That was fast. Just a little over a week after doctors suggested Kansas point guard Tyshawn Taylor would miss about three weeks after knee surgery, coach Bill Self confirmed Sunday night that the senior will likely play tonight against Davidson. 

Tyshawn Taylor Is Back Early For Kansas

That’s a remarkable turnaround from the original prognosis, and it means the Jayhawks will have a steady leader to help them fight a feisty Davidson squad. It’s unknown whether Taylor will start, but it does appear that Self will be quite careful with him.

“He won’t play 30 minutes or anything,” Self said in an interview with KAKE-TV in Wichita. “If he does not have a setback today than I think he will be okay to at least play a little bit (Monday).”

With Taylor’s limited availability, Elijah Johnson will still assume a greater role in the offense and freshman Naadir Tharpe should see a lot of minutes against the Wildcats. Davidson shouldn’t pose a serious threat to Kansas at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, but stranger things have happened in college basketball. Bob McKillop’s steady success at the school has continued with his 2011-12 squad, as his team has hung with both Duke and Vanderbilt before eventually losing. The Wildcats did just lose by 23 points at Charlotte, but they have decent size and versatile shooters at almost every position. Of course, the major story line here is the rematch of the 2008 Elite Eight game, when Jason Richards missed a game-winning three-point attempt at the buzzer. Had that shout fallen, Stephen Curry and Davidson would have made the Final Four; instead, Kansas marched to a national title.

Tonight’s game probably won’t go down to the wire like that. If it does, Taylor will have to play a heck of a lot more than “a little bit,” that’s for sure.

Steve Fetch is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12. You can also find his musings online at Rock Chalk Talk or on Twitter @fetch9.

Reader’s Take

The Week That Was

• Kansas scored a huge win over Ohio State on Saturday. One big difference was accuracy behind the arc as the Jayhawks shot 53% from three while the Buckeyes shot just over 29%. The other key was the great defense Travis Releford displayed while guarding William Buford, limiting him to a paltry 8-23 from the field. Thomas Robinson scored 21 points on 77.8% shooting despite rumors that he was battling the flu, and Tyshawn Taylor had a career high 13 assists – against one of the best defenders in the country – all while playing with a torn meniscus.

Tyshawn Taylor Went Under The Knife Sunday, But With Finals Week And A Package Of Cupcakes On The Docket, Kansas Should Be Just Fine With Him On The Mend (Danny Medley, US Presswire)

• Missouri keeps rolling, beating Villanova in Madison Square Garden on Tuesday and Navy on Saturday. They are currently favored by Ken Pomeroy in every game but two remaining on their schedule, and while I don’t think it will happen, there is at least a chance that they will be 22-0 on February 4 for perhaps the last border showdown ever with Kansas in Columbia. Entering this week, they are currently ranked in the top 15 nationally in the following offensive categories: adjusted efficiency, effective FG%, turnover rate, three-point percentage, two-point percentage and free throw percentage. There were a lot of questions aboutFrank Haith when he was hired, but for now, he seems to have passed the test.
• Khris Middleton made his return to the Texas A&M lineup this weekend, scoring 24 points on 8-14 shooting (2-5 from three) and grabbing six rebounds. With Texas A&M struggling offensively despite starting the season 8-1, Middleton is just the medicine they need. And with the team being extremely effective defensively so far, perhaps the Aggies will prove to be Big 12 title contenders yet.

Power Rankings

1. Missouri (9-0) – The Tigers are fantastic offensively as I noted above, but they have struggled a bit lately on the defensive end. They allowed Villanova to score over a point per trip and they are down to 41st nationally in forcing turnovers (though if the season ended today, it would be right in line with their rate last year, when they finished ninth nationally). They’ll have two cupcakes to practice against before a big rivalry matchup with Illinois on December 22. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyshawn Taylor finally redeemed himself in a 78-67 win over #2 Ohio State on Saturday, shaking off a poor start to his senior season by tallying 13 assists. Sure, Taylor did turn the ball over seven times, but he served as the catalyst for an improved offensive effort by the Jayhawks.

And he did it all with a sprained MCL and a torn meniscus, an injury he had actually previously suffered early in the week in practice. After pushing through the injury, however, Taylor finally had surgery yesterday and will miss about three weeks.

His status for Kansas’s Big 12 opener on January 4 against Kansas State is in question, though he is expected to return by then. Even if he does, he will surely miss their games with Davidson, USC, Howard, and North Dakota. Even without their point guard, the Jayhawks have no excuse to lose any of those contests, though Bob McKillop‘s Wildcats could provide a sneaky challenge after testing Duke and Vanderbilt earlier this season.

