1. There’s a game between Kansas and Kansas State at Allen Fieldhouse tonight on ESPN’s Big Monday. One of the two teams is in first place in the Big 12. It’s not Kansas. The Jayhawks, losers of three straight contests, face a must-win game at home against the league’s current top dog. That’s the Wildcats, mind you, who have already lost in Manhattan to this same Kansas team. They’re not the same team this time around, though, and they’re playing a KU team with serious confidence issues. Kansas State hasn’t won at Kansas since 2006, which was part of a losing streak that prompted this very post by yours truly. No matter how fired up the Jayhawks’ fan base may be after three straight losses that includes a defeat at lowly TCU, I stand by Bill Self. You should too. We’ll find out tonight.
2. Bill Self says he’s not giving up after this latest skid. This is unfamiliar territory for him during his career. At Kansas, he’s had his fair share of crushing NCAA Tournament losses, but it’s unprecedented to see his basketball team play so poorly in the middle of the regular season for an extended period of time. This isn’t just a week-long struggle, though. Self had a terrific quote in this article: “It hasn’t been a good week for us by any stretch. But let’s be real. If you’re ranked No. 2 in the country (in the Associated Press Top 25) just seven days ago, you don’t go from being a good team to a bad team overnight. You’ve had a couple bad outings.” That’s the key here to remember. Kansas needs to improve in all facets of the game, and there are no quick fixes, but the Jayhawks are still a very good team.
3. Kansas has fallen, but Oklahoma State is flying high. Coincidentally, the Cowboys’ big win last week at Allen Fieldhouse may have been the jumpstart the Cowboys needed in this roller-coaster of a season. They’re also gelling as a team, as if you haven’t read this cliche of a story already. Maybe there’s something to this chemistry thing, though. Marcus Smart has certainly had a mature and calming presence on this team. Their ball movement is better. There’s more sharing. They do seem to like each other. That’ll go a long way in March.
4. Korie Lucious has been The Man for Iowa State this season. He’s not the Cyclones’ leading scorer, but the Michigan State transfer at point guard is the guy who makes this offense go. He struggled early in the year, but he’s played up to expectations since and has kept the Cyclones afloat offensively. That’s why Iowa State had so many problems when he got into foul trouble against Kansas State over the weekend. “He went out right away and got his third and it is tough… the guy that’s been leading your charge and the guy that goes out there and runs the show for you is in foul trouble like that.” That surely had an adverse effect on leading scorer Will Clyburn, who struggled through a difficult night in the Octagon of Doom.
5. We’ve got a Big 12 championship race, folks. Kansas is mortal for the first time in ages. There’s a legitimate chance somebody else will win the league instead of the Jayhawks, and that’s making for a wild final month in league play. It’s been a microcosm of college basketball in general — while writing this post, 822 top-ranked teams just lost again — but it’s also been a beautiful sight to see. Much of it depends on how the rivalry game shakes out at Allen Fieldhouse tonight. You may not see a more important regular season game all season long in the Big 12.

You all need a history lesson. You’re laughing at Kansas right now for losing to a historically bad TCU team on Wednesday night, and rightfully so. The Horned Frogs entered the game with one victory over a team with a winning record this season. They ranked below five Ivy League teams in the RPI. Trent Johnson’s team had not won a Big 12 game in its inaugural season yet, half the team was injured and Jerry Palm said on Twitter he’d never seen a bigger upset in terms of RPI since he started tracking the numbers 20 years ago. This was bad. Epically bad. On another planet from NCAA Tournament losses to Bucknell, Bradley, Northern Iowa and VCU.

Don’t Put the Gun to Your Head, KU Fans.

Done laughing? Great. Your history lesson begins now. Allow your minds to drift back to January 16, 2006. That’s the last time Kansas’ basketball program lost a second consecutive game. January 16 was a Monday. Big Monday, to be exact. The Jayhawks, two days removed from a loss to Kansas State, traveled to Columbia to play a Border War game (archaic, right?) against Missouri. They were 9-5, unranked and playing some of the worst basketball of the Bill Self era. On this particular evening, Kansas hit its version of rock bottom. A walk-on named Christian Moody stepped to the free throw line in a tie game with 0.4 seconds left, and he missed both. Wasn’t even close on either attempt. The Jayhawks lost in overtime to their bitter rival, falling to 9-6 and 1-2 in the league. Panic time. That Missouri team, which finished 12-16, would wind up firing coach Quin Snyder a month later.

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Over the next two weeks, we’ll break down where each Big 12 bubble team stands in terms of its current NCAA Tournament resume. We begin with a snapshot of Iowa State, a program seeking its second straight trip to the Big Dance under coach Fred Hoiberg.

