Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.

Current Records and my standings (Last Week)

1. Oklahoma (10-0) (1)
2. Texas (8-1) (3)
3. Baylor (8-1) (2)
4. Missouri (8-1)  (5)
5. Texas A&M (7-1) (7)
6. Kansas (7-2) (4)
7. Texas Tech (7-2) (6)
8. Kansas St. (7-3) (9)
9. Nebraska (6-2) (8)
10. Iowa St. (6-3) (10)
11. Oklahoma St. (6-3) (11)
12. Colorado (4-3) (12)

This has been a slow week for the Big 12.  Finals are upon us, so just a few games and updates this week.

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A10 Weekend. The A10 used three televised games on Saturday to announce its presence to America, knocking off an SEC, Big East and Big 12 team in the process (two of which were effectively road games).  With the relative weakness of the Pac-10 and SEC this year, the A10 could make a run at a legitimate four NCAA bids this season.  Today’s results could go a long way in the Tourney Committee’s minds toward that end.   Great weekend for the Atlantic 10.

• Temple 88, Tennessee 72. Every outlet in America is making the “Merry Christmas” joke, so we’ll refrain here, but suffice it to say that Temple’s Dionte Christmas stole Bruce Pearl’s cookies and blew up his sled with an explosive game where it seemed as if every shot he threw at the rim was flushing straight through.  More importantly, Temple exposed Tennessee’s defense for what it is – simply not good enough to sustain any kind of legitimate run in March.  The Owls shot a blistering 55%, led by Xmas’ 35 on seven threes, and it often appeared as if the Vol players had little interest in covering him.  The roof nearly came off the place when he hit three trifectas in a row during a personal 1:30 run to blow open the game.  Temple, who had not defeated a top 10 team since John Chaney was still on campus, celebrated with a spirited RTC, to which, we say – deserved.

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Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.

Current Records and my standings (Last Week):

1. Oklahoma (8-0) (1)
2. Baylor (7-1) (2)
3. Texas (6-1) (4)
4. Kansas (7-1) (5)
5. Missouri (7-1)  (7)
6. Texas Tech (7-1) (8)
7. Texas A&M (6-1) (9)
8. Nebraska (6-1) (3)
9. Kansas St. (5-3) (6)
10. Iowa St. (6-1) (11)
11. Oklahoma St. (5-3) (10)
12. Colorado (3-3) (12)

A light week for the Big 12 as most teams only played once and it was their game in the Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Series where the Big 12 dominated.

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Believe it or not, we’re already one-quarter of the way through the regular season.  Most teams have played seven or eight of their allotted 28 regular season games, and as we head into the next two weeks of semester finals, things will quiet down a bit.  Thus, now is a good time to stop, take a look back at the first month of the season, and reflect as to some of the things we think we’ve learned through the “getting to know us” portion of the schedule.  Here’s your 2008-09 First Quarter Report.  (all stats and records through Sun. Dec. 7th)

Top Storyline. Nothing could be finer than to be from Carolina.  Right now, the top storyline is whether anyone can stop the North Carolina Tarheels before April 6th in Detroit.  There’s no need to go over all the impressive stats in this space again (check here instead), but suffice it to say that UNC has looked absolutely dominant through its eight games, and the reigning NPOY has only played in half of them.  It’s an absolute lock that UNC will hit ACC play undefeated and it’s very difficult to envision a scenario where the Heels drop more than a couple in league play by March Madness.  The storyline from here on out will be if any other team(s) develop to the point where they can realistically challenge UNC.

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Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Challenge. We’d hoped to have gotten a preview up on these games this afternoon, but we were epically busy today, so it didn’t happen.  Nevertheless, we probably would have chosen UCLA, USC and Oklahoma St.  But we have to say that the two marquee games tonight were considerably more interesting than the premier games of the ACC/Big 10 Challenge the last two nights (Duke v. Purdue and UNC v. Michigan St.).  We had the good fortune to watch both of these game in their entirety.