Tyshawn Taylor Will Miss About Three Weeks for KU

Despite the weaker competition, Kansas will need to make major adjustments to compensate for Taylor’s injury. Elijah Johnson may become the go-to option in the backcourt, a role he looks equipped to handle based on his productive performance against the Buckeyes. The situation could also enable freshman Naadir Tharpe to finally crack Self’s rotation. The true freshman has not seen much action this season, but his minutes could skyrocket during the next few weeks. Tharpe looks like a potential point guard option for Self next season after Taylor graduates, so the extra playing time could be key in his development as a Big 12 player.

If Taylor misses any time during league play, Kansas could be in trouble. With a relatively inexperienced roster, Taylor and Thomas Robinson are the two most important players on this team. But by all accounts, Taylor should have no issues getting back on the court by early January.

1. As you may have heard, there was a small fracas at the end of the Xavier–Cincinnati game on Saturday. The two schools suspended four players each for their actions with the suspensions ranging from six games (for Yancy Gates and Cheikh Mbodj) to one game along with unspecified community service obligations. While there are a handful of fans and media members who are saying that the schools did a good job handling the punishments, it seems like a vast majority have been quite critical of the relatively light suspensions especially after what they believed they were hearing from Mick Cronin in his post-game press conference (a topic we wrote about yesterday). Although it has been discussed ad nauseum within the college basketball world, don’t be surprised if this is one of the major stories on sports radio and all the talking head TV shows even if does get buried under Tebow-mania.
2. It took him long enough, but Ben Howland finally decided to kick Reeves Nelson off the UCLA basketball team on Friday. It does not appear that there was another specific incident that led Howland to finally get rid of Nelson, but instead it appears that it was more the result of a series of discussions that Nelson had with Howland and how Howland felt Nelson was responding to his punishment. We are not sure if this decision will finally spark a lifeless Bruin team as they struggled on Saturday to beat a mediocre Penn team at home. We aren’t sure where Nelson will end up next or if he will ever live up to his potential (our guess: no), but it might be instructive to see how he responded to his dismissal.
3. On Saturday, Georgetown announced that highly touted freshman center Tyler Adams would be out indefinitely while undergoing tests to work up a potential cardiac abnormality. While we don’t know what Adams is being worked up for, the most likely reasons are for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy or an arrhythmia. We probably don’t need to tell you that cardiac conditions can be serious, but if you missed our prior post on the increased incidence of sudden cardiac death in Division I men’s basketball players it is worth a read. It goes without saying that basketball should be a distant secondary concern for Adams at the time and we hope that whatever triggered this work-up was an isolated event and not a significant medical problem not so much for his basketball career as for the rest of his life.
4. While Kansas picked up a big victory at home on Saturday against a Jared Sullinger-less Ohio State team, they also suffered a blow when it was announced that Tyshawn Taylor had torn his meniscus in his right knee earlier in the week and would be undergoing surgery. According to reports, the surgery, which is a fairly simple procedure, went well and Taylor is expected to be out for three weeks. Until he returns a relatively young Jayhawk team will have to learn to adjust to life without their talented, but mercurial leader, who himself has had trouble with turnovers this season. This majority of the point guard duties will probably be handed over to Elijah Johnson or one of the younger players on the team like Naadir Tharpe. Fortunately for the Jayhawks, they don’t really have another tough opponent until January 16 (five weeks from now) when they play Baylor.
5. We are always surprised when a coach resigns in the middle of the season and even moreso when it is an established coach so when Northern Arizona‘s Mike Adras abruptly announced that he was stepping down on Friday we were shocked. Adras, who compiled a 193-170 record in 13 seasons at the school, led the team to its second NCAA Tournament appearance ever in 2000, but had not been back to the NCAA Tournament since then and his team started this season 2-7. Adras had very little to say in the school’s official release other than the usual generic stuff about being proud of what he accomplished and leaving to pursue other undisclosed opportunities. Interestingly, Adras never actually told his players about his decision to leave and as of this writing apparently has not talked to the team about it, which makes it seem like he may have actually had a little push from the administration to help him with his decision to resign. For the time being, 70 year-old Dave Brown will act as the interim head coach while the school begins its search for a permanent replacement.