Iowa State’s Past Two Weeks Have Been Helpful (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Current Record: 15-6, 5-3 Big 12

RPI: 40

SOS: 70

This is the team you’ve forgotten about in the Big 12. Oklahoma State’s roller-coaster of a season caught your attention early. Oklahoma’s rapid improvement did too. But the Iowa State Cyclones have quietly built a case for another NCAA Tournament at-large selection, and it’d look a heck of a lot more impressive if the basketball gods hadn’t guided that Ben McLemore three-pointer off the glass and into the hoop on January 9. Blown chance against Kansas aside, Fred Hoiberg’s team has worked its way back into the at-large conversation by knocking off Kansas State, Baylor and Oklahoma in a two-week span. Nothing is guaranteed, but Monday night’s flawless victory at home over the Sooners is proof that Hoiberg might have the most dangerous bubble team in the league.

Case For An At-Large

The Cyclones did not fare all that well in non-conference play. They own a solid home victory over BYU, but they lost every other significant game outside of the Big 12. That’s why their 6-3 start in the conference — good for third place so far — has been so important. As stated earlier, the past two weeks have been critical. Iowa State has picked up three victories over the RPI Top 50 in Ames, which means Hoiberg’s squad is now an even 4-4 in that category. Not terrible. Plus, six games remain against the Top 50 in league play, so it’s not as though Iowa State’s opportunities are finished.

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Danny Spewak (@dspewak) is an RTC Correspondent. He filed this from Chaifetz Arena following Saint Louis’ 75-58 victory over Butler.

The world’s leading scientists have two theories on Butler coach Brad Stevens. The first is simple. He is a robot. The second is a bit more complicated — that Stevens is technically a human being, but he intentionally bottles up his emotions on the sidelines and plays up his poker face to keep his basketball team under control in all situations. Not even Einstein’s quite sure how the 36-year-old coaching prodigy’s brain works, but every hypothesis concludes with the same result. Brad Stevens is a mastermind. He is a genius with an unshakeable demeanor, a fierce general who leads with his actions not his words. He never screams, never yells, never loses his cool, never argues with the officials, never lashes out at reporters and does not even offer a fist-pump when his team wins on the most improbable of buzzer-beaters. Nothing rattles Brad Stevens.

Except for the Saint Louis defense. Oh, those Billikens defenders could send General Patton running for the hills. As he watched his team turn the ball over time after time after time after time during a humbling 75-58 loss at Chaifetz Arena on Thursday night, Stevens showed his human side on more than one occasion. When Khyle Marshall threw the ball away under his own basket in the first half and gave Saint Louis two free points – one of 16 turnovers before the break – Stevens called a timeout and lit into his junior forward. Freshman Devontae Morgan was the next victim of verbal abuse after some sort of indiscretion on the defensive end. Stevens chased around official Ted Valentine at times, and in the postgame press conference, he fully admitted his ninth ranked team looked like a disaster for 40 minutes. “It was an absolute joy to watch one team play,” Stevens said. “Problem was, it wasn’t the team I was coaching.” It wasn’t as though Stevens put on a show with his antics on Thursday night. Compared to the rest of the hooligans roaming the sidelines in Division I basketball, he looked like Mother Theresa. Still, Stevens showed noticeable frustration as his team suffered through a 26-4 Billiken run in the first half. The Bulldogs had difficulty getting the ball up the court and running even a single set in the halfcourt.

SLU Players Got to Celebrate Too During the Rush The Court

It was oddly reminiscent of another vintage performance by Saint Louis back in December, when the Billikens held New Mexico to fewer points (13) in the first half than turnovers (16). They punish teams with picture-perfect help defense, and they have quick forwards who may not block a ton of shots but certainly disrupt opponents with their foot speed. Wing Dwayne Evans’ hands are all over the place. Cory Remuken is the shot-blocker and hustle player in the frontcourt. Jordair Jett is like the Tasmanian devil in the backcourt. They are fast, tough, smart and almost impossible to score against when they are at their best, but Saint Louis stepped it up a notch against the Atlantic 10 newcomers. “We’re just getting stop after stop, just converting on offense, but it started on the defensive end,” Jett said. “We’re just thinking, ‘Step on it. Make the lead bigger.’”

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Oklahoma nearly blew a 16-point lead on Wednesday night. It turned the ball over 17 times and was outrebounded by 14. Not an absolutely vintage performance against a Baylor team fighting its own issues, but good enough for a 74-71 road victory against one of the league’s better teams. The win solidifies the Sooners’ NCAA Tournament resume and, in most cases, would deserve a pat on the back or modest praise. You know, things like… Nice win. Way to go. Keep up the good work.

