1. Six teams ranked in the AP Top 10 lost last week, including the nation’s soon-to-be former number one team, Duke. This begs the question: who deserves to become the new America’s Most Wanted? Jeff Eisenberg makes the case for three candidates: Michigan, Florida and Kansas. Based from sheer proximity to the top spot, Michigan appears to be the likeliest suitor. The Wolverines are a very talented team for sure and only have one loss (to Ohio State) on the season. Florida had two losses in a span of seven days in mid-December but it seems like long ago because the Gators have soundly beaten everyone on their schedule since. The Jayhawks are a unique squad. They have had close calls versus Temple and Texas but if there’s something they have on Michigan and Florida it’s that they technically don’t have a loss on the road or at home. It’ll be interesting to see how the writers and coaches vote in their respective polls due out later today.
2. When I started writing about Kansas pushing aside Oklahoma over the weekend, Pandora coincidentally played for me “It’s the Same Old Song” by The Four Tops. In many ways, it was a lot of that at Allen Fieldhouse on Saturday afternoon. The 67-54 victory marked KU’s 10th straight win over the Sooners overall, including the 12th straight at Phog Allen dating back nearly 20 years. OU had its chances to take control of the game; the Sooners were only down eight at the break and won the turnover battle, but the problem was that they only made 35% of their shots and no matter where you’re playing, you won’t win a lot of games shooting like that. We still don’t know much about how good a team Oklahoma is this season. There hasn’t been a game where you could point and say, “This was Oklahoma at its best against a team better than they are.” Good thing we’re still in January. 
   
3. I am about to attempt something unknown to mankind: Describing an important home win for Iowa State without saying a certain phrase. You know what these two words are — they rhyme with “Kilton Sagic”. The Cyclones rebounded in the best way possible from their defeat to Texas Tech, knocking off a reeling Kansas State team in Ames over the weekend. The game was won on the perimeter as ISU connected on 11-of-22 from outside while K-State managed to hit 7-of-19. While Fred Hoiberg has built his alma mater into a conference contender and hopefully NCAA Tournament regulars, I believe wins like the one against the Wildcats won’t have anything to do with the arena; the only “Magic” will be from the Cyclone players on the floor.
4. TCU’s the worst team in the Big 12 and they played a pretty talented one in Baylor on Saturday. According to head coach Trent Johnson, the Bears left quite an impression on his team. At the postgame presser, Johnson said, “This [Baylor] is the most talented team in the country. They’ve got length, they’ve got size, they’ve got quickness to the ball.” I understand that his team was just manhandled by the Bears, but Baylor’s not even the most talented team in the conference much less the country. At their best they’re probably a fringe Top 25 team but nothing better than that. Think about how bad it’ll be when TCU plays at Kansas this season. Wonder what Johnson will have to say then?
5. It’s time for our semi-weekly check-in on the thoughts of West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins. Early in Saturday’s game, the Mountaineers led Oklahoma State by 13 on the road, only to lose by 14. So after another disappointing loss, what could Huggins then say that hadn’t already been said? This will just about do it. “I’ve never had teams that after a timeout come out and don’t know what they’re doing, right after you showed them. It is guys who have played 19 games now this year, 30-some games last year. They’ve played 50 games.” When he’s talking about never having a team like this one in the decades he’s roamed the sidelines, it’s pretty serious. Upperclassmen whose production has declined from last year to this? Hard to picture it for a Huggins-coached team.

Thanks to the double dip of games on Big Monday and the Sunflower Showdown the following evening, Wednesday was rather light on the conference schedule. Like, the weight-of-a-leaf light. TCU-West Virginia and Iowa State-Texas Tech were match-ups that sounded like they were made for ESPN3,  yet there they were, soaking up precious air time on ESPN2 and ESPNU last evening. For fans of Big 12 basketball, it wasn’t a good night.

Iowa State played Tech’s game all night. (Stephen Spillman/The Avalanche-Journal)

West Virginia 71, Texas Christian 50: Everybody knew that the game of the night was down in Coral Gables. What I was hoping for was a close game between Duke and Miami so that the drama of that game would limit the opportunity to check up on that eyesore in Morgantown. As luck would have it, the game I wanted to watch didn’t go as planned but the one that I didn’t want to watch did. Oh, the horror.

