With a month of action in the 2013-14 college basketball season now under our belts, the natural question becomes what exactly have we learned so far? We’ve been treated to some impressive performances, by both Big 12 teams and individuals, and a good number of less-than-impressive efforts. And while the buzz of Christmas season is firmly upon us, we’re also in the meat of a non-conference slate with several high-profile games involving the Big 12’s elite, allowing us further opportunity to draw more concrete conclusions. For the time being, though, four weeks into the season, here are a few observations worth keeping an eye on.

Smart showed he is human after a sub-par performance against Memphis in the Old Spice Classic (Credit: Orlando Sentinel).

• Marcus Smart is actually human after all.  Seriously, after exploding for 39 points against Memphis, Smart followed that up with 25- and 30-point performances against South Florida and Purdue, and left many in college basketball wondering if he had transformed into some sort of Space Jam Monstar in the offseason. The Oklahoma State point guard struggled in the Cowboys’ second match-up with Memphis, finishing with 12 points and two costly turnovers in a close game down the stretch. I’m not sure there’s another player in college basketball who seems to be better at harnessing his emotions in a positive way than Smart, so if there’s one thing worth betting on this season, it’s that the sophomore from Flower Mound, Texas, will find a way to bounce back quickly from a disappointing performance.

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Jameson Fleming is an RTC columnist who also works for CBSSports.com as the site’s social media editor. You can follow him on Twitter @JamesonFleming.

For several years, the Pac-12 was the laughingstock among the power conferences. The league is landing top talent once again, and that talent is represented in these rankings as four Pac-12 players cracked the Top 10. While two freshmen make up the top four of these rankings (and two more, Andrew Wiggins and Aaron Gordon could be on their way soon enough), the four Pac-12 representatives aren’t first-year players. Through the first month of the season, here goes:

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

10. Jahii Carson – Arizona State
2013-14 stats: 20.2 PPG, 5.1 APG, 115.9 oRTG

Thanks to his struggles in his team’s losses against Creighton and Miami, Jahii Carson might fall from his #10 spot. But before those struggles, Carson was looking like one of the country’s most improved players even though he scored 17-plus per game last year. He dropped 40 points on UNLV and is already halfway to his 2013 total for three-pointers. How do you guard filthy moves like this?

9. Roberto Nelson – Oregon State
2013-14 stats: 25.4 PPG, 5.2 APG, 122.6 oRTG

Roberto Nelson probably won’t hold his spot in Top 10 for too long if his team doesn’t start to win, but in the first edition, his 24.5 PPG has to be recognized. He’s taking an astronomically high percentage of his teams shots (36%) while maintaining great efficiency (122.6 oRTG). His percentage on two-pointers is way up to 58%, 11 points higher from last year. Where did the improvement come from? He’s taking 50 percent of his two-pointers around the basket and converting an absurd 65 percent of them. Last year, he only took 36 percent of his twos from around the hoop and sank just 55 percent as a result (stats via Hoop-Math).

8. Kyle Anderson – UCLA
2013-14 stats: 14.0 PPG, 9.2 RPG, 7.8 APG, 121.6 oRTG

After a disappointing freshman season, Kyle Anderson returned to UCLA and the extra year in school under Steve Alford is paying off. While the Bruins have played a bunch of cupcakes (their toughest game so far is hosting Drexel), Anderson’s impressive start can’t be downplayed. He’s a threat to record a triple-double every night while his shot selection has dramatically improved. His slash lines are a slick  51/55/70 compared to last year’s 45/21/74. His teammate Jordan Adams has been nearly as impressive.

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With four weeks of basketball now in the books, it’s time to take a quick glance back at some of the things we thought we knew in the preseason. Some notions have proved accurate, but early results have tested a slew of preseason hypotheses that we once felt confident in. Here are a few examples, on both sides of the ledger:

We Thought We Knew…

Andy Enfield Was the New Coach Bringing Exciting Offensive Basketball to LA

There Has Been Nothing Slow About Steve Alford’s And UCLA’s First Four Weeks

We weren’t the only ones who thought it was USC, with Andy Enfield now at the helm – and not UCLA, with new head man Steve Alford — which was going to be lighting up Pac-12 scoreboards in the City of Angels this winter. Back in October, Enfield told his players, “if you want to play slow, go to UCLA.” Well, USC isn’t playing slow – they are 33rd nationally in possessions per game –but they are playing slower than the Bruins, which are six spots ahead of them in that category. And if this first month means anything, perhaps Enfield should have also advised any of his players who enjoy scoring, winning, or both, to plan that transfer across town. USC is 5-3, with just one win against a team in KenPom’s top 230 (!!!) and an offensive efficiency that ranks them 170th nationally. UCLA, on the other hand, is 8-0 and averaging more than 90 PPG behind the 7th-most efficient offense in the country. Now, there is a necessary asterisk here: Alford inherited significantly more talent at his disposal than Enfield did. Even so, it was Enfield – not Alford — who invited the cross-town comparisons. The Dunk City architect better have something besides his mouth working by the time USC visits Pauley Pavilion on January 5; otherwise, his Trojans are firmly at risk of getting run out of Westwood, and contrary to popular belief, there would be nothing slow about it.  

