1. A big part of Iowa State‘s rise under Fred Hoiberg has come from the Cyclones’ ability to trump expectations and get the most out of its talent. After ISU outperformed predictions in the last two seasons, the league’s coaches are done sleeping on them.  Big 12 coaches pegged Iowa State to finish fourth in Thursday’s preseason poll after being tabbed eighth in 2011 and 2012. The Cyclones enter this season hoping to do something they haven’t done since 1997: make the NCAA Tournament for a third straight time. With the transfers that made up the core of Hoiberg’s teams the last two seasons now graduated, the vast majority of ISU’s roster will consist of players “The Mayor” recruited out of high school. Fourth place in the conference is definitely a reasonable goal for Iowa State this season, and it’s not difficult to see them finishing ahead of preseason third-place pick Baylor if things break just right.
2. Yahoo! Sports‘ Jeff Eisenberg compiled a list of 10 freshmen capable of making big impacts in 2013-14 and you’ll never guess which Kansas newcomer topped the list (OK, you probably will). It’s worth noting that no other Big 12 freshman cracked Eisenberg’s rankings, but we like to think of that as a testament to just how good the freshman class is nationwide. Still, just because they didn’t make the list doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep an eye on other young Big 12 rising talents like Joel Embiid, Allerik Freeman, Elijah Macon, Wayne Selden and Ishmail Wainwright. Still, Andrew Wiggins is the gem of the league’s incoming class and is just another reason why we can’t wait for the opening tip.
3. It was announced late last week that two Big 12 teams, Kansas and Kansas State, will hold open scrimmages for their fans. The Jayhawks will open the Allen Fieldhouse doors this Saturday, giving fans who were shut out of “Late Night In The Phog” earlier this month a second chance to see the 2013-14 squad. Kansas State, which didn’t hold a late night event of its own, will also host an open scrimmage on Saturday. The Wildcats aren’t quite looking at a full-on rebuild, but losing Angel Rodriguez, Jordan Henriquez and Rodney McGruder will hurt the defending co-Big 12 champions. Still, with the official start of practice coming earlier this season, the wait until the first regular season games lengthens so public practices are a great opportunity for teams to inject some extra anticipation into their devoted fan bases.
4. If all goes according to plan this season for Marcus Smart, Markel Brown and Travis Ford (and even if it doesn’t), Oklahoma State will need to rebuild in a hurry to stay in the conversation atop the Big 12 moving forward. The Cowboys took one step toward that goal on Saturday when they received a verbal commitment from recruit Mitch Solomon, a 6’9″ power forward who is considered the best 2014 prospect in Oklahoma. Solomon, along with shooting guard commitment Jared Terrell, gives the Cowboys a very solid foundation from which to reload. In 2014, we’d expect Le’Bryan Nash, Michael Cobbins and Phil Forte to be the leaders, allowing the incoming freshmen to be eased into supporting roles and gradually move up from there.
5. Late last week, UNLV announced that it will partner with Kansas for a home-and-home series beginning in Lawrence in the 2014-15 season, with a return trip to Las Vegas planned for the 2016-17 campaign. Neither Dave Rice nor Bill Self have ever been shy about assembling tough non-conference schedules, so while we aren’t too surprised at this development, we’re nevertheless thrilled to pencil in a pair of must-watch games for the future. The Runnin’ Rebels have more to gain from ambitious scheduling than the Jayhawks due to the difference in competition their respective leagues provide, although Kansas will benefit as well. It’s also worth noting that a trip to Las Vegas gives the Jayhawk coaching staff a convenient opportunity to check out some of the recruits at nearby Findlay Prep, which churns out blue-chip prospects on an annual basis. We’re still waiting on the announcement of that annual Kansas-Missouri series, by the way…