Both teams lacked basic fundamentals. Ball-handling was spectacularly bad, fast breaks were poorly executed, and passing was hilarious in the saddest of ways. And I’m talking about TCU and West Virginia. If these schools just stayed where they were, this game would have been the Big East’s problem. TCU plays like they don’t deserve to be in a major conference. I’ll admit it: The Big 12 is having a bit of a down year but will the Horned Frogs win even one conference game this season? I don’t think so. What if they were still in the Mountain West, a conference that’s looking a lot better than several power conferences? I think, no I know, that they’d go oh-fer for sure. I hope Trent Johnson can turn things around and soon because no one deserves to root for a team that’s currently 344th out of almost 350 Division I schools in team scoring. West Virginia on the other hand has been playing better basketball as of late. They came into last weekend having lost three of four to start conference play but could have easily been 3-1 instead. They stunk it up against Purdue on Saturday so with TCU next up on the docket, it was a shoe-in for Bob Huggins’ team to get a W in the left hand column. Deniz Kilicli had his best game of the calendar year and a young guard to keep an eye on is Eron Harris. Huggins has rewarded the freshman with more minutes, and as a result, he’s averaging 15.3 points per game in his last three outings.

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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.

1. There’s already enough drama in this showdown between Kansas and Kansas State tonight. Two top-15 teams. Playing for first place in the Big 12. Bitter in-state rivals. But look carefully, and there’s another aspect to all this: the Illinois rivalry. The last two coaches at Illinois before John Groce were Bruce Weber and Bill Self. Weber took over for Self and went to the national title game in his second season. He now coaches Kansas State after the Illini fired him seven years later. Bill Self left originally so he could take this job at Kansas. Got it? Good. You knew all that. But do you remember when Weber hosted a mock funeral during his first year at Illinois because he was sick of everybody talking about Bill Self all the time? They’re not best friends, but that makes for terrific entertainment tonight.
2. Weber wasn’t necessarily the most popular choice when Kansas State hired him. Everybody knew he could coach at some level. He did, after all, have unbelievable success at Southern Illinois and propelled a Self-recruited team to the brink of a national title at Illinois, but things did not end well in Champaign. His final 2011-12 season was especially a disaster, so it’s not as though he was considered a home run hire by the Wildcats. Still, it appears to be working just fine at this point, and maybe it’s a sign that second chances and a change of scenery can really do wonders for a head coach.
3. We’re not sure who stole West Virginia’s uniforms this season and started playing with them, but they certainly can’t be coached by Bob Huggins, can they? Not even Huggins believes it. In the midst of one of the worst seasons of his storied career, Huggins is profusely apologizing to anybody who will listen for his team’s uninspired effort in a 27-point loss at Purdue. “I want to apologize to our fans, apologize to the people in the state of West Virginia. This is totally unacceptable. This is not what we’re supposed to represent and hopefully they have enough faith in me that I will fix it.” If there’s anybody who can fix it, it’s probably Huggins, but whether it will happen this year is an open question for considerable debate.
4. For as emotional as Huggins got with the media, it seems as though he took a different approach with his team. Strangely, the fiery head coach appeared to have said very little to his team in the locker room after Purdue embarrassed his team on national television. If the yelling and screaming is not working, why not try something else?
5. Travis Ford said after his team’s victory against Texas Tech on Saturday that the Red Raiders were one of the most improved teams in the Big 12. Even if that’s true, their record isn’t quite showing it. Texas Tech has lost four of its first five league games by exactly 100 combined points, with the only win coming against dreadful TCU. At least the Red Raiders are playing well in spurts. After a last-place, 1-17 finish a year ago, even that’s significant improvement in many ways. Tech’s Jaye Crockett, who emerged as a scoring threat down the stretch in 2011-12 and appears to have a bright future with the Red Raiders, says he’s “tired of all these moral victories.” Texas Tech competed punch-for-punch with Kansas for one half and was within striking distance of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State at halftime, but it hasn’t resulted in any upsets. Yet. Maybe as the season goes on, Ford’s statement about Texas Tech’s supposed improvement will show up on paper, in the form of a marquee win.