The Complection of the Top of the Big 12

At this point, expecting Kansas to win the Big 12 generally equates to peeping out a Southern California window and looking for the sun in the morning. The Jayhawks may not have played their way out of the preseason expectation to win the Big 12 again this year, but they should have company at the top this time around. Marcus Smart and Oklahoma State, post play deficiencies aside, have looked every bit the part of Big 12 title contenders themselves, and many would now peg the Cowboys as Big 12 favorites (including yours truly). Kansas State and Baylor were next in line after the Pokes and Jayhawks a month ago, but the Wildcats have suffered through a miserable opening month, while Baylor has looked as shaky as a 7-1 team with two top-40 victories can look, with two of those wins coming against non-D-I competition and three of the other five earned with a final margin of victory of five points or fewer. Iowa State now looks like the team ready to take a step up in class. The Cyclones, 7-0 with a pair of top-40 victories of their own, could easily enter the Big 12 season undefeated and prepared to further shake up a suddenly unpredictable conference race.

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Four Thoughts is our way of providing some (typically) rapid reactions to some of the key games involving AAC teams throughout the season.

Shaq Goodwin was energetic on both ends of the floor on Sunday. (Mark Webber/The Commercial Appeal)

1. Marcus Smart’s AAC reign of terror has come to an end. The RTC preseason Player of the Year failed to replicate his Herculean stat lines from the Cowboys’ prior wins over Memphis and South Florida, in which he had averaged 32 points and 4.5 steals per game. In Sunday’s rematch, Smart scored 12 points on a season-low 30.8 percent shooting and finished 0-of-5 from beyond the arc. He also forfeited five turnovers, including consecutive miscues in the Cowboys’ final two possessions, allowing senior Memphis point guard Joe Jackson to sink four free throws that effectively cost Oklahoma State the game. Fortunately for the rest of the league, Smart won’t get the chance to take another crack at the American Athletic Conference during the 2013-14 regular season.
2. Josh Pastner has the “Big Game” monkey off of his back after earning his first win over a team ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. Despite his successes as a recruiter and the regular season since he began calling the shots at Memphis, the fifth-year coach has earned a reputation for failing to produce results in important games – whether in the NCAA Tournament or against elite competition. After Pastner lost his 13th consecutive contest against a Top 25 opponent in embarrassing fashion in his team’s first match-up with Oklahoma State, RTC’s Mike Lemaire asked whether the former up-and-comer should be on the hot seat. A win like this removes any question of Pastner’s job security, and restores a measure of faith and respect that the coach seemed to be losing among the fan base. Moreover, it has big-picture implications for his program’s national perception, as CBS Sports writer and Memphis native Gary Parrish described Sunday’s win as “narrative-changing.” Read the rest of this entry »

The conclusion of last week’s barrage of holiday tournaments is as good a checkpoint as any to take stock of the Big 12. Overall, it wasn’t a good week for the conference, as its membership failed to pick up a single exempt-event crown despite some great opportunities. The league’s heavyweight contenders sputtered out while teams in the conference’s mid-pack seemed to come away with the biggest boosts going forward. There’s a lot to go over, so let’s take a look at the week that was.

Kansas – The Jayhawks had a frustrating time in the Battle 4 Atlantis, as they failed to make the championship round of the event. Kansas hit some timely shots as it came back against Villanova in the semifinals, but the Jayhawks were done in by a Ryan Arcidiacano three in the final minute. They left the island with a pair of wins, but victories over Wake Forest and UTEP weren’t what Bill Self was counting on as the highlights of the trip; and lukewarm performances by Andrew Wiggins will only fuel the skeptics even though his overall numbers are still very good. The Jayhawks have a high ceiling, but they’re still a ways from reaching it. Kansas buried just 10 three-pointers over three games in the tournament, or, put another way, as many as Chaminade’s Christophe Varidel canned on Monday night alone. The Jayhawks are also allowing far more two-point buckets than even the flimsiest of Bill Self’s defenses have let up. It doesn’t help that KU’s defensive rebounding fell back to earth after an otherworldly start in that category. It isn’t time to panic in Lawrence, but it doesn’t get any easier as Kansas will square off with even higher-profile teams (including Florida and Georgetown) before conference play tips off in January.

