The chatter about next season began in Lawrence not long after Trey Burke led an improbable comeback against the Jayhawks in the Sweet Sixteen, and with good reason. Kansas loses all five starters this year. The four seniors — Elijah Johnson, Travis Releford, Jeff Withey, Kevin Young, and redshirt freshman Ben McLemore (who technically hasn’t declared for the NBA Draft yet, but there is a better chance of President Obama reading this article in the Oval Office than McLemore returning next season). He is projected to be a top three pick with many publications predicting that he will go #1 overall. Freshman guard Anrio Adams also announced last week that he had received a release from the coaching staff and was set to transfer, but he has since changed his stance and said he is staying at Kansas. It’s hard to guess where Adams will be playing next season, if anywhere. Either way, the Kansas roster turnover resembles that of the 2008-09 season, when most of the national championship team left and Self returned only two players with experience, junior Sherron Collins and sophomore Cole Aldrich. Collins blossomed into a star that season and Aldrich eventually left early for the NBA himself. Is there that kind of talent returning next season? No, but next year’s incoming class is better than that which arrived in 2009, which should help the transition somewhat.

Bill Self Might Need To Be Patient Next Season.

Returning Players With Experience:

• Naadir Tharpe, sophomore point guard (19.4 MPG, 5.5 PPG, 3.1 APG, 34.3% FG): Naadir Tharpe is a shoot-first point guard who isn’t a great shooter. When he decides to play like a true point guard and looks to distribute the ball to open teammates, he’s not bad. And as the only point guard remaining with any real game experience, expect him to start from day one. But he needs to realize (or Self needs to be in his ear every day this summer) that at some point, he’s not a scorer. There was a three-game stretch in February where he went 5-of-22 from the floor. He was 2-of-15 against TCU, 2-of-11 against Iowa State and 4-of-17 in the NCAA Tournament. But that’s not all his fault. Self had no other options on the bench, and this Kansas team was sometimes timid. Ben McLemore should have taken 18 to 20 shots a game but also had a tendency to disappear. Elijah Johnson shied away from the ball in certain situations. Travis Releford wouldn’t hurt a mouse, and Jeff Withey was a defensive giant with limited offensive post moves. Tharpe is ever-confident, and you could sense that Self didn’t want to kill his aggressiveness even if it meant a few 2-of-11 shooting nights. Next season might be different, however. It might have to be different.

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1. The coaching carousel has been as busy as ever this offseason, and ESPN‘s Jason King takes a deeper look into the resulting coaching changes. Texas Tech made headlines recently when it hired former Minnesota head coach Tubby Smith to replace interim head coach Chris Walker. I had advocated for keeping Walker on past this season, but when you have a chance to hire a coach like Smith, you have to do it. The ex-Gophers coach won a national title at Kentucky in 1998, and he instantly gives the Red Raiders one of the five best coaching staffs in the Big 12.
2. Here is another way-too-early 2013-14 preseason Top 25, this time from Seth Davis at Sports Illustrated. Not surprisingly, only Kansas makes the list right now. The Jayhawks come in at #13 on Davis’ ballot and here is a big reason for it: “I put them here because of the names on the front of the jersey, not the ones on the back.” The Jayhawks have the roster of a Top 25 team, no question, but Davis is right that his ranking has more to do with Bill Self’s reputation of taking teams with obvious issues and turning them into #1 seeds. You will also notice that there are no other Big 12 teams on the list. If (when) the Jayhawks win their 10th consecutive Big 12 championship next season, they could send thank you cards to the other nine schools in the conference. I’m not saying that next year’s Kansas team couldn’t win a more competitive Big 12, but they won’t have to wonder if they could because the conference on paper appears down.
3. Another Kansas State player has decided to transfer. Sophomore forward Adrian Diaz follows freshman guard Michael Orris on the way out of Manhattan after both players saw spot minutes last season. While neither player’s career started the way they probably imagined, there seems to be plenty of opportunities next season for Kansas State. The team’s best player, Rodney McGruder, is gone, as are Martavious Irving and Jordan Henriquez-Roberts. But as Joel Wagler points out, the losses of Diaz and Orris won’t have much of an effect on next year’s team.
4. It’s always nice to hear an NBA scout mirror what you’ve been saying about a player for the last few months, because it doesn’t happen very often (if ever). “McLemore is a better version of Ray Allen,” an anonymous NBA scout told the Lawrence Journal-World‘s Gary Bedore, obviously speaking of Kansas freshman guard Ben McLemore. “He will play shooting guard the way it is supposed to be played.” McLemore can definitely be timid at times, which isn’t a great characteristic in a league filled with assassins like Lebron and Kobe. But I would bet it’s easier to change a quiet demeanor than to give someone McLemore’s outstanding athleticism and shooting ability.
5. Because news is slow this time of year and most news in Big 12 country has already turned to spring football anyway, I leave you with this: Baylor women’s star Brittney Griner should head to the WNBA and skip any publicity stunts associated with joining an NBA team. We don’t need to waste any time discussing the obvious reasons, like how Griner couldn’t survive in the men’s college game much less an NBA practice. But getting embarrassed by someone like Bernard James on the first day of a Mavericks training camp would only hurt Griner’s and the WNBA’s overall image, not help it. And if the WNBA has any hope of surviving and becoming profitable in the long term, having its best prospect ever looking silly against fringe NBA players in a glorified scrimmage is not the best plan.