Not for this program. For a moment, think back to Jeff Capel’s disastrous break-up with Oklahoma. Think back to the Tiny Gallon accusations of improper benefits, the two straight losing seasons in the post-Blake Griffin era and the overall embarrassment of a once-proud fan base. Consider all of that, and then come back to reality and realize that Oklahoma just won its most important game in years on Wednesday night. Writers like us are often guilty of hyperbole and sensationalism, but Lon Kruger put the Sooners back on the college basketball map tonight. Forget that Baylor wasn’t even ranked, and that nobody’s ever referred to the Ferrell Center in Waco as Cameron Indoor West. It was still Oklahoma’s first true quality victory this season, save for perhaps Oklahoma State earlier this month. It was an example of what this team can do when Wyoming transfer Amath M’Baye is on his game. He scored 20 points tonight, and Steven Pledger broke out in a big way with 20 more of his own. Freshman Buddy Hield played such a terrific basketball game in the backcourt that Kruger didn’t even need our man Sam Grooms (who we’ve so generously supported this season and will continue to do so). There was sharing of the basketball. A 53 percent clip from the field as a team. And a couple of veteran plays by two freshmen — Hield and Je’lon Hornbeak — at the end of the game to seal the win and hold off the Bears.

Remember Blake Griffin? Wednesday Night Might Be OU’s Best Win Since He Was There

Speaking in terms of simply RPI, it is Oklahoma’s best win since February 6, 2010 against Texas, a season in which the Sooners finished with a losing record. For our purposes, let’s call this the biggest win in Oklahoma basketball history since March 27, 2009, when Blake Griffin and his boys smacked around Syracuse in the Sweet Sixteen. It’s been a long four years since that day. Finally, the Sooners are back on track, though it’ll take awhile longer for Kruger to restore that sort of glory. Griffin had a double-double for the Los Angeles Clippers in a victory over Minnesota on Wednesday night, by the way. You could still argue Oklahoma had a better night.

Tonight, it really begins. West Virginia will find out what the Big 12 is really all about when it steps into the national spotlight on Big Monday, facing none other than the program that has won the league every year since the dawn of time (or at least seems to have). The Mountaineers saw teams like Kansas in the Big East, sure. They are ready for the level of competition, but tonight’s match-up will truly indoctrinate the Mountaineeres into the Big 12 Conference. Since Day One, it hasn’t been an easy transition for Bob Huggins‘ team. West Virginia embarrassed itself in its season opener by losing big to Gonzaga to kick off ESPN’s Tip-Off Marathon. It then finished 1-2 in the Old Spice Classic, lost at Duquesne (currently 7-13 and 0-6 in the A-10) and has now started 2-4 in the Big 12, with the only victories coming against Texas and TCU. Oh, and the Mountaineers played a CBS game against Purdue a few weekends ago where they lost by 27 points. So that’s where the Mountaineers stand heading into Big Monday: 9-10 overall, 2-4 Big 12, and with an angry Huggins, who seems to rip his team a new one after every single loss.

Bob Huggins and Deniz Kilicli Aren’t Happy Campers

You can’t blame him. Over Huggins’ storied career, he has become accustomed to coaching and developing hard-nosed players who don’t back down from challenges and fight on each and every possession. His teams are usually famous for their toughness, defense, and ferocious rebounding. That’s why it was stunning to see this team bow out so pathetically in a blowout loss to Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament a year ago. With transfers Aaric Murray and Juwan Staten joining a promising sophomore class, it almost seemed like a foregone conclusion that Huggins would find a way to regain that tenacity. With his track record, he deserved the benefit of the doubt. Instead, disaster has struck.