Michael Cobbins (right) and Oklahoma State had a tough week in Orlando. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)

Oklahoma State – The Old Spice Classic was one long wake-up call for the Cowboys, a team that hadn’t been seriously tested coming into the event. Sunday’s loss to Memphis, underscored by Marcus Smart‘s inauspicious night, is still fresh in everyone’s mind, but it’s worth pointing out that Oklahoma State had trouble in the first two rounds as well. The Cowboys struggled to put Purdue away, giving up 58 second-half points to the Boilermakers, and on Saturday they had to hold on for dear life against Butler while both teams lit their final possessions on fire. Like their biggest challengers to the Big 12 title, Oklahoma State came home with a pair of wins, but they didn’t do much to inspire confidence going forward.

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1. It’s no secret that a good portion of the country (myself included) has marveled at the eye-popping numbers Marcus Smart has put up this season for Oklahoma State. But Run The Floor’s Michael Rogner offers the other side of Smart’s play and gives a compelling argument as to why he might not be the leading candidate for National Player of the Year honors. Going into Sunday morning and the Cowboys’ rematch with Memphis, Smart had two games where he turned the ball over five times. His line last night: 12 points, 4-of-13 from the field (0-of-5 from three), four assists and five turnovers. Rogner might be on to something here.
2. TCU is having a tough time in its first year-plus in the Big 12, but some of those troubles are out of their control. Stefan Stevenson of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports more injuries for the Horned Frogs in 2013-14. The most recent setback has to do with junior Amric Fields (12.8 PPG, 4.8 RPG), who suffered a broken hand in their loss to Harvard on Saturday and will be out for the next two to six weeks. This was only Fields’ fourth game of the year after missing all but three games last season due to knee surgery. Freshmen Brandon Parrish also suffered a sprained thumb in the Harvard loss and Hudson Price is recovering from a concussion. Both are listed as day-to-day. If Parrish and Price were both available for Thursday’s game vs. Mississippi State, Stevenson says TCU would have just seven scholarship players in uniform. If you’re a believer in a TCU turnaround, you’ll have to come to this realization: It’s hard to get a program off the ground if you don’t have the bodies to do it.
3. Tonight’s Oklahoma-Mercer game is a homecoming of sorts for Mercer head coach Bob Hoffman. Hoffman, an Oklahoma City native, coached at Oklahoma Baptist in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he accumulated 243 wins over a long tenure there. Then Hoffman headed to Southern Nazarene in Bethany to be the women’s basketball coach, where he won 88 more games. He was also an assistant at Oklahoma for Kelvin Sampson from 2004-06. If you rewind to last season’s conference tournaments, his Mercer team lost in the Atlantic Sun title game and as a result introduced Florida Gulf Coast to the college basketball world. In five-plus seasons, Hoffman has won 104 games at Mercer but might have trouble getting No. 105 against a Sooners team averaging nearly 88 points per game.
4. In the last two seasons, Iowa State has been seen as a solid team that usually got hot late in conference play to surge into NCAA Tournament at-large bids. This season has gone a little differently: they’re hot early. The Cyclones have already scored a home win over then top-10 Michigan and persevered in a tough road environment against BYU. Heading into their Big 12/SEC Challenge match-up vs Auburn, Iowa State has had a week since its last game and Fred Hoiberg has decided to add plays to an already bulky playbook. It must be a nightmare as a Big 12 coach to game plan for a brand new Iowa State team every year, but to also be thrown off balance with the new wrinkles they use. It’s probably a good thing the other nine Big 12 coaches have quite a bit of patience on the sidelines.
5. Former Kansas State and Maryland assistant Dalonte Hill has decided last week to resign from his post on Mark Turgeon’s staff. In October, Hill was charged with his third DUI in five years, dating back to his tenure working under Frank Martin. He took a leave of absence from the Terrapins to “focus on his personal life,” according to Turgeon, and this is probably the best move for Hill. He feels that he must help himself before he can help others again, and who’s to say he can’t? Hill’s only 34 years old and he’ll have plenty of time to jump back  into the coaching ranks whenever he feels like he’s ready to. All the best to him going forward.

With Feast Week already in high gear, we’re outlining the roads ahead for prominent Big 12 teams involved in neutral site events this week.