1. Over the past several years, Kansas and Texas have created a modest, budding little rivalry. Save for this year, of course, the Longhorns have been the most consistent threat to the Jayhawks’ streak of Big 12 championships, and that’s made for classic battles recently. Although the fourth-ranked Jayhawks certainly didn’t expect Saturday’s game against winless (in the conference) and Kabongo-less Texas to be a classic, it turns out this rivalry is turning into a “throw-the-records-out” kind of series. Kansas slipped by, and here’s a good look at why the Jayhawks were able to avoid catastrophe. Note Kansas’ lackluster defense against one of the worst offensive teams in college basketball. Did Texas improve, or does Bill Self have work to do? It’s probably a bit of both, and frankly, you can never fault a team for playing sluggishly on the road in league play. It happens, even to elite teams like Kansas.
2. If you’re not a Kansas fan perhaps you’re a Kansas State fan or maybe you’re a lost Wichita State fan. Either way, the state of Kansas is sitting pretty on the basketball scene right now. You never have to worry about Kansas holding up its end of the bargain, and lately, you haven’t had to worry about Kansas State or Wichita State floundering, either. After the Shockers’ home win over Creighton this weekend, it’s all but assured there will be three ranked teams in the state of Kansas this week. Now, if only the Big 12 schools would play Wichita State. We would pay to see that, but we’re guessing Bill Self and Bruce Weber probably wouldn’t.
3. Bob Huggins is partly responsible for the rise of Kansas State basketball, but his new team isn’t faring so well in the Big 12 right now. West Virginia got pounded on national television by Purdue over the weekend, leaving Huggins at a loss of words. There’s not much to this link, but the quote tells it all: “This is not what I’ve built a career on. We just do the most unexplainable things I’ve ever seen.” Enough said. This isn’t a Bob Huggins team, and West Virginia hasn’t looked like a Bob Huggins team for a couple of years now.
4. Oklahoma has played well enough to garner NCAA Tournament consideration at this point, but Lon Kruger’s team couldn’t capitalize on a chance to pick up a road victory against his former team on Saturday. A big reason for that? The three-point shot. It killed the Sooners, especially in the first half. Kansas State made seven before halftime, much to Kruger’s surprise. “We were concerned about a lot of things with them but not in their ability to make threes. They’ve been a little streaky on the year, but still very capable.”
5. Playing Texas Tech solves a lot of problems and for Oklahoma State that’s exactly what it needed. Travis Ford’s team, which lost a Bedlam game in Norman to Oklahoma a week ago, went through some gruesome punishment practices early in the morning in preparation for the Red Raiders. It appeared to have gotten the team’s attention, as OSU wasted no time dispatching its inferior opponent. Now, it’s time to see if the Cowboys can ride that momentum into Big Monday when it faces Baylor tonight.

Walker Carey is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after Saturday afternoon’s game between West Virginia and Purdue. You can follow him at @walkerRcarey.

West Virginia entered the season as a team of great intrigue as the Mountaineers were beginning their first season in the Big 12. In the preseason, they were picked to finish sixth in the conference, but many thought Bob Huggins would be able to get his team to improve as the season progressed. As it turns out, if anything has happened to West Virginia over the course of the season, it is that the Mountaineers have gotten worse.

It’s Been That Kind of a Season For Huggins

When West Virginia lost by 34 points at Gonzaga in its season opener, some dismissed it as a result of a long road trip against a very good team. When the Mountaineers dropped games to Davidson and Oklahoma in the Old Spice Classic, some felt those losses were a result of growing pains and a squad of newcomers who had yet to gel. Serious concerns over this season’s West Virginia squad did not really begin until the Mountaineers dropped their December 11 game to a Duquesne squad, who opened their season by losing to Albany and currently sit at 7-10 overall. After getting thrashed by a clearly superior Michigan team at the Barclays Center on December 15, the Mountaineers closed out their non-conference schedule with three straight wins. In hindsight, those three wins may have been a bad thing as they once again raised some hopes about the Mountaineers as conference play drew near.

