1. The system that Buzz Williams has put into place at Marquette has generally done a good job of preventing major letdowns after the Golden Eagles lose significant contributors. However, this year’s Marquette squad has struggled at times, especially during Wednesday’s loss to Wisconsin-Green Bay. What looked to be a solid core that includes Vander Blue, Junior Cadougan, Davante Gardner, Jamil Wilson, and Chris Otule has really struggled to score this year, with only Blue and Gardner averaging double figures in points at just over 12 per game each. The Eagles are 162nd in the country in scoring this season, at 68.6 points per game
2. Many coaches contend that some of the best games for a developing team are the ones that count in the win column but feel like losses. Jim Boeheim’s 900th career victory sure felt like a loss in many ways, and he will find plenty of teachable moments in Syracuse‘s near-collapse against Detroit. This was the first game all year where the Orange really had their backs against the wall, and that situation provides good feedback to Boeheim and his coaching staff. “These are things that usually you don’t learn from games that you win, but usually players almost need to lose a game to really think about things such as ‘this is what we have to do’ and I think this game feels more like a loss. It’s good to get one that feels like it but isn’t and I think we’ll be able to look at some plays.”
3. The Kevin Ollie situation seems to be wearing on UConn, as evidenced by comments made by Shabazz Napier following a Thursday practice: “Warde (Manuel), our AD, we all know what he’s doing… After (beating) Michigan State, I felt like he was going to get this job, but sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. I’ve kind of come to terms that, no matter what we do, it’s not going to be in our hands. We can win as many games as we want, I still don’t believe it’s going to be in our hands where he’s going to give him a job.” With no postseason prospects to look forward to, the chance to win long-term job security for Ollie is one of the tangible things that the Huskies have to play for this year; but if new athletic director Manuel is really that difficult to win over, it will be interesting to see how the team reacts.
4. One of the major categories that hurt USF early on this year was their mediocre efforts on the glass. Enter: Victor Rudd. After seeing the Bulls get dominated in the rebounding department through the first few games of the year, Rudd took it upon himself to excel in this area and he is now averaging 8.2 boards per game, good for third in the Big East. Rudd’s rebounding prowess, coupled with improved play from Toarlyn Fitzpatrick and Anthony Collins, has helped the Bulls recover from a slow start. USF has won four of its last five games, with the only loss coming to a ranked Oklahoma State squad.
5. According to Blue and Gold Illustrated‘s Wes Morgan, Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant has a bruised back and may miss the Irish’s game against Niagara tonight. After scoring 14 points the last time out, Grant left Notre Dame’s game against Kennesaw State after a collision with an Owls player. Grant, who is second on the Irish in scoring this year, would be a big loss if he misses extended time, but Mike Brey’s squad should not have any issue with a 5-6 Niagara squad tonight with or without him in the lineup.

1. Here’s some news we’ve been waiting to hear all season long. According to a Yahoo! Sports report, the NCAA will suspend Texas guard Myck Kabongo for the remainder of the season. As the article notes, most cases involving players and impermissible benefits result in a three to 10-game suspension followed by a repayment of the benefits. However, the NCAA believes Kabongo provided false information in his interview and has decided to end his sophomore season before it even began. Javan Felix has done a solid job in Kabongo’s place this season by averaging 8.7 points, 4.2 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game, which is good for second in the Big 12. Can’t make excuses for Texas anymore.
   
2. Just as the Kabongo news was breaking, Texas was putting the finishing touches on a wire-to-wire blowout of North Carolina, 85-67, at the Frank Erwin Center in downtown Austin. I happened to be in attendance at the game last night and to be honest, I was expecting the Horns to cool off from their hot start and Carolina to eventually take control of the basketball game. I prepared myself for this to happen but it never did. Both teams were sloppy with the basketball all game long and it felt like I was watching two AAU teams who were wrongfully wearing burnt orange and Carolina blue. Here’s an encouraging tidbit from last night’s game: The Longhorns bettered their season scoring high by 10 points, knocking off the 75-point mark set last game vs Texas State. Maybe, finally, this team is turning the corner offensively. Our eyeballs thank you.
3. TCU announced that guard Jarvis Ray will be out for the next six to eight weeks after suffering a leg injury in Tuesday’s game versus Southern. After a jump shot, Ray came down awkwardly on a defender’s foot and is now the third Horned Frog to miss significant time due to injury; junior Amric Fields and freshman Aaron Durley are the other two. TCU was picked to finish dead last in the Big 12 anyway so it’s not as if we’re losing a possible tournament team. Trent Johnson’s group knows that this is a do your best kind of season. At least you can’t fall any further than rock bottom. 
   
