1. TCU basketball is doing an amazing job making us forget about this performance from a week ago. The Horned Frogs won their third game in a row last night, beating Southern Utah 61-52 in Fort Worth. Kyan Anderson had 21 points and six dimes while Arkansas transfer Devonta Abron scored 17 with 11 of them coming in the second half. So now they’re 6-2 but we all know this is a 6-2 that will be here today and gone come January. They don’t have a lot of weapons offensively and actually average more turnovers as a team than assists. I had the Horned Frogs finishing better than Red Raiders by season’s end and now I regret ever believing that. But it’s ok; this is a learning year. They will get there eventually.
2. Cowboys Ride For Free has released their totally unbiased predictions from now until New Year’s Eve. On the schedule, Oklahoma State has games at Virginia Tech and home contests vs. South Florida, Missouri State, Central Arkansas, Texas-Arlington, Tennessee Tech and Gonzaga. CRFF has the Pokes going 6-1 with their sole loss coming against the Zags. I also think they’ll go 6-1 during the stretch but I see them losing to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg rather than Gonzaga. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Hokies can score toe-to-toe with OSU, but hey, 11-1 going into conference play? Sounds prrrr-etty good to me.
3. Viva The Matadors dissects what’s trending for Texas Tech at the moment. According to the piece, Tech’s new style of “controlled chaos” is a big part of their recent turnaround. They’ve adopted a “40 Minutes of Hell” scheme with a 1-2-1-1 defense, forcing 13 steals a game, which is good for fourth in the nation. Those forced turnovers have led to more scoring opportunities, hence their 89 PPG scoring average. The Arizona game on Saturday means so much to the Red Raider program. They haven’t had a big-time opponent come to Lubbock since another top-10 team (Washington) lost to Tech in overtime back in 2009. Texas Tech fever: catch it!
4. Baylor’s SB Nation blog, Our Daily Bears, had a nice feature exposing the Bears’ poor play on defense so far this season. The article uses a couple of defensive scenarios from the Baylor-St. John’s game in Charleston last week. On one Red Storm fast break, the Bears had three guys checking just one man. When you have a team with their size, athleticism and speed, putting three players on one guy in transition is not just unacceptable but nonsense. Another scenario was Baylor’s ineffectiveness to run a proper screen-and-roll defense which allowed the Red Storm’s D’Angelo Harrison to hit 6-of-9 from three-point land. Guess how College of Charleston runs their offense? Pick. And. Roll. So if a team wants to exploit the Bears, P & R seems to be the way to go. Think John Calipari is looking at that DVD?
5. This FanPost I found on the Bring On The Cats has nothing to do with basketball. It’s a post that asks the question: What if each Big 12 team were different countries of the world? This will not make you a more savvy Big 12 fan than you already are, but what it will do is make you laugh while at the same time have you nodding your head in agreement at some of these answers. Have a great weekend, everyone.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2012 at 7:31 am by Nate Kotisso and is filed under big 12, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: baylor, iowa state, kansas, kansas state, oklahoma, oklahoma state, tcu, texas, texas 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.