1. It’s a novelty in college basketball these days: A neutral site series between in-state foes from both power and non-power conferences. Come again? Yup, it’s time for the Big Four Series in Des Moines this weekend, which features a game between Iowa and Northern Iowa followed by a showdown between Drake and Iowa State. It strips the programs of a home game, but it’s been unbelievable to watch these teams play each other over the last several years. And to set up an actual tournament? That’s unheard of with the modern we-have-nothing-to-gain philosophy employed by almost every single BCS league team in college basketball.
2. Mark your calendars for next season. It looks as though Kansas State will likely host Gonzaga in Wichita as a salute of sorts to the fans in that city. The Wildcats will face the Zags in Seattle this weekend, but in the return game, Weber may opt for Wichita instead of the Sprint Center in Kansas City as a neutral destination. Apparently, those are the two choices he has, and he told a reporter with the Wichita Eagle he is leaning toward playing at Intrust Arena instead of the Sprint Center. Either way, you know it will probably be a sellout in either city.
3.  The Kansas City SB Nation blog has begun previewing Big 12 Conference play, since it is amazingly almost here. In the first edition of the preview, we get yet another reminder that Kansas rules all and probably will be hardly challenged in Big 12 play this year. Oklahoma State could do it, sure. Baylor could improve. So could Kansas State. But right now, amidst all of the chaos in the Big 12 and the league’s poor performances in non-conference play, the Jayhawks are the one thing you know you can count on. The Big 12 might be lost without Kansas this season.
4. When I saw this headline — “Jayhawks’ Ellis plans to work over break” — I thought Ellis had decided to get a part-time job outside of basketball. For a moment, I tried to figure out how in the world a guy playing Division I basketball would have enough time in the day to have a job, too, and then I read the story. It’s about how Ellis and the freshmen will work on their game during winter break without school in session, and then things started to make a little more sense. Ellis will need to use the time off to clear his head and relax a little bit. He’s playing only about 16 minutes a game right now, but Self said his minutes will continue to increase as long as he keeps working. Not at a job, of course. At basketball.
5. This news is a few days old, but it’s so priceless we just had to include it. West Virginia’s mascot is no longer allowed to hunt with his musket after he killed a black bear and got caught on tape. That seems like a pretty reasonable request. It would also make Fake Dwight Schrute from The Office pretty happy.

dnspewak (343 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2012 at 7:30 am by dnspewak and is filed under big 12, microsites. Tagged: bruce weber, kansas, kansas state, oklahoma state, perry ellis, 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.