Big 12. He may never appear in this conference, but he has a chance to start something special at TCU. The Horned Frogs, by the way, are 3-2 right now, having lost by double-digits to Norfolk State and Mississippi in the Paradise Jam.
4. With both national polls set to release on Monday, it will be interesting to keep an eye on where Missouri finds itself. The Tigers were considered a fringe top-25 team before the season, but after beating Notre Dame and California by a combined 58 points in the CBE Classic, they could be looking at a top-10 ranking. The scary thing is that Missouri will not have to face a tough opponent until December 6  when it faces Villanova, so it should continue its winning ways until then at the very least. How high could these Tigers rise?
5. And as Missouri jumps in the rankings, so does the popularity of coach Frank Haith. Considered a poor hire by almost everybody back in the spring, Haith did not make any new friends this summer when Nevin Shapiro accused him of acknowledging an illegal payment to a recruit at Miami. After the CBE Classic, however, Haith has probably made friends in every city in Missouri. He’s a rock star now. Funny how winning fixes a lot of things.

dnspewak (343 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2011 at 7:00 am by dnspewak and is filed under big 12, microsites. Tagged: california, craig williams, duke, frank haith, jim christian, kansas, miami, mississippi, missouri, norfolk state, notre dame, pittsburgh, tcu, tyshawn taylor, villanova, west virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.