What They’ve Done So Far: With a 5-0 record and the top spot in the KenPom rankings, the Cowboys are off to a hot start this season and the whole country is anxious to see how long they keep it up. Travis Ford‘s team has shown that not only should it contend with Kansas at the top of the Big 12, but it has a place in the national title conversation as well. The Cowboys have destroyed all comers, transforming their games into must-see television programming with Vine-friendly moments left and right. Do-everything NPOY candidate Marcus Smart is quieting the doubts people had about his shooting, and his teammates have been outstanding, particularly from deep. Four Cowboys have attempted at least 10 threes on the year, and all four are shooting 35 percent or better from distance. That’s a deadly level of firepower that few teams in the country can match. In the paint, Brian Williams, Michael Cobbins and Kamari Murphy have all pitched in to clean up the glass, clearing up Oklahoma State’s biggest incoming question heading into the season.

Marcus Smart and the Cowboys look to keep rolling in Orlando after their resounding win over Memphis last week. (SI.com)

First Round Preview: Oklahoma State begins the bracketed portion of the Old Spice Classic against Purdue on Thanksgiving. The Boilermakers have a perfect 4-0 record, but they haven’t played anyone of consequence, and squeakers against Northern Kentucky and Rider – both at home – unsurprisingly haven’t led to anyone jumping on their bandwagon. Ronnie Johnson and Terone Johnson are the team’s leading scorers, but at just 13.8 and 13.0 points per game, respectively, they don’t do anything that exactly strikes fear into the hearts of their opponents. Purdue’s offense is struggling from deep, hitting 31.1 percent of its shots from three, although they are shooting well inside the arc. Defensively, Matt Painter‘s team is still trying to rediscover the days of the late 2000s, when the Boilermakers locked down anyone they faced. However, poor defensive rebounding and an inability to regularly force turnovers continues to leave them searching for answers.  There’s no doubt that they’ll be motivated to take down one of the top programs in college basketball this season, but in what should be an up-and-down affair, the Cowboys should handle the Boilermakers rather easily.

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1.  After losing a majority of their scoring from a season ago, Oklahoma head coach Lon Kruger said in the preseason that the team would have to rely on major contributions from senior guard Cameron Clark. It appears Clark heard his head coach’s message, dropping 32 points in the Sooners’ loss to #1 Michigan State in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic final on Saturday night in Brooklyn. Oklahoma jumped out to 22-11 lead on the Spartans, providing some new optimism for Kruger’s squad leaving New York as it appears the Sooners might be poised to challenge for a finish in the upper half of the Big 12 this season.
2. After two disappointing performances the first two rounds of the Puerto Rico Tip-Off in losses to Charlotte (68-61) and Georgetown (90-63), Kansas State managed to bounce back with a 52-38 win on Sunday morning against Long Beach, avoiding a last place finish in the non-conference tournament. Perhaps one reason for the improved play was due to the contributions from forward Thomas Gipson, who finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds in his first start for the Wildcats this season. Scoring will certainly be difficult at times this season for Bruce Weber’s group, so any consistent play they can get from players like Gipson on the offensive end will be much needed.
3. After missing all of last season and the first three games of this season with a knee injury, TCU junior Amric Fields was determined to make an impact in his first game of the season for the Horned Frogs, scoring 16 points in a 64-62 win at Washington State on Sunday. After struggling to a last place finish in the Big 12 a season ago, this type of road non-conference win is huge for head coach Trent Johnson this early in the season.
4. In most seasons, field goal percentage defense is a statistic Kansas head coach Bill Self pays close attention to as a measurement for how his team is faring on the defensive end. Given the rule changes this season in college basketball, Kansas’ first four opponents have averaged 42.5% from the field, far greater than their average of 36% a season ago. The Jayhawk offense seems to be adjusting fine scoring 80, 94, 86, and 88 in their first four games this year, shooting 57% from the floor. Against Towson on Friday night, Kansas ran the floor better than they have all season scoring often in transition. While Self would normally prefer a lower scoring defensive type game, it will be interesting to see if he opts for a more up and down game given their athleticism and ability to draw fouls and trips to the foul line this year.
5. When Marcus Smart isn’t busy pouring in performances for Oklahoma State on the hardwood like he did last week against Memphis, he’s spending his time as a guest picker on ESPN’s College Gameday in Stillwater on Saturday morning. Smart became the first ever current current college athlete to be featured on the show during the picks segment, which is a little comical in a way given how serious the NCAA preaches amateurism in college athletics. With the Cowboys’ rout of Baylor on the football field Saturday night, Oklahoma State fans’ biggest worry of the day came when ESPN analyst Lee Corso began firing guns in the vicinity of Smart while wearing Pistol Pete’s mascot head.