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1. The AP and Coaches Polls were released Monday, and Kansas climbed into the top five (#4 to be exact) in both polls. The Jayhawks jumped Michigan and Arizona this week, who lost to Ohio State and Oregon, respectively. Kansas State continues to climb in both polls as well, jumping to #18 in the Coaches Poll and #16 in the AP. While both teams from Kansas are climbing, the rest of the Big 12 is nowhere to be seen. Oklahoma State has been dropping fast while losing three of their last four games, and Iowa State and Baylor are still a few weeks worth of wins away from making appearances of their own.
2. I’ve never been a big Rick Barnes fan. I’ve always thought that Barnes has underachieved with the amount of talent he has had at Texas and has never been held accountable because Texas fans are more worried about the third-string quarterback than the basketball team. But C.J. Moore of Basketball Prospectus began to change my mind today. It’s an eye-opening piece with plenty of noteworthy statistics. Moore does a solid job of rebuking the claim that Barnes should have advanced further into March during his one season with Kevin Durant on the roster in 2006-07, when the Longhorns lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Maybe Moore is right — maybe Barnes is better than we think.
3. A quick update on West Virginia sophomore guard Juwan Staten, who missed Saturday’s game against Kansas State for disciplinary reasons: Bob Huggins said during a teleconference on Monday that Staten will travel with the team for its game at Iowa State on Wednesday night. It is still uncertain whether he will play, though. Huggins seemed to infer that this week’s practices leading up to the game will decide Staten’s fate for that game as the Mountaineers will look to improve to 2-2 in the Big 12. Staten is second on the team with 10.5 PPG and leads the team with 2.9 APG at this point in the season. He played sparingly last week against Texas in logging just 13 minutes, but just the week prior he had 17 points in a home win over Eastern Kentucky.
4. Kansas guard Ben McLemore has been getting the most attention of any freshman in the Big 12, but Iowa State freshman forward Georges Niang is quietly putting up impressive numbers for the Cyclones as well. He is third on the team with 11.5 PPG and is shooting 35.5% from beyond the arc. Fred Hoiberg told the Associated Press that he loves Niang’s footwork, and I think he has a high enough basketball I.Q. to mask his athleticism with smarts while he continues to develop his body at Iowa State. He scored 18 points in Saturday’s blowout win over Texas and has scored double figures in six of his last seven games. He has a very European style of game for a big man, shown in last week’s near-upset of Kansas. He drew shot-blocking extraordinaire Jeff Withey out of the paint with his ability to knock down jumpers, opening up the lane for his driving teammates.
5. Jerry Palm of CBSSports.com updated his latest bracketology on Monday. The Big 12 received six bids: Kansas (#1 seed), Kansas State (#6), Oklahoma (#7), Oklahoma State (#9), Baylor (#11), and Iowa State (#12). Who would have guessed before the season that Oklahoma would be projected as a higher seed than Oklahoma State and Baylor? There is obviously still a bunch of games to be played, but the Sooners are positioning themselves for a good day on Selection Sunday. On a different note, I wouldn’t want to be a #6 seed paired with Baylor in the first round (Boise State in this particular bracket). The Bears are far from a great team but, as in recent years, they have the talent to win a few games in the NCAA Tournament.

