Big 12 Morning Five: 10.11.11 Edition

Posted by dnspewak on October 11th, 2011

  1. It’s official: TCU has accepted an invitation to join the Big 12, and it will formally become a member on July 1, 2012. If you’re keeping track, the Big 12 marks the fifth league the Horned Frogs have accepted an invite from since 1996, along with the WAC, C-USA, Mountain West and Big East. With TCU officially in the fold, the attention now turns to the Big 12’s additional options during this time of Realignment Apocalypse.
  2. Speaking of those options, how does Notre Dame sound on the basketball side? A report obtained by the Associated Press mostly centered around Missouri’s conference affiliation, but it also included a small piece of information about the Irish: apparently, they are mentioned in the document as a potential Big 12 target for all sports besides football. This is nothing more than wild speculation, but that’s what realignment is all about, right?
  3. The news about Notre Dame wasn’t the important part of that document, though. It was all about Missouri‘s possible move to the SEC– and the financial impact of that scenario. The school could make up to $12 million annually, and the report said the SEC would not significantly harm the university’s academic reputation. Interestingly, MU would actually rank lower in average SAT scores if it moved from the Big 12 to the SEC, though.
  4. Staying with Missouri, the end of the bench at Mizzou Arena just got a little more crowded. Frank Haith already added walk-ons Tony Lester and Danny Feldmann this summer, and now KOMU-TV’s Eric Blumberg reports that he’s added forward Andy Rosburg. That news actually has major implications for Missouri’s program, considering Rosburg’s brother, Ryan, is a 6’9″ high school senior on the Tigers’ radar. According to Rivals.com, Tennessee, Virginia, Virginia Tech and a load of other schools have already offered the younger Rosburg a scholarship. Perhaps the presence of his older brother in Columbia will be enough to sway him — at least that’s what Haith certainly is hoping.
  5. With Midnight Madness just days away, the Big 12 announced last week that three teams from the league will participate in ESPN’s coverage of the event this Friday. Scrimmages from Baylor, Kansas and Texas A&M will all air on ESPNU, and it’s hardly surprising that the network chose three of the Big 12’s main title contenders for national exposure.
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Morning Five: 10.29.10 Edition

Posted by rtmsf on October 29th, 2010

  1. What’s the adage?  Don’t tweet and rebound, or something to that effect?  Kentucky forward Josh Harrellson learned the hard way yesterday after head coach John Calipari shut down his Twitter page after he ripped the coach for not receiving a compliment in the postgame press conference after a 26-rebound effort.  Color us unimpressed, but neither DeMarcus Cousins nor Enes Kanter were on the floor for the Blue or White team in the UK scrimmage, so we’re not sure that Harrellson should be reserving hotels for NBA Draft night in NYC just yet.  After putting the nix on Harrellson’s micro-blogging, Calipari himself tweeted that his player has not “dealt w/ how to handle success” and he will not be on Twitter until he is “responsible enough to handle success & failure.”  Great stuff out of Lexington.
  2. Good news for Iowa, as it was learned yesterday that star player Matt Gatens will only be out three weeks after surgery to repair a tendon in his left hand.  There was concern that he could miss a significantly greater amount of time, but this will put the Hawkeyes’ leading scorer back in action at the Paradise Jam during the weekend before Thanksgiving.  They’ll need him, too, as the field is comprised of Xavier, Alabama and Seton Hall.  New coach Fran McCaffery has enough problems facing him this season without injuries being another one.
  3. The AP Top 25 came out on Thursday and there were no surprises there either.  Mike DeCourcy has as good an analysis as we could have put together, so here it is
  4. Binghamton’s Kevin Broadus finally got his long-awaited settlement from the university as a result of being let-go without actually being let-go.  Oh, how we wish we too had a government job.  At any rate, Broadus will be paid $1.2M to walk away and never sue the university over his treatment, which included recruiting questionable characters and getting called on it.  Yeah.
  5. Rather than eliminating the whole shebang, the NCAA has decided that it will instead spend a year evaluating the summer recruiting environment before making a decision on what to do about it.  A number of concerns were raised over the issue, so the NCAA once again made a reasoned and logical decision to give it more time and consideration.  We’re starting to get a little frightened by the NCAA’s use of logic and reason in recent years here.
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