1. Coming into this season we were expecting big things out of Montrezl Harrell. The one-time Virginia Tech recruit played a pivotal role in Louisville’s run to the national championship last season and he showed signs of becoming a star with his play this summer. So when news broke that Harrell had injured his right knee in a collision at the Adidas Nations Camp we are sure that there were plenty of nervous people in Louisville, Kentucky. Fortunately, Harrell merely hyperextended his knee and did not suffer any significant structural damage. All of this should make Louisville fans sleep a little easier tonight knowing that their veteran inside presence should come into the season healthy.
2. Louisville fans were not the only ones who had a scare come out of the Adidas Nations Camp as Will Sheehey also had his own injury scare. The rising senior sprained his right ankle, which had kept him out of five games as a sophomore, but it appears that the sprain was only moderate. Although Sheehey was largely overshadowed by his Indiana teammates/top-4 picks Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller as well as seniors Christian Watford and Jordan Hulls, he still managed to average 9.5 points per game and will be expected to carry a much bigger load for a Hoosiers team that will probably spend much of the early season trying to figure out its new identity.
3. It might seem like an odd time to ask the question with the college basketball season drawing near, but CBS Sports took an informal poll of college coaches asking them which college coach they thought would be the best fit for the NBA. At first we were a little surprised to see Fred Hoiberg ahead of Mike Krzyzewski, but then we realized that these are people who actually know the game and realize the type of personalities that a NBA coach has to deal with. Now we are not going to say that Krzyzewski is not equipped to handle those personalities as he has shown that he can do for a short period of time in the Olympics, but we are not sure how that would hold up over an 82-game season. On the other hand, Hoiberg has more experience at the NBA level and based on these results we would not be surprised to see Hoiberg’s name come up when a NBA job opens up.
4. Few recruits have had to deal with the adversity that Austin Hatch has. Hatch, a Michigan commit, may not be considered one of the truly elite prospects in this year’s senior class, but his story–having been involved in two plane crashes that took the lives of much of his family. Hatch has managed to come back from that and will be finishing high school in Los Angeles (hopefully Luke Winn will cut him some slack if he finishes as a top 100 recruit). Hatch has not played competitively since the most recent accident (in June 2011) so we will be interested in seeing how he performs, but more importantly to see how he is adjusting to his new life.
5. With the off-the-court trouble that Wyoming had last season it should not be that much of a surprise that some of its players have decided to create their own club known as “624” to avoid the craziness of Laramie, Wyoming (I know I can’t believe I just wrote that either). The club is not really a club in the traditional night club sense, but is rather a symbol for a place (624 is the address of the apartment of some upperclassmen) where the players on the team can hang out without worrying that people outside of the team will create problems that will break up the team. The entire idea should not be novel although we doubt that many teams do something like this for a variety of reasons, but it seems like something that many programs would benefit from trying.

North Carolina State announced earlier this week that Dereck Whittenburg, one of the heroes of the 1983 Wolfpack NCAA Championship squad, would be returning to the basketball program as an assistant coach. On paper, as it almost always does in these circumstances, the move looks great. Whittenburg’s arrival helps maintain a connection to NCSU’s past glory years, with his mere presence on the staff providing a constant reminder to players, fans, and most importantly, recruits, that the NC State program has summitted the mountain before. Pack fans must admit that this all sounds pretty good, but wait — haven’t they heard this one before? And didn’t it actually not go so well? Mark Gottfriend has done his best to erase the memories of the five-year Sidney Lowe era that preceded his hiring, but the half-decade with the former Pack star (and teammate of Whittenburg on that 1983 title team) at the helm was far too ignominious to have already slipped the consciousness of the Raleigh faithful. Now, of course, we needn’t note that Whittenburg is not running the program as Lowe did, which should figure to make this a far lower-risk hire. But with another Pack star returning to the PNC Arena sideline next season, it begs the question: Is the college star-returning-as-coach really the slam dunk hire fans believe it to be?

Can Dereck Whittenburg Lift NC State To Similar Glory As An Assistant Coach?

Lowe’s failures aside, you don’t have to scan the country long to find examples of alums returning to their old program and succeeding – both as assistants and head coaches. Most notable among current head men is Fred Hoiberg, who in 2010 took over the helm of the Iowa State program he starred at in the early 1990s. Early returns have been good for “The Mayor” in Ames, as Iowa State has won an NCAA Tournament game in each of the last two seasons. Other recent successful examples at the head coach level include Bob Huggins (West Virginia) and Sydney Johnson (Princeton).

