1. West Virginia‘s lack of depth came back to bite them Tuesday afternoon as Virginia Tech overcame a 17-point deficit to top the Mountaineers. Juwan Staten played 39 minutes despite a ghastly 3-of-12 shooting day and fellow guard Eron Harris was allowed to log 38 minutes of his own while going 4-of-17 from the field. Five of the nine players that saw the floor for Bob Huggins tallied at least four fouls, compounding WVU’s issues. Despite having a future Hall Of Famer on its sideline, West Virginia could be facing a long winter for the second straight year. This will likely go down as a “bad loss” in the tournament committee’s mind, and there aren’t many opportunities on the Mountaineers’ non-conference schedule for Huggins’ team to neutralize Tuesday’s effort.
2. When we laid out a possible road to redemption for Rick Barnes and Texas last month, we didn’t foresee South Alabama giving the Longhorns a scare. Boy, were we wrong to overlook Brad Stevens’ protege, Matthew Graves. His Jaguars raced out to a 15-6 lead and almost handed Texas one of its worst losses under its beleaguered coach, but the Longhorns dug out of a 14-point halftime deficit thanks to big second halves from Jonathan Holmes and Isaiah Taylor and went on to dispose of the Jaguars. 
3. Another Big 12 team that is probably thankful that the Champions Classic received all the attention Tuesday is TCU, which dropped a stunner to Longwood in Fort Worth last night. Trent Johnson‘s team continues to fight the injury bug and had four players sidelined for this one, but that’s no excuse for a team playing a squad that is only in its second season of  Division-I conference affiliation. Those hoping for a quick rebuild will probably need to adjust their expectations if they haven’t already.
4. Former Ohio State walk-on Mark Titus, who contributes for Grantland, released his Big 12 outlook yesterday, and like most things Titus writes, it’s an interesting read. From his entertaining superlatives (“Best Senior With A Slim Chance At An NBA Career”) to his ruminations on whether Kansas extends its streak of conference titles, we definitely recommend you take a look.
5. This time of year, the competition has to be taken into account, but Iowa State put forth a promising defensive effort against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Tuesday night. The Cyclones held the Islanders to 28.6% shooting from the floor and rebounded 76.9% of their misses. The biggest question surrounding Fred Hoiberg’s team is whether they will defend well enough to support its outstanding offensive potential. A bigger test looms Sunday, when Michigan pays a visit to Hilton Coliseum.

Brian Goodman (987 Posts)

Brian Goodman a Big 12 microsite writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BSGoodman.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 13th, 2013 at 10:25 am by Brian Goodman and is filed under big 12, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: bob huggins, iowa state, mark titus, rick barnes, tcu, texas, trent johnson, 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.