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1. Texas Tech defeated unranked Iowa State at home this week. For most programs, that’s a blip on the radar. For interim coach Chris Walker and the Red Raiders, it is a major feat to beat anybody, considering last year’s team finished 1-17 in Big 12 play. Add in the fact that the Cyclones are actually a formidable opponent and advanced to the NCAA Tournament last season, and you might as well hang a banner in Lubbock. Or not. Point is, as the article points out, this might have been the most important win for Texas Tech in two seasons. Two seasons! A win over Iowa State! Still, it’s encouraging to see how well freshman point guard Josh Gray played down the stretch, and this is a team with a lot of young, talented parts. Give it a couple of years, and maybe wins over Iowa State at home will become the norm, not a surprise.
2. Finally, Oklahoma State is getting some good news with regard to an injured player. Brian Williams should return by next week, which will give the Cowboys a much-needed defensive boost. The versatile wing, who broke his wrist this fall and has not played a game yet, can guard a lot of different positions at 6’5” and changes the dynamics of Ford’s roster. It’s a huge relief for this program, which has dealt with the injury bug on more than one occasion and could use a boost as they enter the heart of Big 12 play.
3. We knew this would happen. We know TCU would not come out swinging in its inaugural Big 12 season. We knew the Horned Frogs would lose a lot. Now that it’s actually happening, though, those low expectations don’t make the results less ugly. TCU lost by 21 points to West Virginia on Wednesday, and it may be difficult for Trent Johnson’s team to even win another game this year. Thanks to some notable recruiting efforts by Johnson, help is on the way, but the Horned Frogs already lost at home to Texas Tech and certainly shouldn’t be favored in any game for the rest of the season. A winless Big 12 season is not out of the question.
4. As for that West Virginia team that beat TCU on Wednesday– the picture is almost as bleak for Bob Huggins in his first Big 12 season. His team has been nothing short of atrocious, which makes that beatdown even more embarrassing for the Horned Frogs. TCU is undermanned due to injuries, but offensively this team is a mess and cannot keep pace with anybody. Not even the hapless Mountaineers.
5. Bill Self met with the media this week to discuss a variety of topics, and as usual, the Kansas coach was highly entertaining and informative. The most interesting part of the press conference might have been his comparison between Ben McLemore and Brandon Rush, the former Kansas star from his national title team. He called Rush the better defender, but McLemore the better scorer. That’s probably fair. He also praised both of them for being unselfish stars, which is the sort of personality Self breeds as a coach. If you recall that 2008 title team, many criticized the Jayhawks for lacking a go-to scorer. They were too unselfish people said. And then they won it all. Self knows how to coach, and he knows how to get his stars to play team ball. McLemore is a terrific example of that.

Danny Spewak (@dspewak) is an RTC contributor. He filed this report following Wednesday night’s Wichita State victory at Missouri State. 

On March 6, 2009, Gregg Marshall walked to the podium in the bowels of the Scottrade Center in St. Louis and delivered perhaps the most difficult postgame press conference of his career. Minutes earlier, Creighton’s Booker Woodfox banked in a jumper as time expired in the quarterfinals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, even though replays showed a possible clock malfunction. Mass chaos all around. Reporters were interviewing the Missouri Valley commissioner in the hallway and demanding answers. The Shockers had heroically rallied from 22 points down, but this controversial shot sent them to the CBI.

Carl Hall Looks Like a Grown Man, Much Like The Rest Of His Team. (Photo credit: AP Photo)

Marshall’s press conference got emotional right away. He told us how his young child was begging him to appeal to the commissioner’s office, pleading for something to be done to rectify the situation. There was nothing anybody could do. The Shockers lost the game, and in two seasons, Marshall’s record at Wichita State stood only at 28-37. He left Winthrop for this? Marshall had been the king of the Big South. He had qualified for seven NCAA Tournaments with the Eagles and thrashed Notre Dame in the first round of the 2007 NCAA Tournament. Now, he was trying to re-establish himself and his style of play all over again in the tough-as-nails Missouri Valley. Mark Turgeon hadn’t exactly left him a perfect situation when Marshall had taken over in 2007, but this proud program with a rabid fan base was going to need to see some improvement. And soon.