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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. It appears the entire Kansas team took a harder shot below the belt than Michigan’s Mitch McGary on Friday night. The Jayhawks coughed up a 14-point second half lead to the Wolverines, capped off by a deeeeep three-pointer from point guard/superman Trey Burke with five seconds left in regulation. Now Michigan’s prepping for the Final Four in Atlanta while KU is looking ahead to a very different roster in 2013-14. Gone will be Travis Releford, Jeff Withey, Elijah Johnson, Kevin Young and Ben McLemore to the NBA (presumably) but Bill Self has a top-flight recruiting class coming in to plug those holes. Next year will sort of resemble the KU team he had in 2009: a major roster turnover after they won a national title. Another reason to not be down on Kansas: that ’09 team made the Sweet Sixteen.
2. Fred Hoiberg isn’t going anywhere for awhile. The Mayor agreed to a 10-year, $20 million extension with Iowa State last Thursday just as his name was thrown around the rumor mill for the vacant Minnesota job or consideration for a future NBA job. All he’s done in three years in Ames is make the NCAA Tournament twice while winning two games in March. Typically, opportunities for coaches to “come home” occur later in their coaching careers (see: Roy Williams, Bob Huggins). With Hoiberg’s local ties and statements like “It’s [Iowa State] where I want to be” and “I hope to coach here until I retire,” it’s hard to believe he’ll go anywhere else. What a welcome change in college athletics.
3. Remember conference realignment? For the longest time, Louisville was rumored to become a member of the Big 12, but it never materialized. It would have been a perfect fit. Their football team is coming off a win in the Sugar Bowl, men’s basketball is headed for a second consecutive Final Four, and women’s hoops has just pulled a colossal upset of  Baylor to advance to the Elite Eight. Now they’re headed for the ACC  in 2014, which for basketball purposes, is as close to heaven as anything else with Syracuse, Duke, and North Carolina all in the same league. If I had to put money on it, this bigger ACC will not last. We’ve seen mega-conferences before (WAC, Big East) and they don’t tend to last  for very long. Hopefully, the Big 12 can get another shot at the Cards in the future.
4. The Tubby Smith-Texas Tech rumors of a meeting are now fact. According to an Associated Press report from Saturday night, TTU is in talks with Smith to become its next head coach. Tubby and his wife left Lubbock and we have not discussed whether Smith received a firm offer from the school. I personally like Chris Walker to take the full-time job because of how he carries himself and treats his players, but all of that changes if Tubby is interested. He’s a winner everywhere he’s been and Minnesota probably made a huge mistake by letting him go.
5. Did you even think we’d say the Baylor men’s season would last longer than the women’s? Well, it will. Brittney Griner, arguably the greatest women’s player at the college level, ended her decorated career Sunday night in a Sweet Sixteen defeat to Louisville, 82-81. She had one of her worst games of the year as the Cardinals were physical and unrelenting with her all game long, failing to score her first points until the second half. The Lady Cards earned it the hard way and will now face Tennessee for the right to go to the Final Four tomorrow night.

As the season winds down and Big 12 teams continue to find themselves eliminated from the postseason, we’re taking a team-by-team look at the 2012-13 season. Up next: Iowa State.

Final Record: 23-12, 11-7

The Expectations: This team was difficult to gauge in the preseason. The Cyclones had been so heavily reliant on Royce White last year, and Fred Hoiberg had a lot of new faces in Ames to consider. White had dominated the ball so much for in 2011-12 that with he, Scott Christopherson, and Chris Allen no longer available, Hoiberg had to gel a new class of big-name transfers into a winning team. It appeared that Michigan State transfer Korie Lucious would bring a new element to the roster as a true point guard, but White’s loss to the NBA was big. And even Will Clyburn, eligible after transferring over from Utah, probably was not going to be enough to replace the NBA Draft pick. You knew that Clyburn and Lucious could really play, though, and with the return of veterans Chris Babb, Tyrus McGee and Melvin Ejim, there seemed like enough talent still around to keep this team in reasonable postseason contention.

Fred Hoiberg Has To Hurt After Losing To Ohio State

The Actual Results: The Cyclones never crashed and burned at any point, but it took them a long time to find their identity. Non-conference play did not fare all that well, as Iowa State lost just about every important game before the Big 12 schedule. It lost to Cincinnati and UNLV in a Las Vegas tournament and later also lost at Iowa. When it blew a sure victory to Kansas in the Big 12 opener — you know, the one where Ben McLemore banked in a three-pointer to send the game to overtime — nobody knew where this season was going. But thanks to a high-powered offense, Clyburn’s production and improved seasons out of sharpshooter Tyrus McGee and elite rebounder Melvin Ejim, the Cyclones eventually learned their identity. They were shooters. They’d light up the scoreboard, rebound the basketball and fire up every shot imaginable, and even though their defense wasn’t stellar, they could shoot their way to wins from the perimeter. So that’s what Iowa State did, earning home wins against Kansas State and Oklahoma State to build a resume strong enough to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. It ended abruptly in the Third Round Sunday afternoon thanks to Aaron Craft, but all things considered, Hoiberg’s “rebuilding” year didn’t seem like one at all.

