1. We now have repeat winners representing this week’s Big 12 Player and Newcomer of the Week. Baylor’s Rico Gathers takes Player of the Week after sharing the honor with K-State’s Nino Williams two weeks ago. It’s hard to deny the award to a guy who averaged 15.5 points and 17 rebounds in wins over TCU and West Virginia but that’s exactly what Gathers accomplished for the Bears. Oklahoma State’s Anthony Hickey wins his second Newcomer of the Week award after taking home the honors for the week of December 15. Hickey’s 15 points in a win at Texas and 15 more vs Kansas were instrumental in the Cowboys’ climb up the Big 12 ladder. Better make room in your trophy cases, fellas.
2. Is Travis Ford the Big 12’s Coach of the Year thus far? ESPN’s Myron Medcalf thinks so and makes a compelling argument for the Oklahoma State coach. When you have the week the Cowboys have had sweeping the regular season series from Texas, a double-digit comeback victory versus Kansas and taking care of the also-streaking Baylor Bears, a question like this is bound to pop up. We have to remember that today is only February 11. Chaos has been commonplace nearly everywhere in the Big 12 except for the very top of the league and with six games to go, it’d be silly to expect the status quo to remain the status quo. We have to also remember that the only anxious people in Stillwater is, well, everyone because they’ve tasted fleeting success under Ford before only to see season after season end in disappointment. Who knows, maybe this is the year the Cowboys finish stronger than they usually do and Medcalf’s case makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, we wouldn’t be having this conversation seven days ago. Life can come at you fast.
3. Down two of their top four scorers in Manhattan, Texas and coach Rick Barnes needed a spark. As Chris Hummer of Horns247 notes, Barnes went with a three-guard starting lineup for the first time all season and it worked out beautifully. With Javan Felix and Jonathan Holmes‘ statuses still up in the air as of now, this experiment by Barnes would be worth trying out again. The trio of Isaiah Taylor, Demarcus Holland and Kendal Yancy, spacing on offense was as good as it has been all year long. Taylor was at his best, keeping the K-State defense off balance by driving and finding teammates. At 4-6 in conference play, it could be time to tinker with the lineup even if Felix and Holmes are ready to go. The Longhorns may not have much time to right the ship completely before the Big 12 Tournament but they must turn it around to ensure a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
4. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal came out with a list of the 20 best players in the Big 12 earlier this week. In a league as talented as this one, you can’t possibly find 20 credible names without leaving some good ones off the list but there are a couple (Kenny Chery, Jonathan Holmes). As for the rankings themselves, I’d have some guys higher (Nash, Forte) and some lower (Spangler) but it’s not half bad. I’m curious to know what the thinking was by putting Kyan Anderson on the list. I’m all for showing TCU love whenever it warrants it but they haven’t done a lot of winning since the calendar turned to 2015. If you replace Anderson with Marcus Foster, who has been up and down for K-State, I wouldn’t see much change in the overall quality in the rankings. Then again, it’s just a list so whatever.
5. Now at 12-12 on the season, Kansas State has now found itself playing the spoiler role. The Wildcats could throw a monkey wrench in the Big 12 race as they face West Virginia tonight and five other teams in the hunt for the NCAA Tournament — Oklahoma, Baylor, Kansas, Iowa State and Texas — before season’s end. A lot of said monkey wrench throwing depends on whether or not Marcus Foster and Malek Harris are taken off suspension in time for tonight’s game (sources told Kansas.com that they’d be both out vs West Virginia). This is the reality that Bruce Weber and his team must face.