4. A day after posting an article about Le’Bryan Nash playing down to his competition, Oklahoma State beat up on UT-Arlington 69-44 in Stillwater. The statistical line of the game goes once again to Marcus Smart, who scored 10 points (on four shot attempts), grabbed four rebounds, dished out five assists, and had four steals. And what about Nash? 10 points on 3-of-11 shooting. In reality the entire Cowboy team probably didn’t care about this game that much. At halftime, coach Travis Ford said that Oklahaoma State really has “a lot of respect for UT-San Antonio.” Speak for yourself, coach.
5. After Saturday’s loss to Michigan, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins complained about his team in front of the media. It appears now that his Mountaineer players understand his frustration and are trying to do something about it. The super early return on his investment is looking pretty good so far with West Virginia defeating Oakland 76-71 last night. They hit better than 50% of their shots as a team and made eight threes. Aaric Murray returned from a one-game suspension to drop 12 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, and blocked five shots. Maybe this is the week that Texas and WVU have chosen to do complete 180s. Good idea.

1. Yesterday I talked about the success Oklahoma had in Saturday’s win over Texas A&M when the Sooners went on a important 8-0 second half run using a four-guard lineup. Well, they probably could have used some of that last night. The Sooners fell to Stephen F. Austin by a score of 56-55, making this OU’s first non-conference loss in Norman since 2007 (coincidentally enough to these same Lumberjacks). OU led 30-26 at halftime but SFA came out on a 19-4 run to start the second half and led by as many as 11 points. The Sooners then countered with an 18-6 spurt to take a brief 52-51 lead, but OU’s Buddy Hield had a chance to possibly force overtime with four seconds left but obviously he didn’t. I don’t think we’ll see a whole lot of OU-SFA games again in the future.
2. The struggles of Rodney McGruder in Bruce Weber’s brand-new motion offense are well documented, which makes last night’s performance against Texas Southern all the more encouraging. K-State won the game but McGruder lit up the Tigers for 26 points on 12-of-17 shooting. If the Cats want to do anything in March, much less Big 12 play, the senior McGruder needs to be at the top of his game this season. One fun note from this game: Former Oklahoma State and current Texas Southern guard Ray Penn made the most of his return to a Big 12 arena, pouring in 24 points and dishing out five assists in the defeat.
3. If you’re a fan of Big 12 basketball as a whole, there hasn’t been much to stick your chest out about this year. But I found something to be proud of: all the über-talented freshmen. CBSSports.com ranked the top five freshmen in college basketball and two of them hail from the Big 12. Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart has arguably become the most versatile freshman point guard in the country, or maybe just point guard, period, in America by putting together averages of 13 points, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals per contest. The newbie on this week’s list at number three is Ben McLemore from Kansas. The St. Louis native has had an impressive three game stretch against Oregon State, Colorado and Belmont by averaging 20.7 points per game which includes 9-of-15 shooting from behind the arc. Freshmen — this is our silver lining.
4. “I don’t know about my teammates but I play at the level of the competition.” That quote is the last thing you want to hear if you’re a coach or fan but it comes from Oklahoma State’s LeBryan Nash. If I may play Devil’s Advocate, can you blame him? The Cowboys are 8-1, with quality wins, a Top 25 ranking, and talent everywhere. But if there’s a time to not slack off, it’s now. They have UT-Arlington and Tennessee Tech on the schedule before playing Gonzaga on New Year’s Eve prior to Big 12 play. Nash said that he wants to change his attitude of playing down to teams, though. The first step in dealing with a problem is acknowledging that there is one to begin with. Now prove it.
5. Here’s a weekly favorite of mine — and it should be yours too. Gary Parrish’s Poll Attacks spotlights the horrible mistakes writers and coaches make on their Top 25 ballots. This week, there’s some confusion as to why a certain Big 12 team received two votes from coaches that didn’t even deserve one. If there’s just one vote, it probably looks like a mistake. But a second vote makes you think otherwise.

David Cassilo is an RTC columnist who also writes about college basketball for SLAM magazine. You can follow him at @dcassilo.

