Kansas State last night wrapped up a disappointing season with a 67-65 loss to TCU in the opening round of the Big 12 Tournament. “The game was kind of a microcosm of our whole season,” head coach Bruce Weber said afterward, “a bunch of ups and downs and all-arounds.” The Wildcats have certainly been through the ringer this year. Questions began surrounding the team back in December after a late-game collapse at home against Texas Southern. That loss was followed by star sophomore Marcus Foster finding his way into Weber’s doghouse before returning to help his team upset Oklahoma in Norman. Foster would ultimately be suspended in February and then reinstated down the stretch as the Wildcats defeated Kansas and Iowa State to play themselves back into the NCAA Tournament conversation for a hot second before losing their final two games. In a word, the season has been tumultuous.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for Kansas State’s poor season. (Scott D. Weaver/K-State Athletics)

Perhaps the biggest factor in the team’s struggles has been an often volatile relationship between Kansas State’s players and their head coach. We mentioned Foster’s suspension. After the February loss at TCU, Weber pleaded with his team through the media, saying, “I just want guys that care. That is all I want, guys that care and want to play for K-State and want to play to win and will play hard.” Finally, sophomore Jevon Thomas was kicked off the team earlier this month, only to learn about his removal through social media before getting reinstated ahead of the conference tournament.

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We’re in the midst of Championship Fortnight, so let’s gear up for the continuing action by breaking down each of the Other 26’s conference tournaments as they get under way.

Big West Tournament

Dates: March 12-14

Site: Honda Center (Anaheim, CA)

What to expect: UC Davis, picked seventh in the preseason, put together its best campaign in program history and won the conference championship with ease. The Aggies are the best three-point shooting team in America and nearly impossible to stop when guard Corey Hawkins and his pinpoint accurate teammates catch fire. Still, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine – beset by injuries for much of the year – are finally healthy and playing their best basketball of the season, while inconsistent-but-talented Long Beach State remains a threat. The Big West has good star players – Hawkins, USCB’s Alan Williams and LBSU’s Mike Caffey among them – along with an element of unpredictability that should make for a fun few days in Anaheim. In 2014, #7 seed Cal Poly beat #5 seed Cal State Northridge for the tournament crown, so anything is possible.

Favorite: UC Davis. The Aggies won their first-ever Big West title by three full games after going just 4-12 in conference play last season. How did that happen? For one thing, they got healthy – forwards Josh Ritchart (11.9 PPG) and J.T. Adenrele (6.3 RPG) returned after missing most of 2013-14 – but also because they simply shot the lights out. Both Hawkins and coach’s son Tyler Les shoot around 49 percent from behind the arc, and as a team they drill 45 percent of their attempts – easily the best mark in college hoops. With the conference’s most lethal offensive attack, UC Davis is the team to beat.

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We’re in the midst of Championship Fortnight, so let’s gear up for the continuing action by breaking down each of the Other 26’s conference tournaments as they get under way.

WAC Tournament

Dates: March 12-14

Site: Orleans Arena (Las Vegas, NV)

What to expect: The talent gap between New Mexico State and the rest of the conference is substantial, a reality which the final standings confirmed; Marvin Menzies’ team cruised to a 12-1 WAC record and won the league by four games. The Aggies are led by an athletic point guard, senior Daniel Mullings, and one of the tallest frontcourts in college basketball. Since losing to Seattle in mid-January, the league champs have reeled off 11 straight victories, including their last seven by an average of nearly 16 points per game. And on top of all that, they are the only team with a bye to the semifinals. It’s hard to imagine the Redhawks or any other challenger stopping them from reaching a fourth-straight NCAA Tournament.

Favorite: New Mexico State. The Aggies were hit with the injury bug in early December, losing preseason all-conference forward Tshilidzi Nephawe for one month with a foot injury, and Mullings – reigning WAC Player of the Year – for eight weeks with a broken finger. Both are back and fully healthy, and the team now looks as good as it has all season. That is bad news for everyone else.

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ACC Microsite writers Matt Patton and Brad Jenkins will be reporting live from Greensboro at the 2015 ACC Tournament throughout the week.

A discussion of the top point guards in the ACC will mostly focus on Duke’s Tyus Jones, North Carolina’s Marcus Paige and Boston College’s Olivier Hanlan, but N.C. State’s Anthony “Cat” Barber may be playing better right now than any of his conference peers at the position. Last night the sophomore scored 34 points to lead his team past Pittsburgh in the ACC Tournament’s second round, propelling N.C. State into Thursday night’s quarterfinals against Duke, a team that the Wolfpack beat by 12 back in January.