1. Kansas struggled during the first half against Texas Tech on Saturday in Lubbock, and Lawrence-Journal World columnist Tom Keegan didn’t like the Jayhawks’ energy level in their 60-46 win over the Red Raiders. It was the second straight sluggish game for Kansas, which needed a Ben McLemore banked three-pointer with one second remaining in regulation to force overtime against Iowa State last week, a game the Jayhawks eventual won. And while few people questioned whether Kansas would beat Texas Tech (They led just 27-25 at halftime), it has now been three games in a row where Kansas has either struggled for large parts of the game or has been in danger of losing late. Baylor visits Lawrence tonight, and the Allen Fieldhouse crowd should give Kansas the usual boost it provides for big games. But if not, the Bears have enough talent to take advantage of sloppy play, something you might not be able to say for Texas Tech, Iowa State, or Temple.
2. I read the headline of this column by John Helsley of the Oklahoman and immediately thought, ‘Oklahoma State has more issues than just struggling on the road,’ and a minute later, I read similar sentiments from Helsley. As he says, the Cowboys have lost 20 of 21 road games in conference play and have begun this season 0-2 on the road after losses at Kansas State and Oklahoma. But it’s becoming more clear each day that the win over then #6 North Carolina State in November was more of a mirage then we thought. The Cowboys rank in the triple-digits nationally in PPG (70.6), RPG (36.7), APG (12), and field goal percentage (44.3). Their roster of talented players like Marcus Smart, Le’Bryan Nash, and Markel Brown is nice, but this isn’t the 1996 Bulls we’re talking about, either. They aren’t incapable of free-falling into irrelevance, and unless their road woes cease to exist, that might be exactly where the Cowboys are headed.
3. West Virginia lost a close one to Kansas State last week after playing without second-leading scorer Juwan Staten for the second straight game for disciplinary reasons. The Mountaineers are 8-7 and will be lucky to make the NIT this season, so it’s not completely surprising Bob Huggins is having personnel problems. Losing seasons can make for hostile environments sometimes. It’s hard to say whether Staten’s off-the-court problems are one of the reasons the Mountaineers have struggled this season, or the Mountaineers struggling is giving Huggins plenty of opportunities to teach lessons without fear of losing meaningful games. Who knows? We do know one thing, however. The 2012-13 season won’t be a campaign Huggins looks back on with admiration.
4. It’s still early, and as Tulsa World columnist John E. Hoover points out, Oklahoma has only three wins combined the last three Februarys, but with each win the Sooners are looking more and more like an NCAA Tournament team. The real test will come next month, it seems, but right now Oklahoma is 11-3 with a very winnable game against Texas Tech coming up on Wednesday. With four games remaining against Texas Tech and TCU, it’s not hard to find another eight or nine wins on the regular season schedule, getting them right around the 20-win mark and in a good spot to hear their name called on Selection Sunday.
5. Texas is 0-3 to start Big 12 play, and regardless of how good you think sophomore point guard Myck Kabongo is, his return on Feb. 13 won’t suddenly erase all the problems the Longhorns are facing right now. They lost to back-to-back overtime games to West Virginia and Baylor to open the conference season and were blown out by Iowa State in Ames on Saturday. The Longhorns can’t score this season. There are literally 300 teams with a better shooting percentage this year (302 to be exact). Not only that but head coach Rick Barnes seems to be having problems with effort. But don’t take my word for it. “He went in, first play of the game, gave up an offensive rebound,” Barnes told the AP about benching Shelden McClellan against Iowa State. “We’re not going to continue to talk about coaching effort.” Horrific shooting. No starting point guard. No effort.

Welcome to the first Conference Call of conference play! We are one full week into the Big 12 season and you can already put each team into one of four boxes: the you’ll-know-how-they-finish box (Kansas, TCU and Texas Tech), the disappointment box (Texas, West Virginia), the surprise box (Kansas State) and the don’t-know-where-to-put-them box (Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Baylor and Oklahoma). Today, we discuss the futures for some of these teams, some of the disappointing players and much more. 

Things have been a-ok for Bruce Weber and Kansas State (Associated Press)

1. Two of the league’s biggest disappointments, West Virginia and Texas, played an ugly basketball game Wednesday with the Mountaineers prevailing in OT. Which team will hear its name called on Selection Sunday?
2. Iowa State was a bank shot three away from picking up a huge win vs Kansas in Lawrence. What do we make of the Cyclones this season?
3. If you were to stop the season right now, which Big 12 coach would be the first to get fired?
4. Which player has been the biggest disappointment this season?
5. Divisional round of the NFL playoffs are Saturday and Sunday. Who ya got?

*****

1. Two of the league’s biggest disappointments, West Virginia and Texas, played an ugly basketball game Wednesday with the Mountaineers prevailing in OT. Which team will hear its name called on Selection Sunday?