Farewell, Big East. As a Villanova grad who grew up in New Jersey, you were always close to my heart. I’ll miss the prime time Saturday night final. I’ll miss the coaching legends. I’ll miss the physical play that would be called for a foul in any other league. I’ll miss the afternoon games of the Big East Tournament. I’ll miss being sponsored by Aeropostale. I’ll miss record crowds at the Carrier Dome. I’ll miss seeing Carnesecca and his sweater sitting behind the St. John’s bench. I’ll miss Mick Cronin being displeased with his team. I’ll miss West Virginia fans throwing stuff. I’ll miss looking at the newspaper and saying, “Wow, DePaul won.” I’ll miss Madison Square Garden. I’ll miss the weird dimensions of the RAC. I’ll miss Seton Hall thinking its good. I’ll miss Providence’s mascot. I’ll miss UConn breaking the rules. I’ll miss Pitt’s illegal screens and 30-year old point guards. I’ll miss Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami. I’ll miss Pitino’s press conferences. I’ll miss people saying Villanova is Guard U when it rarely sends a guard to the NBA. I’ll miss Georgetown running the Princeton offense. I’ll miss the overachievers at Notre Dame and Marquette. I’ll miss that time South Florida was good. I’ll even miss the double bye, Burr and Higgins. Now let’s end this league in style.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

10. Brandon Paul – Illinois (Last Week – NR)
2012-13 stats: 19 PPG, 4.7 RPG, 3.5 APG

Brandon Paul tore apart Gonzaga. (Joe Robbins/Getty)

With 35 points at Gonzaga last Saturday, Paul officially declared his candidacy in the Player of the Year race. The major improvement in his game this year comes down to his shooting. He never cracked 40 percent from the field in his first three years but is up to 46.8 percent this season.This week: December 16 vs. Eastern Kentucky

9. Michael Carter-Williams – Syracuse (Last Week – NR)
2012-13 stats: 12.4 PPG, 5.6 RPG, 10.4 APG, 3.8 SPG

There’s no doubt that Carter-Williams does more to fill up the stat sheet than any player in the country, but it’s his passing that has been second to none. He leads the nation in APG and has 37 dimes in his last three games. A high turnover rate (3.8 per game) and poor three-point shooting (22.2 percent) hold him back from challenging for the top spot. This week: December 15 vs. Canisius, December 17 vs. Temple

8. Jeff Withey – Kansas (Last Week – 7)
2012-13 stats: 13.8 PPG, 8.0 RPG, 5.6 BPG

After blocking five shots against Colorado last Saturday, Withey has swatted the ball at least that many times in six of his team’s eight games. His defensive dominance coupled with the rise of freshman Ben McLemore has the Jayhawks thinking of a return to the title game. This week: December 15 vs. Belmont, December 18 vs. Richmond

Read the rest of this entry »

1. It’s a novelty in college basketball these days: A neutral site series between in-state foes from both power and non-power conferences. Come again? Yup, it’s time for the Big Four Series in Des Moines this weekend, which features a game between Iowa and Northern Iowa followed by a showdown between Drake and Iowa State. It strips the programs of a home game, but it’s been unbelievable to watch these teams play each other over the last several years. And to set up an actual tournament? That’s unheard of with the modern we-have-nothing-to-gain philosophy employed by almost every single BCS league team in college basketball.
2. Mark your calendars for next season. It looks as though Kansas State will likely host Gonzaga in Wichita as a salute of sorts to the fans in that city. The Wildcats will face the Zags in Seattle this weekend, but in the return game, Weber may opt for Wichita instead of the Sprint Center in Kansas City as a neutral destination. Apparently, those are the two choices he has, and he told a reporter with the Wichita Eagle he is leaning toward playing at Intrust Arena instead of the Sprint Center. Either way, you know it will probably be a sellout in either city.
3.  The Kansas City SB Nation blog has begun previewing Big 12 Conference play, since it is amazingly almost here. In the first edition of the preview, we get yet another reminder that Kansas rules all and probably will be hardly challenged in Big 12 play this year. Oklahoma State could do it, sure. Baylor could improve. So could Kansas State. But right now, amidst all of the chaos in the Big 12 and the league’s poor performances in non-conference play, the Jayhawks are the one thing you know you can count on. The Big 12 might be lost without Kansas this season.
4. When I saw this headline — “Jayhawks’ Ellis plans to work over break” — I thought Ellis had decided to get a part-time job outside of basketball. For a moment, I tried to figure out how in the world a guy playing Division I basketball would have enough time in the day to have a job, too, and then I read the story. It’s about how Ellis and the freshmen will work on their game during winter break without school in session, and then things started to make a little more sense. Ellis will need to use the time off to clear his head and relax a little bit. He’s playing only about 16 minutes a game right now, but Self said his minutes will continue to increase as long as he keeps working. Not at a job, of course. At basketball.
5. This news is a few days old, but it’s so priceless we just had to include it. West Virginia’s mascot is no longer allowed to hunt with his musket after he killed a black bear and got caught on tape. That seems like a pretty reasonable request. It would also make Fake Dwight Schrute from The Office pretty happy.

