1. Gary Parrish is updating his Top 25 (And One) daily this season, which will be fun to look out for each and every afternoon. Not surprisingly, he has Michigan State at No. 1 in the country after beating then-No. 1 Kentucky last week and hanging on against Columbia over the weekend. Kansas is third, Oklahoma State is seventh, Baylor is 22nd, and Iowa State jumped from unranked to 15th after beating Michigan at home on Sunday, 77-70.
2. Never fear, Kansas fans. Cliff Alexander signed his National Letter of Intent on Saturday morning. The No. 4 overall recruit on Rivals.com committed to Kansas on Friday afternoon but said he wasn’t going to sign until January at the earliest, keeping his options open as well as the possibility of committing elsewhere before next summer. Whether it was a change of heart or a friendly nudge in a phone call from Bill Self, Alexander is signed and ready for his one year of college, or so says his AAU coach. Speaking of Cliff Alexander…
3. Friday’s hat ceremony involving the Chicago prospect was anything from awful to hilarious to bush league, depending on the whom you ask. If you missed it, Alexander at first picked up an Illinois hat before setting it down and donning a Kansas hat instead, giving Illinois fans a few seconds of pure joy before ripping it all away. If you’re not an Illinois fan and not at work (unless you have headphones), do yourself a favor and watch the videos of student reactions on CBSSports.com, then thank me later.
4. As John Helsley of The Oklahoman points out, the barrage of great match-ups early in the season has tomorrow’s Oklahoma State/Memphis showdown in Stillwater flying somewhat under the radar. Surprisingly, it will be the first top-15 non-conference match-up (Oklahoma State is eighth, Memphis 13th) in Gallagher-Iba Arena since the 1957-58 season. Between Marcus Smart and Memphis guards Joe Jackson and Michael Dixon, it looks to be one of the best perimeter showcases of the non-conference season.
5. When Kansas signed Andrew Wiggins in May, its odds to win the 2014 NCAA title jumped from 30 to 1 to 10 to 1 overnight. The day before beating Duke last week, those odds had improved to 11 to 2 to cut down the nets in Dallas next April. Oklahoma State follows at 18 to 1 and then we see a drop all the way down to Iowa State at 100 to 1 (although erxpect Sunday’s win over Michigan to improve those odds a bit). The shocker is Baylor, a Top 25 team with the same odds (125 to 1) as a team like Creighton. The worst odds in the league for a team you can bet on is Kansas State, where a $1 bet nets you $300 if the Wildcats end up winning it all.

KoryCarpenter (150 Posts)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 18th, 2013 at 9:01 am by Kory Carpenter (@Kory_Carpenter) and is filed under big 12, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: Andrew Wiggins, baylor, bill self, Cliff Alexander, iowa state, kansas, kansas state, marcus smart, oklahoma state. 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.