1. The decision by Syracuse to self-impose a postseason ban for this year has been controversial to say the least. On one hand it shows that the school understands how serious the allegations against it are, but the decision to announce this self-imposed ban for one of its weaker teams in recent memory seems a little disingenuous. If this had been a Syracuse team that would have been a NCAA Tournament team (not necessarily a high seed either) the announcement might have been viewed as more significant, but it seems like the school is essentially banning itself from something it would not have been invited to anyways. Of course, all of this is assuming that the NCAA won’t hit the school with more sanctions when it makes its own announcements, but given the way the NCAA is handling the North Carolina case we would not hold our breath.
2. While Syracuse was not a realistic postseason team this year, Kansas State certainly is although those chances have been dropping recently. Things got worse for the Wildcats when the school announced that Marcus Foster and Malek Harris had been suspended indefinitely for an unspecified violation of team rules. Losing Foster, the team’s leading scorer (14 points per game) and best player, is obviously a huge loss and it showed in the team’s loss to Texas Tech on Wednesday. The question for Kansas State is how long Foster in particular will be out since this is the second time that he has been disciplined this season. If he is out for a prolonged period of time, Bruce Weber can forget about making the NCAA Tournament.
3. While Ohio State’s place in the NCAA Tournament is more secure than Kansas State’s, we are not sure how long they can maintain that security if Marc Loving misses much more time. Loving, the team’s second-leading scorer at 11.7 points per game, was suspended prior to Wednesday night’s loss at Purdue. The school did not give an explanation outside of that Loving had “temporarily lost his privilege to wear the Scarlet and Gray.” Given the wording we would assume that Loving will be back relatively soon and although the Big Ten is down this year, D’Angelo Russell needs more than just cursory support if he wants to have a memorable March.
4. Kent State also suffered a big albeit apparently temporary loss this week when they announced that Jimmy Hall, who leads the team in scoring (15.1 per game) and rebounding (7.5 per game), would be out for at least a week after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. The Golden Flashes currently are tied for first in the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference (four-way tie in a six-team division), but lost their only game without Hall (a one-point loss at Western Michigan on Wednesday). Unlike the other teams we mentioned they don’t have a shot at an at-large bid so as long as Hall is back and healthy for the conference tournament it probably won’t matter in the end.
5. Recently, we mentioned how a court had ruled that Geno Ford owed Kent State $1.2 million for getting out of his contract early. Now it is a college coach (Gib Arnold) who is going after his former employer (Hawaii) for the $1.4 million that they owe him. Arnold is essentially challenging the charges levied against him by the NCAA (including two Level I allegations) and says that the school owes him the full $1.4 million due to him based on his contract as he was fired without cause (reason for challenging the NCAA allegations) rather than the $346,000 that they paid him (presumably based on the idea that there was cause for the firing). His official statement goes into a little more detail about the issues at hand, but we think in the end it will be difficult for Arnold to win his case fighting on two fronts (the NCAA and Hawaii).

Things continue to get worse for Kansas State. The Wildcats entered Wednesday having lost three of their last four games, but a road trip to Lubbock to face league-worst Texas Tech seemed like just the break Weber’s team needed. Shortly before game time, however, the head coach announced in a statement that freshman Malek Harris and sophomore Marcus Foster had been suspended for violating team rules. “Our players have expectations and there are consequences when you don’t live up to those expectations,” the statement said. “Hopefully, they will learn from this experience and make the necessary progress to rejoin our team.” For those scoring at home, this is the second time Foster has found his way into Weber’s doghouse this season. The sophomore was also benched by his coach earlier in Big 12 play. Harris, a top-100 recruit, is averaging 13.6 minutes per game. While he doesn’t fill up the stat sheet, the 6’8″ freshman has provided the Wildcats with additional frontcourt depth this season.

Kansas State’s leading scorer Marcus Foster was suspended on Wednesday. (Scott Sewell/USA Today)

The bigger loss is Foster, the team’s leading scorer and best player. In his second season, Foster is averaging 14.0 points per game and he was pegged as a potential Big 12 Player of the Year candidate over the summer. Although Foster hasn’t lived up to those lofty expectations this season, he’s still been the team’s most important player and his absence showed on Wednesday night. Texas Tech smashed the Wildcats by 17 points in the team’s second biggest loss of the year. The Wildcats looked helpless offensively against the Big 12’s worst defensive team, scoring just 0.94 points per possession (PPP) and becoming the only team to post a number below 1.00 PPP against the Red Raiders during conference play. The Wildcats also suffered their worst defensive game of the season, allowing a bad offense to score 1.28 PPP and shoot 53.7 percent from the field against them.

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