• KC: Both teams will hear their names called on Selection Sunday when the NIT picks the scraps off the table. Even if you assume Myck Kabongo will return to his old self immediately next month, the Longhorns will be lucky to be above .500 at that time and Kabongo isn’t good enough to change that ship’s course. And again, that’s assuming he will be great from the get-go, and I don’t think that will be the case. With no marquee wins on the schedule, West Virginia probably needs 12 more wins this season — giving them 20 — to make the dance. You have to jump through a few mathematical hoops to find 12 more wins on their schedule at this point.
• DS:  I’d be surprised if either West Virginia or Texas even make the NIT. The first half of the season has been a disaster for both squads. It’s been so bad, in fact, that both teams are ranked outside of the top 100 in the RPI. I mentioned earlier this week that it’d be silly to even attempt to determine what Texas must do from this point forward to make the NCAA Tournament. That’s how far off the bubble the Longhorns are right now, and the same goes for West Virginia. Look at the Mountaineers’ “resume,” if you even want to call it that. There’s that one-point win against a Virginia Tech team that has lost four straight games by a combined 96 points. Oh, and Bob Huggins‘ team also beat a better-than-you-might-think Eastern Kentucky team at home. So there’s that, too. Texas, meanwhile, is hanging its hat on a home win over a North Carolina team that’s crumbling by the day, and Myck Kabongo won’t return from suspension until mid-February. There are Great West teams with more compelling CBI resumes than Texas and West Virginia right now. Well, almost.
• NK: Regardless of how this season was going to turn out for the Mountaineers, they weren’t going to be anything like last year’s team. That squad had Tournament-tested guys like Darryl “Truck” Bryant and Kevin Jones. Now with those players gone, Deniz Kilicli, Aaron Brown and Jabarie Hinds were supposed to assume bigger roles this season, but in turn, they are having worse seasons this year than last. For some reason, I can’t close the door completely on Texas. Javan Felix has proven he is more than just a back-up point guard in Kabongo’s absence. Though he needs to make shots at a higher percentage, Sheldon McClellan is a better number one option than anyone West Virginia has. I don’t think either team will make the Tournament now but I’d say Texas has better odds of making it than WVU.

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1. We were beginning to wonder about Ben McLemore a bit during his explosion against Iowa State on Wednesday night and so was his coach. McLemore wasn’t aggressive enough or at least enough to Bill Self’s liking. “[McLemore] doesn’t get himself plugged in,” Self said. Well coach, I think his 33 points on just 12 shots is about as “plugged in” as it gets. He tripled his scoring average of his two games previous (11.0 PPG) and made all six of his threes against the Cyclones. You almost forget that this guy was ineligible to play on last year’s team that lost to Kentucky in the national title game. If he had been eligible, there easily could have been another championship banner hanging at The Phog this season. They could still end up hanging another one but they’ll just have to wait until next season’s home opener to do so.
2. If we learned anything from Wednesday night’s game, it’s that Iowa State has set up a template for beating the Jayhawks. As Rob Dauster notes, Cyclones’ bigs aren’t your prototypical bigs. Guys like Georges Niang and Melvin Ejim can shoot from the outside which means Jeff Withey’s superb shot-blocking ability can be neutralized a bit (although he still had three blocks) when he isn’t hanging around the painted area as much. I think if Big 12 teams were to study this, it could work to their advantage. I look at a team like Baylor with seven-footer Isaiah Austin, who also has the tendency to play around the perimeter. If Austin is on his game, KU could find itself in trouble again.
3. The Los Angeles Athletic Club announced the midseason 25 candidates for the John R. Wooden Award which is college basketball’s most prestigious individual honor. The Big 12 had four players crack the list: Pierre Jackson, Ben McLemore, Marcus Smart and Jeff Withey. First impressions: the LAAC got ’em all right. The representatives went like this among power conferences: the Big East had five, the Big Ten had four, the ACC had three, and the Pac-12, surprisingly, had none. The SEC had two players on the list but both of them (Laurence Bowers and Phil Pressey) play for Missouri, so technically, the Big 12 would have had six players make the cut if the Tigers hadn’t jumped ship after last season. Think about that.
   
4. It’s no secret that WVU-Texas on Wednesday night was everything wrong about college basketball but what Bob Huggins said after his Mountaineers prevailed in overtime raised some eyebrows, if not just my own. “We had opportunities to pack it in and we didn’t when we got down [13] points and we were having a hard time scoring. Hopefully this kind of gets us back to being my kind of team,” Huggins said. I wonder if he actually believes that last sentence. I guess somebody has to, right? The Mountaineers struggled to reach 57 points even with an extra five-minute cushion to boot. All I know is that if Huggins is able to turn this season around, it would be the biggest “sike” in Big 12 history.
5. For the first time since guys like Blake Griffin and James Anderson suited up, the Bedlam Series matters again. Despite their recent slide, I feel good enough to say Oklahoma State will be an NCAA Tournament team by season’s end, but the wildcard in this analysis is Oklahoma. The Sooners didn’t play all that tough of a non-conference schedule so their losses aren’t all that bad, but they have the talent and coaching to go .500 in conference play, maybe better. But, hey, this is a rivalry game — all the facts and figures are supposed to be thrown out the window anyway.