1. This. Is. Awesome. T. Boone Pickens, everybody’s favorite Oklahoma State alumnus, has purchased the 4,000 remaining tickets for a New Year’s Eve showdown with Gonzaga and will give them away for free. Considering the Cowboys’ surprising start and increased expectations, this might be one of OSU’s more important home games in some time. With as much greed and power in sports today, it’s nice to see a guy like T. Boone give some tickets away for us common people to enjoy.
2. We wrote a few days ago about the relative weakness of the Big 12 through the first month or so of the season. Here’s another look at the league’s early woes. This article digs deeper into the problem: Only Kansas and Baylor find themselves in the Top 100 of the RPI, and the conference as a whole has dropped to fifth. Stunningly, the Big 12 is also 0-5 against the Big Ten. The odd thing is that Oklahoma State is really the only team who has overachieved so far this season, but it’s early enough that Texas, West Virginia and several other teams could easily rebound.
3. Oklahoma seems to have a lot of interesting characters on this roster. Buddy Hield made an earlier appearance in the Morning Five for his fun-loving antics, and here’s a look now at fellow freshman Isaiah Cousins. He brings a New York City attitude to the Sooners, a style of play often found up East but not normally in leagues like the Big 12. As teammate Romero Osby puts it, “Guys from New York City are always edgy.” Fair enough.
4. The John Beilein days at West Virginia seem far removed. Hard to believe that less than a decade ago, Kevin Pittsnogle and the crew roamed Morgantown and created a semi-powerhouse in the Big East. His departure to Michigan wasn’t all that messy, and that’s why his match-up against the Mountaineers this weekend in Brooklyn shouldn’t be too awkward for him. Plus, West Virginia got another hometown man with Bob Huggins, and it seems to be sailing along just fine after a Final Four appearance in 2010. So don’t expect to hear the Boo Birds out in full force in Brooklyn on Saturday.
5. To end this edition of the Morning Five, we’ll point you to a story that doesn’t necessarily relate to the Big 12 but involves a current coach in the league. We all know Bruce Weber‘s reign at Illinois did not end very well. He found a good gig at Kansas State and never looked back. But his old team has taken off under new head coach John Groce. He’s not bringing up last year, though. At all. “I haven’t certainly talked to them about it at this juncture and maybe in large part of it is I wasn’t here last year and don’t have relevance to that,” he said. No matter Weber’s involvement with this Illinois team, he’s in a decent position in Manhattan and it was certainly time for him and the Illini to part ways. It’s interesting to see how his old guys have fared, however. Maybe he wishes he’d had just one more year in Champaign.

The NCAA may be butchering another investigation, but they did something right on Tuesday. They are celebrating 75 years of March Madness with a list of all-time greats: the best players, teams, and moments in NCAA Tournament history. They aren’t ranked (wouldn’t that be a fun argument?) but there are plenty of arguments to be had by fans, and plenty of memories — good and bad — brought back to life in the lists. This note isn’t Big 12 related but I thought the same thing as our own editors said when I read the list for the first time:

“Shelvin Mack, really?”

Um, no.

With that out of the way, here’s how the Big 12 was represented:

Players

• C Bob Kurland, Oklahoma A&M 1943-46 (now Oklahoma State): Kurland played in the 1945 and 1946 NCAA Tournaments, winning the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award in 1946. He was a three-time All-American (1944-46) and led Oklahoma A&M to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1945 and 1946, also winning two gold medals as a player.
• F Clyde Lovellette, Kansas 1949-52: Lovellette tells a story about his recruitment in high school. Kansas coach Phog Allen told the Indiana native that if he came to Kansas, the Jayhawks would win the 1952 national title and a gold medal in the Olympics. In 1952, Kansas beat St. John’s for the NCAA title then won a gold medal a few months later. Lovellette was an All-American and led the Big 7 in scoring each of his three seasons.
• C Wilt Chamberlain, Kansas 1956-58: He averaged 29.9 PPG in two seasons in Lawrence and is considered one of the greatest players of all time, making this one of the easier choices for the committee. Chamberlain was named the 1957 tournament’s Most Outstanding Player even though Kansas lost a three-overtime championship game to North Carolina, 54-53.
• F Danny Manning, Kansas 1984-88: Manning’s injury-ridden NBA career sometimes overshadows how great he was in college. He was the 1987-88 Player of the Year as well as the 1988 tournament MOP. He left Kansas as the Big 8’s all-time leading scorer with 2,951 points.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. You can file this into the Won’t Ever Happen In Our Lifetime category, but at least one random writer wants Bill Self to make the jump to the NBA ranks. Could Self coach the Washington Wizards? The argument here is that the Wizards are a younger team who may respond to his college-style tactics. Again, this simply will not happen, and it’s hard to fathom Self ever leaving his cushy, high-paying job at one of the top programs in college basketball. But it’s fun to think about. As is usually the case, Self’s success at the NBA level would entirely depend on the team around him. The failures of college-to-pro coaches almost always hinge on the personnel — the NBA is unquestionably a players’ league.
2. It’s easy to see Texas‘ flaws without looking at the numbers, but just for kicks, here’s a look at how the Longhorns’ horrendous statistics this season break down. Interestingly, Rick Barnes’ team actually took care of the ball better against UCLA by only turning it over on 15 percent of their possessions. Overall, though, it’s been a recurring problem, and this site does a great job of analyzing Texas’ true shooting percentage so far this year. Whether you embrace voodoo-like sabermetrics or not, the numbers are not pretty.
3. Kansas State missed its chance against Michigan. Now, the Wildcats have a make-or-break non-conference stretch, starting with a date against Gonzaga this weekend. The Zags dropped a home game to Illinois last weekend, but this game will be played in Seattle’s Key Arena on a semi-neutral floor. As assistant coach Chris Lowery puts it, “at least we’re not in The Kennel.” That’s for sure, no matter what happened against Illinois. Just ask West Virginia.
4. Korie Lucious will probably be fine. It hasn’t been a terrific start for the Iowa State point guard, though. Get this: So far this year, he’s turned the ball over more times than any other player in a major conference. He’s sitting at 41 turnovers over 10 games, to be exact, and that’s hardly what Fred Hoiberg thought he’d get out of the Michigan State transfer. As this article points out, this is a new responsibility and leadership role for Lucious, so give him a little time to adjust before blaming him for all of the Cyclones’ woes.
5. Marcus Smart, on the other hand, hasn’t needed to adjust at all as a freshman at Oklahoma State. Smart has done absolutely everything we all predicted him to do. We said Smart was a high-IQ, high intangibles guy, and he’s been that. We said he’d be dynamic. He’s done that, too. He’s scored, passed, rebounded, played hard and looks like the kind of game-changing player Travis Ford has been waiting for. No wonder the Cowboys look like a Big 12 contender just one year after finishing below .500.

