- I bet TCU players and fans would have traded an historic win over Kansas at home for a beatdown in Allen Fieldhouse, which was probably coming regardless. But that couldn’t have made Saturday’s 74-48 loss any better. The Horned Frogs had nine points at halftime, worse than the 13 that they held the Jayhawks to in Fort Worth back on February 6. TCU’s starting five was held scoreless in the first half, and Bill Self told the Lawrence-Journal World‘s Tom Keegan that the first 20 minutes were some of the best basketball the Jayhawks have played all season. They may be hitting their stride again as they enter a final stretch that gives them no breaks if they want that ninth consecutive Big 12 championship.
- With 68 teams now in the NCAA Tournament, there should be even less sympathy for teams who can’t make the field. But it’s still interesting to look at the bubble, where a few Big 12 teams are firmly planted with March on the horizon. Jeff Borzello over at CBSSports.com had a nice piece on Saturday about most of the bubble teams right now, and Iowa State and Baylor garnered attention. He labeled the Cyclones ‘winners’ after their 20-point win against Texas Tech Saturday — the team’s third in a row — and mentioned what most people have to be thinking: a win tonight over Kansas seals them into the field of 68. Baylor, on the other hand, is less fortunate after dropping its third game in a row over the weekend, a 90-76 loss at Oklahoma. They have now lost six out of eight contests and still must face Kansas and Kansas State.
- Speaking of bubble teams, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has both Iowa State and Baylor in the dance in his latest mock bracket. The Cyclones are a #10 seed in the East Region while the Bears are a #12 seed in one of the four play-in games in Dayton. Six Big 12 teams make the cut in this edition, the others being Kansas (#2), Kansas State (#4), Oklahoma State (#5), and Oklahoma (#9). I know the brackets usually fall apart well before the Elite Eight and the top two seeds don’t meet in the regional finals consistently, but Kansas definitely received the worst draw of the #2 seeds. If the brackets stays true to form (again, a big ‘if’), the Jayhawks would face top-seeded Indiana in Indianapolis. Good luck with that.
- The three-game losing streak suffered by Kansas is getting further and further into the rear-view while they climb back up the polls, at #5 to be exact in Sunday’s Top 25 (And One) from CBSSports.com. Their four losses suddenly don’t look so bad when you see that six other teams in the top 10 have at least four losses as well. The win over Oklahoma State certainly helped too. Kansas State remained at #12 this week while Oklahoma State (rightfully) stayed at #14 even with the loss to Kansas. An extra bucket and a win wouldn’t have made the Cowboys any better of a team moving forward.
- Kansas State has been a fouling machine lately, but it hasn’t burned them yet. As Kellis Robinett of the Wichita Eagle points out, the Wildcats were called for 54 fouls in last week’s games, two wins at West Virginia and against Texas. “We have got to be careful on fouls,” Bruce Weber told Robinett. “We have to adjust when they are calling it tight.” Fouls shouldn’t be an issue against Texas Tech tonight, but they could be a problem in the NCAA Tournament if a lower-seeded team in the first round is able to slow the tempo of the game down because of K-State’s foul trouble, limiting possessions and increasing the likelihood of an upset.