1. After fouling out during the home stretch of his team’s win over BYU on Wednesday, Iowa State forward Melvin Ejim briefly lost his cool and flashed an obscene gesture toward the Cougars’ student section from the bench. Immediately following the game, Ejim expressed his regret, apologizing via Twitter. Thursday morning, Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard defended Ejim while sympathizing with BYU fans who were offended. Nothing in Ejim’s background suggests that this was anything more than an isolated incident, and while a minority of college hoops fans wondered about possible disciplinary action by head coach Fred Hoiberg, nothing has been announced, and at this point, we’d be surprised to hear anything.
2. Less than two weeks after opening their season with a clunker against Northern Colorado, Kansas State took another one on the chin, falling to Charlotte in the opening round of the Puerto Rico Tip-Off. Starters Shane Southwell, Will Spradling, and Marcus Foster shot a combined 12-of-37 from the floor and Thomas Gipson fouled out in just eight minutes of action. Surprisingly, the Wildcats will have a chance to make good on the loss later this morning in the consolation bracket when they take on Georgetown, which was also upset in their tournament opener.
3. West Virginia may finally be getting comfortable in Bob Huggins’ second season. The Mountaineers pounded Georgia Southern 101-68 in the first round of the Cancun Challenge, led by Juwan Staten’s 20 points. Also important is the fact that Staten was able to get some rest due to West Virgina’s big lead after the transfer played 119 out of a possible 120 minutes to begin the year. West Virginia’s 101 points are the most the program has registered since 2007.
4. Not many people are talking about Texas this year, though considering their fairly easy schedule so far, that may be a good thing. In either case, the start that forward Connor Lammert is off to through his team’s first four games is definitely worth mentioning. The sophomore is averaging 10.8 points per game in just 22 minutes per game and has missed just eight of his first 28 shots while converting seven of eight chances from the free throw line. It will definitely be interesting to see how Lammert fares against much better competition next week at the CBE Classic in Kansas City.
5. Kansas has an important meeting tonight against Towson at Allen Fieldhouse before departing for the Battle 4 Atlantis. While the casual fan may look at the match-up and not think much of it, Towson has greatly improved under head coach Pat Skerry after suffering through an NCAA record 41-game losing streak. Also of note is the connection between the Towson program and Kansas guard Frank Mason, who originally committed to the Tigers out of high school.

Brian Goodman (987 Posts)

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

This entry was posted on Friday, November 22nd, 2013 at 9:00 am by Brian Goodman and is filed under big 12, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: Connor Lammert, kansas, kansas state, Melvin Ejim, 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.