Predicted finish: 1st

2010-11 Record: 35-3 (14-2, Big 12)

Head Coach: Bill Self, 9th season

Key Losses: Marcus Morris (17.2 PPG), Markieff Morris (13.7 PPG), Tyrel Reed (9.7 PPG), Josh Selby (7.9 PPG), Brady Morningstar (7.1 PPG), Mario Little (5.1 PPG)

The 2011-12 Jayhawks face a daunting rebuilding task, after losing six players from last season’s 35-win team. If there is one coach who has proven he knows how to reload instead of rebuild, it’s Bill Self. The appeal of NBA riches hit the 2010-11 Jayhawk team hard with the early departure of the Morris twins and Josh Selby. That won’t stop Self and his squad from competing for a Big 12 championship, though, a title they’ve earned the past seven seasons. Kansas will not roll over, especially at home — Allen Fieldhouse has had 164 consecutive sellouts and has one of the most intimidating student sections in the game. Like always, the Jayhawks will thrive at home. Where we will see who they really are is on the road. Despite not being considered as talented a team as compared to those in recent years, Kansas will still have the bulls-eye pinned to their backs. All season long.

It Says Here That Self's Team Will Find a Way...

The Stars: All eyes will be on Tyshawn Taylor and Thomas Robinson this season. Taylor is the lone returning 2010-11 starter. He averaged 9.3 PPG last season with 4.6 APG. He will have to carry this team with his leadership this season, both on the court and off. Robinson was Kansas’s sixth man last season, contributing 7.6 PPG and 6.4 RPG. Robinson is more known for his personal tragedies off the court last season. We watched as the young man experienced the death of his maternal grandparents and his mother all in the course of a month (read the tragic yet inspiring tale here). He  provided us with one of the more awe-inspiring sports comebacks, as he played the rest of the season as an integral part of his team despite the darkness resting on his shoulders. I expect Robinson to have an All-America caliber season.

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1. The weekend started off with Penn State finding themselves a basketball coach. Pat Chambers will leave Boston University to take over the Nittany Lions, with Penn State AD Tim Curley announcing that Chambers brings “proven success, an appreciation of and commitment to Penn State ideals, and the energy and enthusiasm required to compete at the highest level” to the table. The third of those is true. We’ll take his word on the second. But the first? “Proven success?” We suppose it’s technically true, since in his two seasons as a head coach at BU, Chambers posted a 42-28 record and took the Terriers to two postseasons (CBI in 2010, NCAA in 2011). It’s just strange hearing someone at Penn State described as having “proven success” after two seasons as a head coach, considering the old guy who’s currently got his feet propped up over in the football coach’s office.
2. What’s this? Bill Self in a shiny silk green shirt and a gold chain? His wife in a rainbow dress and go-go boots? Fear not, Jayhawks, your coach and his wife haven’t lost their minds nor their fashion sense. The occasion for such sartorial splendor was Bill’s Basketball Boogie, a charity event co-chaired by Mrs. Self that offers attendees the chance to break out their disco-era garb. Sounds like it was hoppin’, with around 700 guests, but the one who stood out the most was not in costume at all. Rather, he donned his customary shirt-and-tie, just like he did on his recruiting visit (this is rare) to Kansas. Naadir Tharpe sounds like one of those kids for whom it’s easy to root.
3. Can you believe it’s been nearly 25 years since Indiana won its last national title? Upon his arrival in Bloomington, Tom Crean was handed the keys to a Hindenberg-esque pile of wreckage and was asked to make it fly again. If you’re around the guy for even a few seconds, you can tell how much he cares about his players as individuals and about reviving the winning tradition at IU. And with a nice little recruiting class coming in, maybe this is the year that things start to turn for the Hoosiers. If it doesn’t, we’ll bet that Crean’s/IU’s detractors and rivals will throughout the year be repeating a quote that operates as part of the headline to this story from a Louisville television station: “All that’s left is the winning.”
4. As the basketball world knows, Shaquille O’Neal formally retired from hoops on Friday with a legacy as one of the greatest big men to ever play the game.  We’ve been on record as saying we’ve never before or since seen a combined package of power, agility and athleticism as canned in one player at 17 years old as we did in 1989 when Shaq hit the LSU campus.  This piece from the Monroe (LA) News-Star gave a brief glimpse into the player Shaq was to become at the LSU media days event when O’Neal was still an unknown freshman — some 22 years later, we can’ t say that we’re surprised that Shaq was already commanding the center of attention.
5. It’s been one year since the great John Wooden passed, and as Victoria Sun writes in this piece, UCLA’s Black Alumni Association hosted a private fundraiser on Saturday to commemorate the Wizard’s progressive view on race relations.  Even at this point, we’re still learning about the greatness of this man’s life.  It turns out that in 1946, nearly two decades before the national civil rights movement resulted in the banishment of Jim Crow, Wooden stood up for one of his players — a black player — named Clarence Jackson whom NAIA officials would not let play in their national tournament in Kansas City.  He was a bench player — not a star by any stretch — and yet Wooden, cognizant of the injustice of such racism decades before most of his peers, pulled his team from the tournament.  This may just seem trite to some of our readers too young to know the difference, but let’s be explicit about this — as hard as it was to take a stand like this in the mid-60s at the height of the civil rights movement, it was nearly unheard of in the 1940s.  Most people simply didn’t think that way at that time, and the fact that Wooden not only sensed the unfairness but did something about it speaks volumes about the character of this man.  A national treasure, he.

