1. Ben McLemore was named a Sporting News First Half First Team All-American on Tuesday. McLemore is leading Kansas with 16.4 PPG and is grabbing 5.4 RPG this season. His semester of practice last spring while he sat out due to academic issues looks to have helped immensely. He is projected to be a top-5 pick in this summer’s NBA draft and will be the reason if the Jayhawks advance deep in March this year. He sprained his right ankle late in the game against Baylor, but the Lawrence Journal-World reported that he may not miss Saturday’s game against Texas. McLemore wasn’t the only Big 12 representative on the All-American list, though. Oklahoma State freshman point guard Marcus Smart was also named a First Half First Team All-American. He was also named the Freshman of the Year as the Sporting News explained they didn’t include freshmen who were on campus and practiced last season. Smart has been great for the Cowboys this season, averaging 14 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 4.7 assists per game.
2. McLemore and Smart may have received the highest honors of any players or teams in the Big 12, but they aren’t alone. Other awards include: Oklahoma State’s 69-68 loss to Gonzaga on New Year’s Eve is the 4th best game of the season. Kansas State is the biggest surprising team so far, ahead of Charlotte, Oregon, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The Wildcats are #16 in the country with a nice win over Florida last month and their only losses coming to Michigan and Gonzaga. Jeff Withey is 4th most improved player of the year while averaging 13.1 PPG, 8.2 RPG, and 4.7 BPG. Texas is the 4th most disappointing team and West Virginia is 3rd, on the list with Kentucky, North Carolina, and Oregon State.
3. Baylor lost to Kansas in Allen Fieldhouse on Monday night, which isn’t all that surprising because most teams lose in Allen Fieldhouse, 100 out of the last 101, to be exact. John Werner of the Waco Tribune-Herald had a nice piece on the historic building after covering the 61-44 Kansas win. A great snippet from Werner’s article after he described the pre-game video and festivities: “Intimidated yet? It all got to me, and I was just there to write about it.” Allen Fieldhouse can’t be appreciated until you see a game there, and it can’t be fully appreciated until you’re lucky enough to be there for a big game, like Baylor, Ohio State, and Missouri last season.
4. Take away any team’s starting point guard and it will struggle offensively. Take away the starting point guard from a  team as young as Texas, and things are destined to be tough offensively. But historically bad? With an 8-8 record and #12 Adjusted Defensive Efficiency on Kenpom.com, it certainly isn’t the defense that is hurting the Longhorns this season. As Peter Bean of BurntOrangeNation.com points out, barring an upset of Kansas on Saturday, Texas will be under .500 for the first time since Brittney Spears released her debut album. They are 254th in the country with 64.1 PPG and are 0-3 in the Big 12.
5. Even with one of the best point guard’s in the country in Marcus Smart, Oklahoma State isn’t a great offensive team this season, so their margin for error on defense isn’t very big. That didn’t seem like much of a factor early in the season as they started off 10-1, but as John Helsley points out, teams have been shooting the ball well against the Cowboys lately and it has translated to a 1-3 record in their last four games. The recent struggles could also be due in part to a tougher schedule, and Oklahoma State not being as good as we once thought. They have that nice win over North Carolina State and they also beat Tennessee. But overall they are 1-2 against ranked opponents and 3-3 against BCS opponents only because TCU basketball is lucky enough to be called a BCS school now.

KoryCarpenter (150 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2013 at 7:30 am by KoryCarpenter and is filed under big 12, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: baylor, ben mclemore, jeff withey, kansas, kansas state, marcus smart, texas. 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.