1. When the NCAA releases a list highlighting the best players, teams, and moments in the 75-year history of the NCAA Tournament it gets our attention. Now this probably merits its own post because we have several issues with their selections, but given our time constraints we will start here and if we have the time and inclination we may make this into its own post in the future. We will start off by saying that overall it is a pretty solid list, which frankly shouldn’t be that hard when there are so many obvious selections (Laettner, Alcindor, etc.) We won’t get into the player selections too much other than to point out that there are some interesting selections for the players including picking one-and-dones (Carmelo Anthony and Anthony Davis) as well as one player who we would never have even considered (sorry, Shelvin Mack). The team selections appear to be solid as well although it was interesting that they apparently fell asleep during 1999 and made a few other interesting selections, which we will let slide because they only included NCAA Champions. Our biggest issue is the heavy bias towards moments since 1973 (only three of the 35 listed moments come from before that and involve either civil rights issues or the very first championship despite accounting for almost half of the NCAA Tournament’s history). Most observers will be biased toward recent events, but we would have hoped that the NCAA would have fought this off to have some other memorable moments to potentially educate fans of the game.
2. With all the conference realignment going on, one group is getting left out: the mid-majors. If that group, which contains some of the best and most unique programs in the country hadn’t suffered enough with the movement of teams between conferences they just got a little extra salt in their fresh wounds with the announcement that ESPN was canceling their BracketBusters event after this season. In its 11th season, the event was originally intended to help mid-majors add a quality victory to their resume either helping them get an at-large into the NCAA Tournament or at least move up a line or two on the S-curve. Some opponents have criticized the event for a variety of reasons including the fact that it might hurt a team’s chance of getting an at-large if they lay an egg in front of a national TV audience or the fact that sometimes the match-ups are not optimal as they may have two exceptionally strong mid-majors playing in different games against vastly inferior opponents leading to two dismal games that makes mid-major basketball overall look bad.
3. The New Year’s Eve game between Gonzaga and Oklahoma State was already a highly anticipated game, but oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is trying to raise it to another level. Pickens, who you may remember from this amazing tweet at Drake, has purchased 4,000 tickets for the game that will be given away on a first-come, first-serve basis starting this morning at the Oklahoma State ticket office with a maximum of six tickets being given to any single individual. Given how this giveaway is set-up we expect to see quite a few of these tickets wind up on the secondary market, which we would consider disappointing except for the fact that a capitalist like Pickens would probably approve of it.
4. There might be a coach of a major program that regularly schedules such a challenging non-conference schedule as Tom Izzo does, but you will not find many. Now it appears that Izzo wants to up the ante as he is looking at scheduling several home-and-home series. We are not sure how he is going to do it, but we applaud him for it. According to Izzo, Michigan State is trying to schedule home-and-home series with Arizona, Florida, and/or North Carolina. For some coaches we would view this as just posturing, but given Izzo’s reputation for taking on all-comers on land or sea and in some cases abroad we tend to believe him.
5. One of the great things about social media is that it can be used as a force for the public to have its voice be heard by the powers that be. So you would think that in the case of an idea that was almost universally derided the public would win out, right? That does not appear to be the case for Mark Hollis’ four-games-at-one-time idea as the Michigan State AD is continuing to defend the concept. To be fair, we would have been surprised if Hollis had backed out of the idea that quickly as it would have made it clear to everybody just how ridiculous the idea was in the first place. Our disapproval of the idea has nothing to do with our thoughts on Hollis as we think he has done a great job with a number of unique sporting events, but more to do with the practicality of it. You can play a game on the moon if you want, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

1. If you’re looking for the next fan favorite in the Big 12, get ready for four years of Buddy Hield. The Oklahoma freshman has a motor that never steps, and that goes double for his mouth. As the linked article points out, his family hails from the Bahamas and visited him during the Old Spice Classic. Hield, a 6’3” guard, has played well off the bench and has made the most of his minutes. He’s part of the new fresh blood that could help Lon Kruger’s more experienced veterans get over the hump this season.
2. Kevin Noreen has always been an interesting case at West Virginia. The 6’10” center doesn’t get a lot of fanfare and he’s logged limited minutes under Bob Huggins so far in his career. That’s why his performance on Saturday in a win over Virginia Tech might be his coming-out party. He was a terrific high school shooter, but he’d never even attempted a three-pointer in college until Saturday. He took three treys in that game and made a pair of them, which means he’s now a 66 percent lifetime three-point shooter. Oh, and he’s a 6’10” center — did we mention that? In 33 minutes of action, he finished with 14 points, and that’s a great sign for a guy Huggins calls “a great role model.”
3. Historic Gallagher-Iba Arena, once one of the the most feared arenas in all the land, has taken a step back ever since Eddie Sutton stepped down. At times, it’s even been sad and downright pathetic to see the empty seats at that place, but slowly, the fans are starting to crawl back. If you’re anywhere near Stillwater, listen to what The Oklahoman has to say in that column. You need to see this team. And the third-party observers want to see GIA all the way back to glory.
4. Some of you are snobs. Some of you will laugh when you read that Texas Tech will offer $1 tickets for December games. You’ll say it’s a sign the program is in the dumps, you’ll say it’s pathetic and you’ll pity the fans for having to watch a poor product on the floor. We’re going to be bigger than that here at RTC’s Big 12 Microsite, though. Is the demand low for a team and program in transition? Certainly. But there aren’t a lot of athletic departments out there at this level of college basketball that would offer a deal like this and essentially let people come to watch its games for free. That shows a real commitment on the part of Texas Tech’s administration to get people in the seats and make games affordable for people who might not otherwise be able to attend. Kudos to the Red Raiders. Now, go win some games.
5. There were a lot of shining moments during Kansas’ 90-64 victory over Colorado at Allen Fieldhouse this weekend, but Travis Releford deserves top honors for his dunk over Jeremy Adams late in the first half. Teammate Kevin Young had the quote of the day: “It shocked me.” The Lawrence Journal-World has a couple of solid, posterizing photos to embarrass Adams, but that’s the least of the Buffs’ concerns right now. In other notes, Tyler Self scored the first points of his college career with two seconds left in the game. Not sure anybody thought that debut would come against a team like Colorado, but KU fans will certainly take it.