Brian Goodman is an RTC editor and contributor.

Year In Review

Before the start of the season, pollsters bought into Kansas State as the sexy pick to take the Big 12 in 2011 on the heels of an Elite Eight appearance in 2010. The Big 12 was not overly impressive in non-conference play, as the Wildcats fell hard to Duke in a de facto home game in Kansas City, and Missouri did the same against Georgetown in one of the more thrilling matchups of the early season.

As league play began, the preseason #3 Wildcats disappointed, starting 2-5, and the usual stalwarts of the Big 12, Kansas and Texas, rose to the top. After topping the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse in January, the Longhorns looked to be in the driver’s seat, especially after Kansas was blindsided at Bramlage Coliseum to give Texas a two-game lead. However, Rick Barnes‘ team suffered another late-season collapse, going 2-3 to finish the regular season while the Jayhawks dusted off the competition to pull ahead to take their seventh straight conference crown.

Elsewhere in the conference, the Wildcats bounced back to end the season in third place. The middle of the conference wasn’t settled until the latter stages of the season with Missouri falling lat and Texas A&M, Colorado and Nebraska treading water. Baylor underachieved, given the talented personnel in Waco, and Oklahoma State never really looked in sync. Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Iowa State all had awful seasons to finish at the bottom of the standings.

In the conference tournament final, Kansas played its best basketball of the season, topping Texas to gain some revenge entering the Big Dance. Colorado was snubbed on Selection Sunday despite beating Kansas State three times, but the Big 12 still managed to get five teams into the NCAA Tournament. However, only the Jayhawks made it out of opening weekend alive, and they fell short of expectations as they lost to Shaka Smart and the Rams’ reign of BCS destruction.

KU's front line of Thomas Robinson (left) and the Morris twins evolved into a strength, and the Jayhawks struggled most when they weren't utilized on offense. (AP/Jamie Squire)

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Andrew Murawa is an RTC contributor.

Last week we spent some time praising the work of two of the most familiar faces in the college basketball coaching world, Rick Pitino and Bruce Pearl, in getting their teams off to sparkling starts in the aftermath of some rough off-court patches. Today, I’d like to recognize some perhaps less well-known coaches who have turned awful offseasons of a different sort into solid starts for their respective teams. At Providence, Oregon and Iowa State, the basketball programs all went through turbulent summers full of personnel changes and uncertainty, but thus far the coaches at each of those programs has fought through the adversity to earn a combined 29-9 record for the three schools, albeit against maybe some lesser competition. None of the three schools are necessarily expected to be major contenders for NCAA Tournament berths, but at least they’ve got their programs headed in the right directions after rough offseasons.

Marshon Brooks Has Been a Revelation This Season

For Keno Davis and the Providence Friars, the offseason was an absolute nightmare – not that 2009-10 was all that great to begin with. The Friars lost their last 11 games of last season on the way to a 12-19 record, during which time junior guard Kyle Wright abruptly left the program. After the season was over, a new rash of bad news hit the Friars. First, it was announced that point guard Johnnie Lacy and center Russ Permenter would be transferring out of the program. Then, a couple days later, Lacy and freshman center James Still were charged with felony assault, leading to Still’s eventual dismissal. A month later, the bright spot in the Friar program was extinguished when leading scorer and rebounder Jamine “Greedy” Peterson was kicked off the team. About a week later, assistant coach Pat Skerry left to head to Big East rival Pitt, and in the process, severely hurt Providence’s recruiting with incoming 2010 recruit Joseph Young announcing that he would be staying closer to his Houston home for college. After Davis lost some face in refusing to allow Young out of his scholarship for a time, he was eventually released and allowed to enroll at the University of Houston. Next, 2011 commit Naadir Tharpe announced that he was withdrawing his commitment to the Friars and opening back up his recruitment. And finally, for good measure, Kadeem Batts suffered a disorderly conduct charge in July. In short, it was a miserable offseason.