• Oklahoma 73, USC 72. As soon as you’re prepared to completely right off Tim Floyd and his Trojans, they have a game like this where it makes you reconsider every lackadaisical stereotype that you held about his team.  Of course, the stereotype for punkish behavior – yep, still got that one.  We’re sure you’ve already seen it, but in case you haven’t, USC freshman goon forward Leonard Washington introduced himself to all-world Blake Griffin with a rogue elbow to the family jewels as they ran upcourt in the second half (see below).  He was ejected for the manuever, but Griffin was forced to leave the game for a while, whereupon USC immediately started cutting into the 6-8 pt lead.  The game remained tight until the very end, when OU made just enough FTs to hang on.  USC competed well in the hostile environment, though, shooting 50% from the field and 8-11 from three; Dwight Lewis had 25 and Taj Gibson chipped in a double-double (12/10).  Most importantly, even though Griffin still had 25 pts, OU kept him off the boards to the tune of 6 total (13 below his average) and  only 1 offensive, so limiting those second-chances helped keep the Trojans in the game.

• Texas 68, UCLA 64. When these two teams get together, you can count on physical defense, high-flying athletes, and (usually) a bricklayer’s convention.  That was pretty much the case tonight, as the two teams combined for 50-122 (40.9%) from the field and 16-29 (55.2%) from the line.  Still, the duel between all-american guards Darren Collison and AJ Abrams was well worth the price of admission.  Early in the game it appeared that Collison was going to shoot 70% for the remainder of the season, as everything he threw up was hitting the bottom of the net.  But it was Abrans who had the last laugh again this year, as his huge three with just under three minutes remaining gave Texas a more comfortable six-point lead and forced UCLA to begin rushing possessions.  Damion James added 13/13 for Texas, but UCLA is going to have to get more help for its upperclassmen from their uber-hyped freshmen (1-12) tonight.  Their rookie quintet will ultimately determine the success of their season.
• Washington 83, Oklahoma St. 65. UW is difficult to figure this year.  They’ve looked downright awful at times, and like a tournament team others.  Tonight was the latter, as Jon Brockman dropped 16/11 in the home win.  What has happened to OSU’s James Anderson?  Big things were expected for this sophomore guard, but in his last four games he’s put up only 11ppg on 14-44 shooting.

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It’s been a while since we did this consistently, but now that we actually know which games will be played more than 24 hours in advance it’s time to get back into our routine of providing you with the best college basketball links we find each day. If you find something that you think would be of interest to other college basketball fans, leave a link in the comment section and we’ll include it in the next Fast Breaks. Some of these are a few days old, but we have some catching up to do. . .

• Dana O’Neil with a look at the gray areas in recruiting top prospects. It makes us long for the days when Pete Bell bought Neon Bodeaux with a Lexus that he didn’t even ask for.
• Seth Davis with his annual “Ten sophomores ready to break out” selections, which selects the sophomores that he expects to have big years after relatively quiet freshman years. This eliminates obvious selections like early national POY favorite and thespian Blake Griffin.
• Kevin Armstrong with his very early season freshmen All-American. Having seen Greg Monroe against Tennessee last week (there’s a post coming about that someday) I agree with Armstrong’s assessment of the Hoyas big man although I wish Monroe would become a bit more aggressive, but I guess seeing freshmen like Kevin Durant and Michael Beasley has spoiled me.
• Xavier will have to wait one more year before Jordan Crawford can suit up there after the NCAA rejected his petition to not miss a season following his transfer from Indiana. Score another one for Kelvin Sampson.
• ESPN with a look at the transition at Bucknell. Do they really have NCAA 2nd round banners?
• We wrote about the passing of Pete Newell a few weeks ago, but last night approximately 200 people gathered in Berkeley, CA to remember him.
• It looks like Tyler Hansbrough is healthy enough to save lives. Last night, Tyler responded to the “challenge” posed by RTC columnist John Stevens. The question now is will Psycho T keep on playing or continue to be day-to-day?

