1. The departure of Missouri from the Big 12 raised questions about the future location of the Big 12 Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments last month, but league athletic directors now say both tourneys will stay in Kansas City. The city is still a prime location for the tournaments with Kansas and Kansas State located so close, but it’s still interesting to consider that the Big 12 will host a tournament in a state where no member school will be located. As long as the 10 teams in the conference don’t mind, however, Kansas City is a fine centralized spot for fans to travel to.
2. Soon, Kansas State and West Virginia will meet twice a year, and that means KSU coach Frank Martin will face Bob Huggins, who spurned the Wildcats for his hometown school in 2008. However, there’s a first time for everything — and that first time will take place Thursday night. Eventually the excitement of facing Huggins will wear off for Kansas State fans, but this first meeting will be quite an awkward encounter. Huggins did a terrific job setting the foundation for KSU’s turnaround, in particular by helping sign Michael Beasley and Bill Walker. But there’s still a lot of hard feelings about the way he left after one season too.
3. In related news, another future Big 12 game happened last night between Texas Tech and TCU, and the Horned Frogs proved they may belong in this league. Jim Christian‘s team is now 7-2 after the six-point win over Tech, and the game drew more than 6,000 fans. That sounds modest, but it’s TCU’s largest showing in a non-conference contest since 2004. That fact alone might be frightening for the long-term viability of TCU’s program and to fellow Big 12 schools, but at least there’s an obvious improvement taking place here.
4. With the new 18-game schedule, conference play will begin especially early in January this season. Until then, though, Oklahoma State has a tremendous challenge ahead. From now until New Year’s Day, OSU will play against Missouri State, Pittsburgh, New Mexico, Alabama, SMU and Virginia Tech. Um, what? That’s all before Big 12 play starts? Good luck, Travis Ford. That’s not an easy road to 2012.
5. Missouri stayed undefeated by beating Villanova in New York City last night, helped in part by gritty effort by MU senior Kim English. He’s revitalized his game this season after struggling as a junior, and ESPN’s fantastic Dana O’Neil profiled English and his much-publicized bout with a childhood stutter. English is one of the more outgoing players in college basketball, and now that he’s seeing his production skyrocket on the court, it’s hard not to root for him.

dnspewak (343 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 7:00 am by dnspewak and is filed under big 12, microsites. Tagged: alabama, bill walker, bob huggins, frank martin, jim christian, kansas state, kim english, michael beasley, missouri, missouri state, new mexico, Pitt, smu, tcu, texas tech, travis ford, villanova, virginia tech, 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.