I don’t know who Baylor’s biggest basketball rival is, but I imagine whoever it was laughed at the Bears for winning the NIT last week — something about being the 69th best team in the country. Of course there are worse things than winning the NIT —  like losing in the NIT — so the Bears have that going for them. But those taunts from rival fans still have some merit. For schools like Memphis (2002 champs) or Wichita State (2011), winning the NIT can become a stepping stone to bigger and better things. But for big boy schools, schools like Baylor with top recruits falling off the bleachers, it’s hard to gauge how it feels to win its last game of the year and not capture the National Championship. In its 74-54 NIT championship game win over Iowa, Baylor played a former five-star center (Isaiah Austin), an honorable mention All-America guard in Pierre Jackson, and a quartet of former four-star recruits. That roster lost 14 games this season (including a 9-9 mark in conference play) and couldn’t beat out teams like La Salle and Ole Miss for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. There was no reason the Bears should have been in the NIT in the first place, but for the sake of this column, we’ll take a look at the highs and lows of the 2012-13 Baylor Bears.

It Wasn’t the Championship Baylor Wanted, But the NIT Was a Nice Consolation Prize

Highs

• Beating Kentucky in Rupp Arena, December 1: In early December, Kentucky wasn’t the team that would eventually fall to Robert Morris in the opening round of the NIT. Or at least, that wasn’t yet the perception. The Wildcats were #8 in the country at the time and pundits still believed their band of high school All-Americans could make another deep run in the NCAA Tournament. Baylor’s patented zone frustrated the Kentucky freshmen into a 29.6% shooting performance from the field. Pierre Jackson scored 17 points as the Bears rebounded from their loss to Charleston in the game prior.
• 86-79 Overtime Win Over Texas, January 5: With a tough non-conference season then behind them, the Bears avoided back-to-back losses with an overtime win over Texas in the Big 12 opener thanks to big games from Cory Jefferson and Pierre Jackson, who combined for 49 points.
• Senior Night Win over Kansas, March 9: Losers of eight of their previous 11, the Bears still had a chance to deny Kansas the outright regular season conference title on its Senior Night. That’s exactly what they did after Pierre Jackson scored 28 points and added 10 assists to give Kansas its worst loss in five years.