But, in the face of all of that turmoil, the Friars are off to an 11-2 start to this season. Yes, they’ve dropped games to La Salle and Boston College, and for every win over a Rhode Island and an Alabama, there’s a win over Central Connecticut and Prairie View A&M, but at least Coach Davis has not allowed the negative momentum of the offseason to boil over into a disastrous 2010-11 campaign. Senior wing Marshon Brooks has developed into a versatile threat (22.9 PPG, 8.7 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.8 SPG, 1.5 BPG, 2.0 3PG) and a team leader, while sophomores Vincent Council and Bilal Dixon are each developing into serious Big East-level talents. Council is among the top ten point guards in the nation in assists, with seven per game (he had 16 in a game against Brown), while Dixon has been killing the boards on both ends, to the tune of 9.7 rebounds per night (more than three of those on the offensive glass), and adding almost three blocked shots a night. While much more serious competition awaits the Friars come Big East play, Davis has focused on tightening things up on the defensive end where PC ranked in the bottom 100 teams in Division I last year in defensive efficiency; now PC ranks in the top 100. There is certainly a ways to go for this Friar team, and the talent level  is still such that any dream of a run to an upper-division Big East finish should be tempered with, you know, sanity, but Davis has taken what was a disastrous offseason and settled things down in Providence to the point where the program is no longer in freefall and is playing up to their talent level. There are sure to be plenty of losses (and losing streaks) in conference play, but expect the Friars to beat a team or two that they have no business beating, and to be competitive on a regular basis.

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A surprisingly quiet week given Midnight Madness, but we’re expecting quite a few of the recruiting chips to fall into place over the next few weeks before we wait for the inevitable group of recruits that decides to wait until April to commit to a program.

• For weeks we have been talking about how Mark Fox has been turning around Georgia with his solid recruiting, but it looks like he lost out on Julian Royal, who committed to Georgia Tech giving Paul Hewitt a huge boost this recruiting season.
• Kansas may have picked up the point guard that Bill Self was looking when Josiah Turner opted to commit to play for Arizona as after Naadir Tharpe committed to play for the Jayhawks in the middle of last week.
  

  Can Tharpe lead KU back to glory? (Credit: Robert E. Klein / Boston Globe)

• Georgetown picked up a commitment from Brandon Bolden, a center in the class of 2012, just prior to their Midnight Madness event.
• George Mason picked up commitments from Corey Edwards, a point guard out of New York, and Vaughn Gray, a small forward out of New Jersey.
• The commitments keep on coming in for Steve Lavin and St. John’s as they picked up one from D’Angelo Harrison and are in the final four for Nurideen Lindsey.
• We’ve been on Tom Crean about his decision to offer scholarships to rising freshmen, but it looks like Indiana is out recruiting Darryl Hicks, the top sophomore in the state of Kentucky.
• Oklahoma State picked up a commitment from Karron Johnson, a junior college forward who averaged 22 PPG and 7.9 RPG last year, and has 2 more years of eligibility.

1. Minnesota received good news yesterday when much-maligned forward Trevor Mbakwe finally reached a conclusion in his assault case that will allow him to suit up for the Gophers after over a year in limbo.  He will enter a pre-trial intervention program that will wipe the slate clean so long as he performs 100 hours of community service and pays a $100 fine.  With several solid contributors returning to Minny along with the addition of Mbakwe, Tubby Smith’s team suddenly looks a little better than they did a few days ago in the stacked Big Ten.
2. Florida, Mississippi State, Dayton, Illinois and Penn State.  What do theses five schools have in common?  Andy Glockner believes that each is ready to make a substantial leap in their luck next season.  He’s not being facetious either.  In using the Pomeroy definition of “luck,” a calculation that measures whether a team is playing above or below its statistical expectations, he finds that the above five teams should show a bump this season if for no other reason than they were fairly unlucky last year.
3. Mike DeCourcy gives us his five prospects coming out of the July recruiting period who most helped themselves.  Two New Englanders, Maurice Harkless and Naadir Tharpe, were among his list.
4. An NCAA proposal would require incoming NCAA freshmen to essentially prove their academic worthiness through summer school prior to their first season if their academic credentials were found lacking.  Upperclassmen would also have their academic records reviewed at the end of each school year and determine whether summer classes were needed; if they were, coaches could use part of the players’ summer terms for strength/conditioning and some skill development.  How long until every coach figures out that all of his players (including the 3.0 students) miraculously require the additional summer classwork?
5. ESPN analyst and former Duke superstar Jay (don’t call me Jason) Williams recently showed that he still has some game, especially the kind suited for summertime street ball.  He played so well at  Dyckman in NYC recently that he earned a new nickname: the Bourne Supremacy.  We’re very anxious to see what the other ESPN analysts and commentators will do with that next season.