Anthony “Cat” Barber has improved dramatically over the ACC season. (Photo by Liz Condo, theACC.com)

With a solid win in its first ACC Tournament game, N.C. State should feel comfortable about receiving an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. And as their quality wins will attest (Louisville and North Carolina in recent weeks), the Wolfpack could prove a tough out for the rest of the postseason. A big reason for the team’s overall improvement has been the dramatic midseason turnaround made by Barber. After an inconsistent freshman year, the wiry guard from Newport News, Virginia, showed flashes of brilliance during the non-conference portion of this season before regressing over the first half of ACC play. During that stretch of early 2015, he was a shaky ball-handler, a hesitant shooter, and he even lost his starting spot for a couple games in late January. That’s when the proverbial light came on. Read the rest of this entry »

The bloodbath has begun. We entered yesterday with 203 teams still eligible for the 2015 National Championship; we ended the night with 170. A single-day total of 33 teams fell off the Circle of March and we’re all better people for it. Today could be even worse with over 60 games involving a whole bunch of bad and mediocre teams playing in 18 different tournaments. We have to get to 68 over the next 80 hours somehow. On the automatic qualifier front, there was only one champion crowned last night — congratulations to the Patriot League’s Lafayette — but today and tomorrow are all about eliminations. Here’s today’s CoM.

 Eliminations (03.11.15)

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Big 12 Tournament action got underway on Wednesday night in Kansas City. The first day’s games aren’t always very glamorous, but there were some notable things on the line in last night’s slate of games. For example, Texas entered the tournament trying to hang onto an NCAA Tournament at-large bid by its fingertips; Kansas State was looking for a miracle run to salvage a disappointing season; and TCU was within shouting distance of an NIT bid. Texas Tech was, well, simply trying to build some momentum while playing out the string. Here is the good, bad and ugly from Wednesday’s two games of action at the Sprint Center, which included TCU knocking off Kansas State, 67-65, and Texas handling Texas Tech, 65-53.

Trent Johnson and TCU picked up their first Big 12 Tournament win by beating Kansas State (rantsports.com).

The Good. TCU’s Big 12 prospects. The Horned Frogs’ first Big 12 Tournament win shouldn’t be overlooked. As Brian Goodman noted in the most recent microsite power rankings, this was the year that TCU became a conference team worth respecting and last night’s win over the Wildcats was an extension of that sentiment. The unlikely hero was sophomore forward Chris Washburn, who had what Trent Johnson described as his best game of the season with 16 points and eight rebounds on 8-of-11 shooting. TCU will now face Kansas and the Jayhawks, at least in one way, could be a good matchup for the Horned Frogs. A frontcourt with a banged-up Perry Ellis and Cliff Alexander out until further notice will allow Washburn an opportunity to build on his big game. On the other hand, Johnson added that Washburn experienced “happy hands and happy feet” as Wednesday night’s game tightened up, so you wonder if nerves will be a problem in front of what will certainly be a sea of Jayhawks’ faithful. Read the rest of this entry »

The future remains bright for first-year Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski. Players, coaches and fans all knew this would be a rebuilding year for the Golden Eagles, with the staff focused on developing its younger players and instilling a defense-first mindset to eventually return the program to winning ways. Transfers Matt Carlino and Luke Fischer brought much needed offensive firepower to Milwaukee this season, but Marquette still finished 13-18 overall and just 4-14 in Big East play, competing in many close games that they were simply unable to close. Next season promises more: After receiving a commitment from consensus top-five recruit, Henry Ellenson, Wojo proceeded to add four additional four-star recruits across a range of positions, bolstering the team ahead of the departures of seniors Derrick Wilson, Juan Anderson and Carlino.

With little on the line, Mark Carlino and Marquette played about “as well as we could play” according to head coach Steve Wojciechowski in the upset over Seton Hall. (AP/Frank Franklin II)

So with very little on the line this week, Wojciechowski instituted a new mindset for his team as it entered the Big East Tournament. “Why not us? Seeds don’t matter,” Wojciechowski said. “I’ve been in situations where I have been coaching on teams who have been the No. 1 seed and we got our butts kicked. Seeds don’t matter. [For] everybody it’s a fresh start.” Maybe the Golden Eagles don’t have the most talented or athletic group of players, and certainly the season hasn’t gone the way they had hoped, but the players seem largely unphased by it. “We’re huge underdogs, so we have nothing to lose and we’re going to play that way,” Carlino said. “Hopefully play aggressive and play to win.” Read the rest of this entry »