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1. More news surfaced yesterday of Iowa State’s internal investigation stemming from a number of impermissible phone calls over the last couple of years. According to this Associated Press article, a former undergraduate assistant under Fred Hoiberg, Keith Moore, was caught talking to high school recruits at an AAU Tournament in 2011. Hoiberg saw Moore at the event and confirmed he was illegally contacting players. Moore was subsequently fired and the Iowa State Athletic Department began an investigation. It was then turned over to the NCAA, who audited phone calls and text messages over a three-year period and found the impermissible contacts. Are the illegal phone calls or texts much different than what happens at other schools? Probably not. But the moral of the story is to not give the NCAA a reason to start digging.
2. With less than 15 months to go, NBADraft.net released its latest 2014 mock draft here. The top five players are all incoming freshmen, led by top recruit Andrew Wiggins, who is expected to decide between the Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida State in the next few weeks. Incoming Kansas freshman guard Wayne Selden is projected to go #7 to the Sacramento Kings. Other Big 12 players include Oklahoma State’s Markel Brown (#22) and Le’Bryan Nash (#44), Texas’ Myck Kabongo (#23), and Baylor’s Cory Jefferson (#47).
3. Beware Kansas and Iowa State fans: The following link won’t be good for your NCAA Tournament recoveries. Matt Norlander over at CBSSports.com ranked the 10 best NCAA Tournament games, and both Big 12 schools made the cut. Kansas’ epic overtime collapse against Michigan, led by Trey Burke’s 30-footer at the end of regulation, came in at #5. As Norlander points out, playing against the eventual AP Player of Year and a team that nearly won the national title makes the Jayhawks’ collapse a bit easier to take. But with less than two minutes left, Ken Pomeroy claimed that Kansas had a 99.4% chance of winning. As for Iowa State, it was another heartbreaking loss on the season. Aaron Craft probably should have been called for a charge late in the game to give the Cyclones the likely win. He wasn’t, and they didn’t. Craft’s three-pointer with 0.2 seconds left gave the Buckeyes the 78-75 win.
4. For Kansas State head coach Bruce Weber, winning the Big 12 regular season championship and earning a #4 seed in the NCAA Tournament earned him a one-year contract extension, theoretically keeping him in Manhattan until the 2017-18 season. He will earn $1.75 million next year, a raise of $250,000. For a school that hadn’t won a regular season conference title in over three decades, the move makes sense. But for a coach that has a history of winning with another coach’s players before struggling to stock up on players himself, it’s a bit puzzling. I would have waited until more of Weber’s recruits make their way to Manhattan before extending his deal.
5. If you were wondering which team (subjectively) is the best NCAA Champion of all-time, ESPN has you covered. They ranked all 74 champions heading into this season. The 1945 Oklahoma State team (then known as Oklahoma A&M) comes in at #67, followed by the 1946 edition at #51. Clyde Lovellette and the Kansas Jayhawks’ 1952 team are #60, just behind ‘Danny and the Miracles.’ The 1988 Jayhawks won the title as an #6 seed and come in at #57. The 2008 Kansas team fails to crack the top 20, coming up just short at #22.

1. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Kansas freshman guard Ben McLemore announced his intention to enter the NBA Draft yesterday. McLemore apparently told coaches in February that he was coming back, but Bill Self was having none of it. “If he told me he wanted to come back, I would have told him, ‘We need to look at this again,'” Self told the Associated Press. As a near-lock to be a top-three pick, there was little chance McLemore would return for his sophomore season. While it would have obviously helped next year’s team, having a four-star player turn into a top five pick in the NBA Draft will boost Kansas recruiting down the line. Ultimately, McLemore leaving early is a benefit to all parties.
2. Iowa State has been playing basketball for over 100 years but it wasn’t until this season that the Cyclones led the nation in a statistical team or individual category. They made a remarkable 9.9 three-pointers per game this season, tops in the country, thanks in large part to Tyrus McGee. The senior guard led the country in three-point field goal percentage, knocking down 46.4 percent from deep this season. The Cyclones’ small lineup made them one of the toughest match-ups in the country this season. They spread the floor and could knock down shots from anywhere on the court, making double-teams useless and forcing defenses to defend well past the three-point line.
3. The final USA Today/Coaches poll was announced yesterday and not surprisingly, Kansas led the Big 12 representatives at #8. The Jayahwks were #3 in the final pre-NCAA Tournament AP poll, but a disappointing Sweet Sixteen loss to Michigan deservedly dropped them a few spots. Kansas State, the only other Big 12 school to make the cut, also dropped from its final AP ranking. The Wildcats were #12 a few weeks ago but a Second Round loss to La Salle dropped them to #20 in this final poll.
4. Because we can’t get enough college basketball and the dullness of mid-summer baseball is staring us down more with each passing day, the CBSSports.com crew unveiled their way too early Top 25 (And One) rankings. Kentucky, Michigan State and Louisville top the list, but there isn’t much love for the Big 12. Kansas comes in at #20, and it’s hard to argue the Jayhawks should be any higher. All five starters are gone and at least five new freshman are coming to campus. As far as the Big 12 goes, though, that’s it. The conference isn’t supposed to be very good next season as schools like Iowa State, Oklahoma State, and Baylor all lose key cogs from this year’s teams.
5. One surprise team next year could be the Texas Longhorns, who struggled mightily this season with one of the youngest rosters in the country and spending a large portion of the season without point guard Myck Kabongo in the lineup. With most of the rotation returning — except for Sheldon McClellan, who will transfer — next season likely hinges on the draft decision of Kabongo and whether he will stick around Austin. Most people seem to think he is NBA bound as a likely late first rounder.

