1. Jeff Borzello and his CBSSports.com companions near the end of their Preseason Top 25 +1 Countdown with a look at the Kansas Jayhawks. KU is going to finish the regular season as Big 12 Champions. There’s no point in fighting it anymore. It’s as much of a sure thing as Steve Spurrier getting a daily round of 18 in or Skip Bayless uttering something nonsensical. The only reason Borzello has a “Why This Team Will Disappoint” section of the preview because he has to. I’m sure the Bible has a passage that reads, “Thou shalt doubt not Bill Self.” Check again, it’s in there.
2. Burnt Orange Nation released its full Big 12 preview yesterday. When making our own predictions here at the microsite, we came to the conclusion that predicting three through eight in the league was a total crapshoot. They have Texas ranked second in the league behind the Jayhawks, much like the mid-2000s. Their all-Conference team has the names you’d expect but a couple of their honorable mentions are from squads that will appear to finish at the bottom of the league. They aren’t as crazy as you’d think.
3. The Remember the Miners Scholars Program is announcing the release of the Huggins Horrible Hankie. What fans can do with the “Triple-Hs” is wave them around (a la the Terrible Towel; forget that I just used a Pittsburgh reference) at West Virginia sporting events. The program’s Honorary Chairman is West Virginia coach Bob Huggins, who provides financial aid to miners, dependents of miners, and students pursuing an education in the world of mining. We all know mining is a major part of the Mountain State’s identity, so if you would like to get yourself a hankie or if want to know more about Remember the Miners, do check out remembertheminers.org.
4. The Pistols Firing Blog has now hit number eight on its player-by-player countdown. Forward Kamari Murphy was the topic yesterday and he’s definitely going to get his share of attention as a freshman starter for the Cowboys. His high school coach at IMG in Florida was particularly high on him, and I am too, despite Travis Ford complaining about Murphy not doing enough with the ball when it’s in his hands. I hope Ford’s trying to keep Murphy under the radar now just so he can have a chance to surprise us all toward the end of the year.
5. The Collegian just ran a story on the best player in the Big 12 that nobody’s talking about. Rodney McGruder was the top scorer from last year’s Kansas State squad and he leads a team with the experience of playing a bunch of big games under their belt. I have the Wildcats finishing fourth in the Big 12 and that has a lot to do with no important losses from the program other than Frank Martin’s departure. In fact, I’ll even go as far to say that K-State could be a sleeper team to make the Sweet Sixteen this year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2012 at 7:31 am by Nate Kotisso and is filed under big 12, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: bill self, bob huggins, kamari murphy, kansas jayhawks, kansas state, oklahoma state, rodney mcgruder, texas longhorns, 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.