ACC Tournament Wednesday is in the books. Brad has you covered on North Carolina’s Marcus Paige and NC State’s Cat Barber. In other games, Clemson and Florida State played a compelling final few minutes as Leonard Hamilton’s team held off a furious onslaught (see below) from a Tigers team that had been down 20. Despite the near-comeback, the story of that game was the Seminoles’ Xavier Rathan-Mayes (30 points on 11-of-19 shooting). I mistakenly left him off my players to watch this week even though he boasts the most impressive performance of the year. He’s fearless (sometimes to a point of fault), but he’s capable of putting up huge numbers when his shots are falling. The freshman has his work cut out to score against the pack-line defense of Virginia (12:00 PM, ESPN), but if he’s making his threes, Rathan-Mayes should be just fine. Still, to beat Virginia, the Seminoles as a whole need to play a great game. Their biggest problem will be limiting the Cavaliers’ possessions, so Florida State’s tendency toward turnovers (21.9%) must be addressed. The bottom line is that the Seminoles will need everything they can get from Rathan-Mayes and still need the relatively inefficient Virginia offense of late to show up in Greensboro. It’s still undecided whether Justin Anderson will play today, but don’t expect him to immediately return at the level he was at the time of his injury.

The other games today also feature plenty of intrigue. Lots of eyes will also be on North Carolina‘s rubber match with Louisville (2:00 PM, ESPN), as the Cardinals are still looking to prove they can consistently compete without Chris Jones, and North Carolina will again be without Kennedy Meeks. Personally, I’m still interested to see if Louisville’s win against Virginia was a fluke or if Rick Pitino has found the answer for his team’s late-season swoon.

The most compelling game of the day will be the rematch between NC State and Duke (7:00 PM, ESPN). Trust me, a lot of teams invited to the NCAA Tournament will be watching this tape if the Wolfpack win. On paper, NC State has the primary pieces that give Duke’s defense fits: dynamic guards and inside length. Both teams look to be playing better than when they first met and the crowd will be heavily for NC State. Can Barber, Trevor Lacey and Ralston Turner carve up the porous Duke defense a second time this season? Or will the more talented Blue Devils run away with things?

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We’re in the midst of Championship Fortnight, so let’s gear up for the continuing action by breaking down each of the Other 26’s conference tournaments as they get under way.

Big Sky Tournament

Dates: March 12-14

Site: Dahlberg Arena (Missoula, MT)

What to expect: Montana clinched the top seed and earned the right to play in its own building, which is bad news for everyone else; the tournament host has won this event five years running. But the Big Sky is also more competitive than it has been in years, with Eastern Washington (co-champions), Sacramento State and Northern Arizona all finishing tied or within a game of the Grizzlies. The Eagles, which snapped Indiana’s 43-game non-conference home winning streak in November, are an especially dangerous team – lethal from behind the arc and proven on the road. Jim Hayford’s bunch was the only Big Sky unit to win in Missoula this season. In reality, the conference race became so unpredictable towards the end of the year that it’s hard to give an advantage to any one contender outside of Montana’s obvious home-court edge.

Favorite: Montana. Montana won eight of its last nine games to end the regular season and now welcomes its Big Sky comrades to Dahlberg Area, where it was 8-1 in conference play. The Grizzlies parlayed home-court advantage into a pair NCAA Tournament appearances in both 2012 and 2013, and while this year’s group might not be as good as those teams, it’s hard to argue with history – especially in a league where home teams went 66-42 in 2014-15.

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ACC Microsite writers Matt Patton and Brad Jenkins will be reporting live from Greensboro at the 2015 ACC Tournament throughout the week.

This season has been one of ups and downs for North Carolina, and much of that volatility can be attributed to the rash of injuries and illnesses that have beset the Tar Heels. Roy Williams’ team was without starting center Kennedy Meeks (illness) and guard Theo Pinson (still injured) in its opening round ACC Tournament game against Boston College, but it still handled its business in easily winning by a score of 81-63. A big reason for the comfortable margin was the all-around performance of junior point guard Marcus Paige, who appears healthier than he has been all season.

North Carolina’s Marcus Paige is getting healthier and more productive with each passing game. (AP/Bob Leverone)

Back in October, Paige was selected as the preseason ACC Player of the Year and a member of the preseason All-America First Team. While he has played well for most of the year, his performance has not been to that level. There’s no question that part of the reason he has not lived up to expectations is that his plantar fasciitis has caused continuing pain and has hampered his quickness. By his own admission, Paige’s last three outings have been his first pain-free games of the season, and the results are striking. While his scoring is only up marginally — 15.7 PPG over that stretch — his efficiency and all-around play have been especially impressive. When asked after yesterday’s game about what was benefiting most from his healthy foot, Paige cited an ability to finish two-point shots and be more active defensively. The stats clearly back up that notion — Paige has made all eight two-pointers he has attempted and has recorded 11 total steals in those three games, not  to mention six rebounds and nine assists in his latest outing. This increase in his production really bodes well for the Tar Heels as postseason play continues, assuming Paige’s foot ailments are behind him for good. Read the rest of this entry »