Freshman guard Anrio Adams didn’t have the easiest first year at Kansas. Upset with a lack of playing time (3.5 MPG), he took to Twitter in February to voice his displeasure: “There’s no question that I would of been getting mad minutes anywhere else in America people it’s a FACT..” Bill Self responded saying that Adams needed to mature, calling it a “teaching moment.” There were a few other similar posts throughout the season — thinly veiled comments about his frustration. And with the #2 recruiting class in the country coming in this summer, it wasn’t surprising when Adams announced he was transferring away from Lawrence last week. He was granted his release by the school and it initially seemed that he would return closer to his home in Seattle. Then on Friday, he had this to say on Twitter: “I can’t go I love my team too much…#KUCMB” Adams and Self were set to have a one-on-one today to discuss his future, a meeting which obviously ended with both sides (or just Self) deciding it would be better for everyone if Adams finishes his career elsewhere. There’s a difference between thinking about transferring after a tough season and making an official announcement before changing your mind. One is a common thought by a freshmen who can get stuck behind upperclassmen for a season or two. The official announcement, however, is harder to go back on.

Adams Is Out At Kansas

It would have made Self and the coaching staff look bad, for one. It couldn’t have been great for team chemistry heading into the offseason, either, even though Adams was usually the biggest cheerleader on the bench this season. It’s easy to question a teammate’s dedication when he seeks a release after his first season. Then there is the theory that won’t be confirmed by any sitting head coach in America — that schools sometimes recruit over players and room needs to be made. That doesn’t look to be the case here as Kansas still has a few open scholarships next season. But Self has picked up recruits late in the process a number of times, and if his five-man class of freshmen next year all stick around for their sophomore seasons, Adams’ scholarship could be used to find a missing piece for the 2014-15 team. Whatever the reasons, Adams’ propensity for social media rants and his commitment issues never matched his on-court production, making it an easy decision for the coaching staff to let him move on.

1. Kansas center Jeff Withey has been named the co-defensive Player of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches announced on Sunday. Indiana’s Victor Oladipo shares the award with the graduating Jayhawk. Withey leaves Kansas with a number of records and awards. Last season his 31 blocked shots set a single NCAA Tournament record. This season he broke school and conference records with 146 blocks, breaking his own record of 140 which he set last season. In addition to his defensive awards, Withey also earned Second-Team All-America honors.
2. While Michigan and Louisville prepare to win a national championship tonight, Iowa State waits to hear its fate after reporting NCAA violations stemming from impermissible phone calls and text messages between 2008 and 2011. Bobby La Gesse of The Ames Tribune thinks the Cyclones should look at Baylor, who faced a similar situation last year. As Le Gesse notes, the Bears were placed on three years probation and lost one scholarship for two seasons. With the NCAA involved, it’s anyone’s guess if Iowa State will face a similar punishment. At this point, predicting how the NCAA will react is a losing game. On a different note, for any readers dreaming of a career in collegiate coaching, check out the fine print in the column. The NCAA reviewed 900,000 phone calls made by Baylor coaches. That’s a lot of time on the phone with teenagers.
3. Kansas freshman guard Anrio Adams announced that he was transferring last week. Then he announced he was staying. Now we don’t know what will happen. He was officially released last week but told The Lawrence-Journal World that is going to talk to Bill Self today when Self returns from the annual coaches convention at the Final Four. It’s hard to imagine Self telling Adams he doesn’t have a spot next season. But it’s hard to imagine him welcoming Adams back with open arms a week after he wanted to leave the program. But with only two point guards on the roster -one of which is a true freshman- Self may need Adams in the back court next season.
4. As was previously discussed by Danny last week, Tubby Smith is now the head man at Texas Tech. The Big 12 now has six coaches who have been to a Final Four. And as Berry Tramel points out, there are now five coaches in the Big 12 with at least 500 wins: Bill Self, Tubby Smith, Bob Huggins, Lon Kruger, and Rick Barnes. It’s one of the best collection of coaches in the country and will look even better if Smith can resurrect the Texas Tech program. The league was decidedly average this season, but if Huggins and Barnes can rebound from sub-par seasons (which they should) and Bruce Weber can recruit to Kansas State (still up in the air) the league is set up to be great for the next half decade or more.
5. Is there still a chance prized recruit Andrew Wiggins ends up at Kansas? The #1 recruit in the country is down to the Jayhawks, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida State, and is likely to announce his decision this month. His brother, a junior at Wichita State, told NBC Sports that he doesn’t think Kentucky is the best fit for his brother’s services. His parents attended Florida State and Kansas and North Carolina offer the obvious benefits of a blue blood. Good luck trying to dissect Wiggins’ recruitment any deeper though.