Who Won the Week? is a regular column that will outline and discuss three winners and losers from the previous week. The author of this column is Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker), a Spokane-based sportswriter best known for his willingness to drive (or bike!) anywhere to watch a basketball game. And man, will those be tested this winter. 

WINNER: Duke

Parker Has Been Outstanding So Far This Season

The Blue Devils went 3-0 in the past week – star freshman Jabari Parker had 21 points in each of the games, with 10 rebounds in two of them and nine in the other – vanquishing Florida Atlantic, UNC-Asheville and East Carolina to move to 4-1 on the season and to qualify for the New York portion of the NIT Season Tip-Off, where Arizona may await. But what Duke did off the court might be even more impressive, reeling in three five-star recruits: package deal Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones last Friday, followed by Justise Winslow on Thursday. Okafor, the nation’s top player according to Rivals, and Jones, the nation’s second-rated point guard, had agreed to play together in college despite growing up in different states; the pair has the potential to one-and-done their way to a national championship, especially with some strong supporting pieces around them. As a lanky wing defender capable of driving hard to the basket, Winslow and his talents fit right in with what Okafor and Winslow will bring to campus. Now, to get Parker to pull a Marcus Smart and come back to school…

(Related winners: Parker. Related losers: The rest of the ACC.)

LOSER: The rest of the ACC

Speak of the devil. (No, not the Devils. We already did that.) The conference gacked away a series of winnable games over the last week, which can’t help the status of a league hyped to be the best this season (if not all-time). North Carolina, missing Leslie McDonald and P.J. Hairston, was felled by a last-minute three-pointer from Belmont’s J.J. Mann, at home on Sunday. Notre Dame led for only a few minutes in an 83-70 home loss Sunday to Indiana State, shooting 37 percent in the process. Maryland lost 90-83 at home to a beleaguered Oregon State squad, surrendering 60 points combined for the Beavers’ Roberto Nelson and Devon Collier, and 60 percent shooting, too. Georgia Tech turned the ball over 19 times and allowed two 20-point scorers for Dayton, which won 82-72 in Atlanta on Wednesday. North Carolina State lost only the sixth game the ACC has ever lost to the MEAC at home Wednesday, falling 82-72 to LeVelle Moton’s North Carolina Central squad. Boston College fell Thursday to UConn 72-70 at Madison Square Garden, which is at least defensible, save for the fact that the Eagles got to New York despite losing at home to Toledo last week. (Hooray, predetermined tournament finals!) This one might come back to bite ACC squads in the butt come Selection Sunday, but until then… let’s just call this a forgettable week for the conference and move on.

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There probably aren’t too many college basketball coaches who have found themselves on the hot seat just one season after winning more than 30 games, but after a disappointing loss to Oklahoma State on Tuesday that left him 0-13 against teams ranked in the AP Top 25, Memphis coach Josh Pastner is probably feeling a bit toasty. Tuesday’s showdown with the Cowboys was supposed to be an opportunity for Pastner’s Tigers to prove that they were ready for and deserved national recognition. Instead it served as the latest public service announcement on why you should never trust Memphis in big games. Sure, Oklahoma State may have won the game anyway because Marcus Smart doesn’t belong in college basketball and Stillwater is not an easy place to play, but Memphis didn’t even make it competitive. It’s probably unfair to judge this year’s team based on its second game of the season, but Pastner shouldn’t get to be so lucky.

A Proven Recruiter, Josh Pastner Needs To Prove He Can Coach Too If He Wants To Keep His Job

Pastner’s reputation as an up-and-coming coaching superstar didn’t really begin until he graduated fromArizona and became an assistant at his alma mater under Lute Olson in 2002. Pastner’s reputation as a tireless worker preceded him and he quickly used that work ethic to establish himself as one of the best recruiters in the entire country, luring stars like Channing Frye, Mustafa Shakur, and Chase Budinger to the desert with a combination of charm and persistence. That recruiting prowess (as well as Olson’s retirement) played a big role in Pastner moving on to become an assistant coach and lead recruiter at Memphis, working under the Godfather of Recruiting himself, John Calipari, for the 2008-09 season. Calipari resigned after the season to take the job with Kentucky and it looked like Pastner would follow Calipari to Lexington. But the college basketball coaching ranks were experiencing a bit of a youth movement and a passionate and energetic 31-year-old like Pastner was the poster boy for this shift.

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