Yeah, we’re still quite sure that, even dressed like this, Blake Griffin would dunk on us, shatter the backboard, and force us to eat the shards from the floor if we dared to mention it. 

Oh my.

Um… 

Please don’t kill us, Blake. 

Somewhere in a lonely bath house in eastern Europe, a page for John Amaechi just arrived… 

(h/t The Shiver from The Lost Ogle)

And we’re back… We hope that our fair readers had a luckier Thanksgiving weekend than we did.  Due to substantial computer issues, we were unable to keep the site updated over the weekend.  But we managed to watch a fair number of the multitude of games this weekend, so rather than recapping what has effectively become stale news, we’ll instead offer our observations.

What We Learned.

Old Spice Classic.

• Maryland is equally as likely to pull a major upset as to lay a gigantic egg (beating Michigan St. by 18, then losing by 22 to Gonzaga and 27 to Georgetown).
• Michigan St. isn’t going anywhere without a healthy Delvon Roe/Goran Suton and learn to make its FTs (49-84, .583 for the tourney).
• A Gonzaga team that actually defends (with a healthy Josh Heytvelt) is a dangerous one.  Oklahoma St., Maryland and Tennessee shot 36.7%/29% against the Zags.
• Georgetown is going to be dealt with.  With tremendous balance between their inside/outside players, the Hoyas should only get better as the year (and Greg Monroe) progresses.
• Tennessee is far and away the best team in the SEC, and the Bobby Maze experiment at PG appears to be working (so far).

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Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Missouri Valley and Big 12 Conferences.

Current Records and my standings:

1. Oklahoma (6-0)
2. Baylor (6-1)
3. Nebraska (5-0)
4. Texas (5-1)
5. Kansas (4-1)
6. Kansas St. (5-2)
7. Missouri (5-1)
8. Texas Tech (6-1)
9. Texas A&M (5-1)
10. Oklahoma St. (5-2)
11. Iowa St. (4-1)
12. Colorado (3-2)

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Oklahoma (2-0 this week)—Oklahoma won the NIT Tip Off defeating UAB and a pesky Purdue team as the Griffin brothers helped lead the team to victory.  Although  Purdue was able to somewhat contain Blake Griffin, he still came away with 18 points and 21 rebounds and averaged 25 points and 18 rebounds in the two games in New York.

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We’re really not in the mood for this tonight, so it’s going to be short/sweet.  Either you pass or fail, that’s the deal.

Game of the Night. UNC 102, Notre Dame 87.

• Notre Dame. EPIC FAIL.  Carolina shot 58% on you.  Just.  Go.  Home.
• Tyler Hansbrough. PASS.  He’s back (34/5 on 13-19 shooting).
• Kyle McAlarney. PASS.  39 pts on 10 threes, many of which seemed from halfcourt.  The only ND player who came to play tonight.
• Luke Harongody. FAIL.  13/7 and thoroughly outplayed by Psycho-T.
• Rest of College Basketball. FAIL.  If Carolina is going to play like this…

Preseason NIT. Oklahoma 77, UAB 67 & Purdue 71, Boston College 64.

• Blake Griffin. PASS.  Another 32/15 and an OU win.  POY.
• Paul Delaney III. PASS.  23/6 on 10-14 shooting for UAB.
• UAB Finishing. FAIL.  With 5:09 to go, UAB was ahead.  The Blazers scored two more relevant points.
• Robbie Hummell and E’Twaun Moore. PASS.  29/11/8 assts combined.
• Purdue Down the Stretch. FAIL.  A 19-pt lead with 6:30 to go shouldn’t go to two possessions that quickly.

Anything Else?

• Oregon St. FAIL.  Another close loss 82-79 in overtime.  To Montana State.
• Arkansas. PASS.  A solid win 79-77 at South Alabama for one of the worst SEC teams.
• Indiana. PASS/FAIL.  A pass for getting another win (there won’t be many more).  A fail for barely skating by D2 Chaminade 81-79.