You could watch the final possession of Kansas’ 87-85 Sweet Sixteen loss to Michigan 100 times and never figure out what was going through Kansas guard Elijah Johnson’s head. The prep point guard turned college shooting guard turned college point guard never adjusted to his new(er) role as floor general this season, and it was no more evident than in those final eight seconds of overtime against the Wolverines in Cowboys Stadium. Kansas had been melting down like Mickelson at Winged Foot since the 2:25 mark in the second half, but they still had eight seconds to force another overtime or win the game outright. Bill Self drew up an effective play for the situation. Jeff Withey set a fake screen at the top of the key and Michigan bit. The 6’8″, 250-pound forward Jordan Morgan immediately switched off Withey and onto Elijah Johnson with five seconds left, changing directions and giving Johnson momentum to go with his decided speed advantage. “I thought he could get to the rim,” Self said after the game. Correction: Johnson was given a free pass to the rim.

There Wasn’t Much Between Johnson, The Rim, And Double Overtime.

For whatever reason, Johnson didn’t take another dribble after this point. Not only that, but he took an awful route to the basket. And when that awful route led him to no-man’s land under the hoop, he did what coaches for decades have told point guards not to do from first grade to college and beyond: He left his feet to make a pass. But not only that, either. He left his feet before deciding where the pass was going. As most know, he ended up kicking it 30 feet away to Naadir Tharpe for a three-point floater off one foot as the clock expired. Because when you have three seniors and the potential No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft on the floor, giving your backup point guard jack up a floating one-footer from distance is the way to go.

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Bill Self and Kansas are back in the Sweet Sixteen for the sixth time in seven years, and that’s not good news for Michigan, the #4 seed in the South Region that the Jayhawks will meet Friday night in Cowboys Stadium. Self is 5-1 in this round in nine seasons at Kansas and 7-2 for his career dating back to Tulsa at the turn of the century. But Michigan fans shouldn’t be worried about an arbitrary record in a certain round of the NCAA Tournament. They should be worried because Bill Self has an entire week to game plan for the Wolverines, and that is where he has made his teams most dangerous in March.  Between Tulsa, Illinois, and now Kansas, Self has made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances and has 13 losses, winning the NCAA Tournament in 2008. Of those 13 losses, nine came in the second game of the weekend (Round of 32, Elite Eight or National Championship game). As Self likes to point out, the NCAA Tournament is basically split into three two-game tournaments over three weekends. For teams not in the preliminary play-in games, there are four or five days to prepare for their first opponent after the bracket is announced, followed by a roughly 48-hour turnaround. The next week is the same at the regionals and it continues at the Final Four. With that near-week or so to prepare, Self is nearly automatic. He is 12-2 in the Round of 64,  7-2 in the Sweet 16, and 2-0 in National Semifinal games, or 21-4 overall with a week to prepare. The short turnaround has stung him, though. He is 9-3 in the Round of 32, 2-5 in the Elite Eight, and 1-1 in National Championship games, although a month of preparation wouldn’t have been enough time against last season’s Kentucky team. He has won at an 84% clip with a week to prepare and his winning percentage drops to only 57% with a quick turnaround. But the game still has to be played, and Michigan is not your average #4 seed.

Bill Self Is Money With Extra Time To Scout.