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1. What’s wrong with this headline: “Big Ten pace OK with KU’s Self.” Kansas under Bill Self hasn’t played very Big Ten-like, but that showdown with Kansas State on Tuesday sure seemed like a Big Ten battle. It was physical. Ugly. Tons of bricks from every player on the floor. But, as every coach likes to point out, the sign of an elite team is its ability to handle adversity and win even when it’s not on its so-called “A” game. That’s how Self viewed the victory in Manhattan. “A testimony to a team’s toughness is to figure out a way to win when things aren’t going well.” Agreed on all counts. So no matter how ugly that win was, you’ve got to give Kansas credit for scrapping out a win in the most difficult road environment it’ll see all season.
2. Bruce Weber isn’t Bill Self’s best friend by any stretch of the imagination, but even he’s admitting the Kansas State head coach is doing a terrific job with his new program thus far. “Bruce can coach… There’s no question he can coach. I think he’s done a great job,” Self was quoted in Jason King’s ESPN.com article. It’d be easy to write off Weber for winning with a team Frank Martin assembled, especially since his national title appearance in 2005 happened with none other than a Self-recruited team. But, as King points out, any coach who can get to a Final Four clearly has some sort of talent. And considering what Weber built at Southern Illinois, there’s no reason for Kansas State fans to become concerned about a major drop-off after Martin’s players all graduate. Maybe a change of scenery will help Weber learn from the mistakes he made at the end of his Illinois tenure.
3. You know how Myck Kabongo‘s still out for a few more weeks? That’s bad for Texas. And it’s even worse now that Jonathan Holmes will miss three to six weeks with a broken right hand. Rick Barnes already had to deal with an injury to forward Jaylen Bond earlier in the year, so it’s like there’s a curse in Austin this season on the hardwood. Holmes is the team’s leading rebounder — and it’s not even really very close — and he’s also the most talented offensive option in the frontcourt for Texas. When it rains, it really, really pours in Texas, apparently.
4. Marcus Smart may have already set a record in the category Most Feature Stories Written About a Freshman. It’s unprecedented how much hype this guy got after signing with Oklahoma State. He’s lived up to every single expectation, and he certainly deserves the attention. Most of the feature stories have been similar, but this one’s worth your time. It came from USA Today, so you know it’s solid. It’ll also give you an idea of where Marcus Smart is coming from, and why he is the way he is. Chilling stuff.
5. Oklahoma is good. Are the Sooners great? Probably not. Will they make the NCAA Tournament? Perhaps. All we know right now, though, is Lon Kruger has a pretty good team, and it’s definitely the best team in the state right now. At 4-1, Oklahoma is miraculously just a game behind Kansas in the Big 12. The next five games will entirely define Kruger’s second season, and that’s not an exaggeration. Look at this murderer’s row: at Kansas, at Baylor, vs. Kansas State, at Iowa State and vs. Kansas. Lose all five of those and the NCAA Tournament’s a goner. A few wins might put this team in solid position, though. Even a 2-3 record in that stretch might be considered terrific for Kruger’s team.

1. Romero Osby is what you call an impact transfer. A year ago, he immediately became a force on the boards and in the paint for Oklahoma after transferring over from Mississippi State. Now, as a senior, he’s elevated his game even further. Osby is the centerpiece of a team attempting to qualify for its first NCAA Tournament since the Blake Griffin era, and he’s leading the way by attacking the glass and playing with an edge. He scored a career-high 29 against Texas on Monday night, and doing damage against the Longhorns is a sure way to become a new fan favorite in Norman.
2. Losing team? Underachieving? Cue the coachspeak from Rick Barnes, who says his Texas team won’t give up even after losing its first five Big 12 games. We should certainly hope that players with Division I scholarships wouldn’t simply pack it in, but if anybody were to do it, it might be Texas. The Longhorns have been crippled by the suspension of Myck Kabongo, and he’s not set to return to the lineup until next month. There are no juniors or seniors on this team, no veteran leaders and an offense so ugly it makes Bo Ryan look like Paul Westhead. Except Ryan wins. His teams play slowly but efficiently. There’s nothing efficient about Texas right now, and Barnes will need to look ahead to next season to rebuild his proud program.
3. Before Kansas outlasted Kansas State last night, CBS Sports penned a thoughtful piece on why the state of Kansas is perhaps the “best college basketball state of the modern era.” Not Indiana. Not Kentucky. Not North Carolina. The state of Kansas, home to KU, KSU and the MVC’s Wichita State. Look at the numbers. Matt Norlander, who wrote the article, might just be right. The three schools in Kansas have won more than three-quarters of their games historically. That number sits at 81 percent. Eighty-one percent, people! All hail to the state of Kansas.
4. Everybody loves Melvin Ejim in Ames. Why not? He hustles his tail off and, oh, he rebounds too. The Iowa State forward leads the league thus far with 9.7 rebounds per game, a statistic you probably didn’t know about until you read it here. Truth be told, it surprised us too. Ejim is 6’6”, after all, so the fact that he’s outboarding 7’1” Isaiah Austin in the Big 12 is a testament to that whole “it’s-not-the-size-of-the-dog-in-the-fight” theory.
5. West Virginia is having a bad season. You know that. At least one writer argues that it’s due to a lack of recruiting. Problem is, the article doesn’t really dive into Huggins’ recruiting classes or analyze the players he’s brought in. In terms of high-profile recruits, you’ve got to consider Aaric Murray and Juwan Staten in that “marquee” league of newcomers, even though they’re both transfers. They were wildly coveted across the nation after they transferred out of the Atlantic 10, and although they’re not traditional freshmen, those were major signings for Huggins’ program. If you look at sheer Rivals.com ratings — which mean little to nothing, but can at least give us a barometer — it shows one four-star player on this roster in Jabarie Hinds and two more signed for 2013. It also may be premature to rank Huggins’ sophomore class, which includes Hinds. The bottom line is that Huggins’ players aren’t getting it done, but that might not necessarily be because the head coach is losing a bunch of recruiting battles.