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1. Oklahoma was a pleasant surprise this season. Lon Kruger worked his magic to lead a struggling program to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since Blake Griffin roamed the streets of Norman, so it’s fair to call the Sooners classic overachievers. As the article points out, there were a number of bright spots during the 2012-13 campaign. Romero Osby’s production increased as a senior. Buddy Hield became the team’s best defender and became quite the character in the locker room. Kruger transformed a losing mentality into a winning one almost overnight, but it wasn’t all good news this season. There were some negatives. The end of the season wasn’t good, for starters, but despite a late road loss to TCU and no postseason victories in either the Big 12 or NCAA Tournaments, the Sooners created momentum for next season, if such a thing even exists.
2. Baylor doesn’t have any momentum, not after a fairly disastrous season that saw the Bears fall all the way to the NIT. Still, maybe Scott Drew’s team can at least salvage some pride this March. It continues this evening with a quarterfinal game against Providence. Baylor didn’t crash and burn in the traditional sense — it was on the bubble all the way through the Big 12 Tournament, after all — but that’s not good enough for a team with this much talent. Not with blue-chip freshmen in the frontcourt, the best player in the league in Pierre Jackson, and a dead-eye shooter in Brady Heslip. No matter how far Baylor advances in the NIT, that “what if” will linger into next November.
3. Naadir Tharpe is a sophomore. He really is. For all the expectations, criticism and attention, it’s easy to forget he hasn’t even wrapped up his second full season of Division I basketball. That’s life at Kansas, though, which is why he’s playing such a key role on this team right now. Alongside senior Elijah Johnson, Tharpe has also carried the brunt of criticism from fans and writers for Kansas’ occasional offensive lapses and point guard problems. But that didn’t happen during the Jayhawks’ dominant second half against North Carolina this weekend, and it’ll need to stay that way as this team advances into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
4. Texas Tech might need a new basketball coach if it doesn’t retain interim head coach Chris Walker, so it’s reaching out to various candidates. The results are not good so far. Southern Illinois’ Barry Hinson, an odd candidate considering he finished in last place of the Missouri Valley in his first year in Carbondale, said he has no interest. And New Mexico State’s Marvin Menzies said the exact same thing. Texas Tech isn’t the best job in the league, but the school has lured Bob Knight and Billy Gillispie to coach there in the last decade. Those are big names — especially Knight. It remains to be seen whether the TTU program can catch a big fish again this time around.
5. Fred Hoiberg knows all about being awesome at things. Especially basketball. So he’s going to coach an All-Star game at the Final Four, featuring some of the best seniors in college basketball. It’ll be a nostalgic event for Hoiberg, who played in this same All-Star game as an Iowa State senior in the 1990s. See how he’s gone full circle?

Danny Spewak (@dspewak) is a Big 12 Microsite writer. 

One shot does not define a program. Aaron Craft’s dramatic, I-can’t-believe-that-just-went-in three-pointer in the final milliseconds of regulation on Sunday will become an iconic moment of the 2013 NCAA Tournament, but as much as it will pain Iowa State fans for all eternity, it will not ruin Cyclones basketball. It will not overshadow Fred Hoiberg’s rebuilding job and two straight NCAA Tournaments, nor should it overshadow the fact that ISU will return the Big 12’s leading rebounder in Melvin Ejim next season. Hoiberg’s program is in fine shape, and Craft’s pull-up three won’t change that.

Fred Hoiberg Has To Hurt After This Loss

But boy, does this one hurt. And it’s hard not to think about what might have happened had Craft’s shot not fallen. Say he misses, and the 10th-seeded Cyclones upset Ohio State in overtime. Say Chris Babb does not get injured, or the officials make a different call on that charge in the final minutes and it changes the outcome of this game. If Iowa State could have found a way to knock off the Buckeyes and advance to the Sweet Sixteen, it would have made its first trip to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2000. That’s a full 13 years ago, when Larry Eustachy roamed the sideline and Marcus Fizer and Jamaal Tinsley wore the Cyclones jersey. It was the end of a strong era for Iowa State basketball, as Eustachy’s success built upon the work of Tim Floyd and Johnny Orr in the ’80s and ’90s. When Iowa State earned a two-seed in the 2001 NCAA Tournament, this program couldn’t have soared any higher.Then Hampton happened. Out in the first round to a 15-seed. A short while later, the infamous party pictures of Eustachy forced his departure after the 2002-03 season. His replacement, Wayne Morgan, won one game in the NCAA Tournament a few years after that but nothing more. When Greg McDermott took over in 2006-07, four seasons of mediocre, tournament-less basketball followed.

