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

Current Records and my standings (Last Week)

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

A very bad week for the Big 12.  With about a week left in non-conference play, the cream of the crop is starting to shake out.   Kansas St. and Oklahoma St. did not play this week.

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Texas (1-0 this week)—Texas rebounded after the loss to Michigan St. to take it out on another Big 10 team in the Wisconsin Badgers to get a nice road win.   The news in Texas is that former Florida guard Jai Lucas has chosen to transfer to Texas and will join the Longhorns.  It is still to be determined whether he needs to sit out a full year and become eligible for the 2nd half of next season or if he will be able to play right away.  I can’t see how he could be eligible for the beginning of next season, but stranger things have happened.

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You may recall that during the summer – after the NBA Draft was completed and team rosters were essentially set – we did a quick check-in with Vegas futures odds on the winner of the 2009 National Championship.  There were no surprises – Carolina was a clear #1, but now that we’re in the preseason and season start is just over a week away, we thought it would make sense to do another check-in to determine if the futures market has seen fit to make any changes.  Comments after the table…

Source:  TheGreek.com

Thoughts.

• As you can see, the AP Poll and the futures market don’t seem to correlate much outside of the #1 Tar Heels.  If you believe the pollsters know what they’re doing (a fair argument given last year’s top four teams making the F4), then there is tremendous value in grabbing UConn, Louisville, UCLA, Pitt, and a few other top teams.  In fact, if you leave UNC off your card, and instead you take the AP #2 through #15 teams plus the field, you would have a great shot at winning something back if the Heels should falter along the way. 
• Only 14 of the 59 teams listed sustained a change since July 29, which may represent a market inefficiency or a general lack of interest during the offseason, we’re not sure which.  Of the 14, only four (UNC, Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Marquette) showed an uptick.  The other ten, which includes UConn, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio St., Notre Dame, Arizona St., BC, Kansas St. and Stanford, all fell in value. 
• Are SEC East brethren Florida and Tennessee really getting that much action to justify their odds at +1200?  Unranked Ohio St. at +1500?  Team Turmoil Arizona at +3000?  Can we short these numbers?  On the other end, Gonzaga at +4000, Baylor and Washington at +6000, Wake Forest at +8000?  With the talent on those teams, why not take a bender on any or all of them?
• One bet we sure wouldn’t take – Indiana, even if you gave us a million to one odds.  Isiah Thomas and Quinn Buckner aren’t walking through that door for Tom Crean and Kyle Taber.
• If we were filling out a card, we might be intrigued by UConn, Notre Dame, Michigan St., Gonzaga and Wake Forest at those numbers.  Just sayin…

We’ll continue tracking this table throughout the season.