Rush The Court

We continue our breakdown of the Big 12 with the part of the league that will likely determine whether the conference matches its high water mark from last season, when it sent seven teams to the NCAA Tournament. If you missed it yesterday, you can find our thoughts on the bottom rung of the conference here.

Baylor

• Key wins: at South Carolina, vs. Memphis (in Las Vegas), at Vanderbilt
• Key losses: vs. Illinois (in Las Vegas)

People love to hate on Scott Drew, but the dirty secret is that the Bears have been one of the country’s most consistent offenses, finishing among the top 20 in adjusted offense in six of the last seven seasons. They’re trending that way again this year, which is especially impressive when you recall that they lost over half of their offensive production due to the departures of Isaiah Austin, Brady Heslip and Cory Jefferson. The strange thing is that despite their performance so far, the Bears have not been a good shooting team, with an effective field goal percentage of just 50.7 percent, but they have the nation’s best offensive rebounder in Rico Gathers leading a core of strong, athletic players who are just relentless on the glass and get tons of second-chance opportunities. Throw in a stingy defense and four regulars that shoot at least 34 percent from deep and the result is a team that will be able to hang with the best teams in the conference.

I wrote earlier this month that it’d be wise to buy in on Baylor to make it back to the NCAA Tournament, and I still believe that, but there are a couple of things keeping the Bears from breaking into the top tier of the Big 12. Their free throw shooting has been horrific, and in a conference as competitive as the Big 12, I worry about that flaw impacting their ability to close out games. I also think that when the Bears get into conference play, their rebounding, while still strong, will regress some and force the team to get more creative on offense, which will be tough to do on the fly. I don’t think the Bears are as good as their #12 KenPom ranking suggests, but they’re definitely no slouch either.

The Bears haven’t made consecutive NCAA Tournaments at any point in their history and have been on an every-other-year pattern since 2008, but I like their chances to break that routine and go dancing as a #7 seed this year. Their ceiling will be closer to a #5 f they can shore up their free throw shooting and withstand the other rigorous frontcourts the Big 12 has to offer.

Oklahoma State

• Key wins: Memphis (in Las Vegas), at Tulsa
• Key losses: at South Carolina, at home to Maryland

We knew coming into the season that the Cowboys would rely heavily on Le’Bryan Nash and Phil Forte to pick up the slack left by the departures of Marcus Smart and Markel Brown. It was a tall order, but so far, they’ve been up to the task. Nash currently leads the Big 12 in scoring with 17.6 points per game and has been one of the game’s hardest players to defend, as his 8.4 fouls drawn per 40 minutes rank sixth nationally. Forte’s three-point accuracy, which has been his calling card since he arrived in Stillwater, has dipped from a white-hot 44.1 percent last season to 35.2 percent, but there isn’t a team in the country that wouldn’t take that kind of production. To compensate for the drop in long-range shooting, though, Forte has become a more versatile player, scoring more inside the arc than he did in his first two seasons and showing some defensive prowess which had been lacking. Forte’s backcourt mate, LSU transfer Anthony Hickey, may not have Smart’s ceiling, but he’s provided everything Oklahoma State has needed as a primary ball-handler, complementary scorer and defender. He can even rebound a bit, too.

Now for the bad news. Down low, the Achilles’ injury that kept Michael Cobbins out for most of last season is behind him, but new bigs Anthony Allen and Mitchell Solomon haven’t shown much in reps against a non-conference schedule weak enough for them to do some damage. As good as Nash, Forte, Hickey and Cobbins have been, they’ll wear out quickly if they don’t get some help. Jeff Newberry and Jeffrey Carroll could provide a lift, though, so keep an eye on how those two perform in Big 12 play.

A blowout loss at South Carolina, a missed opportunity against Maryland, and a bullet dodged against lowly Missouri last night don’t inspire much confidence that Travis Ford’s team will be able to break into the top half of the Big 12, but that was always more of a best-case scenario than a reasonable expectation anyway. This is a decent team, but it’s very thin, so unless the bench improves, the drop-off from the starters to the reserves will keep the Cowboys out of some games that would otherwise be very winnable. Overall, Oklahoma State is about where I thought they would be before the season started. They did just enough work in non-conference play that a .500 run in league action should be enough to get to the NCAA Tournament and keep Ford’s job safe for another year, but it’s far from a guarantee.