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Throughout Monday, we will roll out our region-by-region analysis on the following schedule: East (9 AM), Midwest (11 AM), South (1 PM), West (3 PM). Here, Andrew Murawa (@amurawa) breaks down the West Region from top to bottom. Also, be sure to follow our RTC West Region handle on Twitter for continuous updates the next two weeks (@RTCwestregion).

You can also check out our RTC Podblast with Andrew breaking down the West Region, which will drop both on the site and on iTunes Tuesday.

West Region

Favorite: #2 Ohio State (26-7, 16-5 Big Ten). Not to take anything away from Gonzaga, a team and a program that should be very pleased with itself for the excellent season it has had, but the Buckeyes get the nod by an eyelash. While the Zags have been coasting through WCC play for the past couple months, Thad Matta’s club has dealt with the gauntlet of the Big Ten and emerged with an eight-game winning streak, boasting wins over teams like Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan State (twice). Aaron Craft, a veteran guard with plenty of great basketball in his past, is probably playing the best ball of his distinguished career. And guys like LaQuinton Ross, Sam Thompson and Lenzelle Smith are tossing in just enough offense to aid big-time scorer Deshaun Thomas. Throw in the nation’s sixth-best team in defensive efficiency and let’s make the battle-tested Buckeyes a slight favorite to repeat as a Final Four team.

Aaron Craft and The Buckeyes Have Been Through The Big Ten Gauntlet, Making Them The Slight West Regional Favorite

Should They Falter: #1 Gonzaga (31-2, 18-0 WCC). It would be easy to play the contrarian here and offer up plenty of backlash to the Bulldogs’ first-ever #1 seed and name New Mexico – a pretty darn good team in their own right – as the next best team in this region. But make no mistake, Gonzaga can ball. With Kelly Olynyk, a first-team All-American favorite, the Zags have the third-most efficient offense in the nation and Mark Few’s best offensive team in his time in Spokane. And while there are some concerns about the Zags’ ability to match up defensively with big and athletic guards, this is a team that is also Few’s most efficient defensive team ever – by far. While there are plenty of potential stumbling blocks (regardless of who they face in the Round of 32, that looks like a serious rumble, for instance), the Zags definitely have the ability to reach an Elite Eight. Or better. Read the rest of this entry »

Danny Spewak (@dspewak) is a Big 12 microsite writer. He’s in Kansas City this weekend for the Big 12 Tournament.

Iowa State Looked Dead and Buried Late In the Game

1. Budding Rivalry: Kansas needed a rival when Missouri bolted to the SEC. Most figured it’d be Kansas State — and it is. A potential showdown with the Wildcats tomorrow night would make for an electric atmosphere in Kansas City. But there’s room for more than one rivalry, and if we’re in the business of anointing new conference feuds, we’ve got to think that Iowa State and Kansas will carry some bad blood into next year. For starters, there’s the sheer point differential of the two regular season games. The two teams needed overtime in both contests this season. First, in Lawrence, a miracle bank shot by Ben McLemore at the end of regulation helped the Jayhawks escape. In the rematch in Ames, an officiating controversy marred KU’s narrow win. That all led up to Round Three on Friday, and for much of the game, the intensity lived up to the hype. Kansas eventually ran away with the victory, but in the first half, you could tell this was more than just your run-of-the-mill semifinal between the top seed and five seed. Ben McLemore picked up a technical foul for jawing at Georges Niang on the bench after he knocked down a three-pointer, which then skyrocketed the tension in the arena. An irate Bill Self pranced up and down the sidelines, and minutes later, the officials then whistled his bench for a technical foul after they argued a no-call. Self seemed as fired up as ever. It seemed to spark his team after a competitive and highly entertaining first half.
2. Defense and Rebounding: Iowa State’s inability to get a stop in the second half doomed the Cyclones. That’s not a new trend this season for Fred Hoiberg’s team. However, their poor effort on the boards was surprising. Kansas outrebounded ISU by 12, and at one point it grabbed five offensive rebounds on a single possession. Talk about demoralizing. In every way, the Jayhawks pulled away for the win by being the tougher team. It didn’t help that Iowa State’s shots weren’t falling from the perimeter, but Self had his team ready to punish the Cyclones in the second half. Read the rest of this entry »