Let’s take a look at the match-ups in this game:

Backcourt

Michigan has one of the best players in the country in sophomore point guard Trey Burke, a Sporting News First-Team All-American Selection and possible National Player of the Year. Burke averages 18.8 PPG and 6.7 APG for the Wolverines and controls their offense almost exclusively. According to Ken Pomeroy, his possession percentage of 29.9% (65th nationally) is higher than all but one player remaining in the Tournament, Louisville’s Russ Smith (31.6%). Of the 12 teams remaining that had a player in KenPom’s top 100 for usage percentage, Michigan and Louisville are the only teams remaining. Since 2005 when Pomeroy began publishing possession percentages, only three Final Four teams had a player in the top 100 nationally: UCLA’s Jordan Farmar in 2006, and last year with the Cardinals’ Russ Smith and Kansas’ Thomas Robinson. That’s 90.6% of Final Four teams that have not relied heavily on one player. Fortunately for Michigan fans, Kansas has been torched by point guards several times this season. Baylor point guard Pierre Jackson had 28 points and 10 assists while handing Kansas its last defeat on March 9. Fellow All-American point guard Marcus Smart had 25 points, nine rebounds, and five steals in an Oklahoma State win over Kansas on February 2. Like Jackson and Smart, Burke should have the advantage over Jayhawk guards Elijah Johnson and his backup, Naadir Tharpe. Off the ball, expect to see Travis Releford guarding Tim Hardaway, Jr., and Ben McLemore on Nik Stauskas. Stauskas is a 43.4% three-point shooter and it will imperative that McLemore — or whichever Jayhawk is guarding him — chases him off the three-point line and funnels him into the paint. Burke is going to have a big game regardless. But if Stauskas and/or Hardaway (39.3% from deep) start knocking down threes, Kansas’ best defensive weapon slowly becomes irrelevant. Offensively, Kansas will need better production from McLemore, who had two points on 0-of-9 shooting against North Carolina. He leads the Jayhawks with 15.8 PPG but has disappeared at times this season. He is averaging only 7.0 points per game in the last four outings despite being the most talented player on the court in nearly every situation. Look for Self to draw up a few plays early designed to get McLemore easy buckets and to give him some confidence.

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1. On the Eve of the NCAA Tournament’s first day, five-star 2013 prospect and McDonald’s All-American Julius Randle committed to Kentucky over Big 12 schools Texas and Kansas as well as Florida. The #3 overall recruit was rumored by some to be headed to Lawrence and Bill Self but he decided to join what has now been called the greatest recruiting class (on paper) of all-time. The Wildcats have commitments from four top-2o recruits and have four players who are the #1 high school player at their respective positions. Randle enrolling at Kansas would have made the Jayhawks one of the handful of national title favorites next season. Self is already bringing in the nation’s #2 overall recruiting class, led by top 30 prospects Brannen Greene and Wayne Selden, and the Jayhawks are still in the hunt for the #1 player in the class, Andrew Wiggins.
2. Here are 68 reasons to love the NCAA Tournament, from Bobby La Gesse of the Ames Tribune. He immediately brings up the #16 over a #1 prediction, which would be fun to see this year. Western Kentucky has the best chance to pull off the monumental upset, according to Vegas, as the Hilltoppers are 20-point underdogs against Kansas. While such a major upset seems impossible, the 20-point line has been overcome before. Last season, #2 seed Norfolk State was a 21.5-point underdog when it took out #2 seed Missouri in the Second Round.
3. La Salle advanced past Boise State in a First Four game last night, and the Explorers will face #4 seed Kansas State on Friday in Kansas City. Jeff Borzello at CBSSports.com thinks La Salle’s small lineup could be poised for a run in the Tournament. Guys like Ramon Galloway (21 points against Boise State) will play key roles against the likes of Angel Rodriguez, one of the backcourt leaders for Bruce Weber’s Wildcats. If Kansas State can pound the ball inside, the Wildcats should win comfortably, but if it becomes an uptempo game ruled by guard play, the Explorers might have the advantage.
4. Want to know why your favorite team won’t win the national championship next month? Check out Andy Glockner’s piece here. He briefly explains why 67 Tournament teams won’t cut down the nets next month in Atlanta. He dismisses the #9-#13 seeds altogether (Sorry, Oklahoma and Iowa State), and he doesn’t like #5 Oklahoma State’s draw with Oregon in the Second Round. Kansas‘ point guard struggles scare Glockner, but he admits to picking the Jayhawks early in the season and as recently as January.
5. Speaking of Oregon, the underseeded Ducks face #5 seed Oklahoma State in a  match-up that is much too even for that spot in the bracket. ESPN’s Jason King thinks it will be one of the best games in the Round of 64, and it’s hard to disagree with him. The Ducks finished second in the Pac-12 regular season standings and they also won the conference tournament and played great this year when healthy, which is what they are heading into Thursday.