Tilting at Windmills

Wednesday, ponderos. The men’s Big 12 tournament starts on Wednesday, NOT Thursday. They’re starting on Wednesday so the NCAA selection committee won’t have any excuses when they shaft one of the teams on Sunday since they will have chosen their teams already by the time the tournament is usually done.

Thank you, inside voice. Go back to whatever you were doing.

Yes, the 13th Big 12 men’s basketball tournament starts tomorrow at the Ford Center (home of yourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr OKC Thunder!) in idyllic downtown Oklahoma City. While you’re there, head over to the track if you have a moment. Hitting a quinella at Remington Park is dominance defined.

Personal grooming habits have been an issue with the Thunder's new cheerleader.

As always, the first round games are of interest to fans of teams who couldn’t get the first round bye, and those teams who await them on Thursday (not Friday). The team probably most disappointed to be playing on humpday is Texas, which thought it would be able to rest on Wednesday after beating a Griffin-less OU. That was before laying eggs at Stillwater and Lawrence.

Some interesting facts from Big 12 tournament history:

• Only four teams have won the conference tourney: KU (6), OU (3 straight), OSU (2), and ISU (1).
• The conference’s regular season winner has won the post season tournament 7 times: Kansas (5), OSU (1), Iowa State (1).
• This is the second time the Ford Center has hosted the Big 12 tournament. The last time was 2007 when Kansas won an 88-84 thriller over Kevin Durant and four other Longhorns.
• Kansas is the winningest team in the Big 12 tournament at 25-6. OU is second at 19-9.

2009 Big 12 Tournament Bracket

Here’s a quick, just past the boxscores look at the first round games:

#8 Nebraska (18-11) vs. #9 Baylor (17-13). The Huskers don’t have a player over 6’5” who logs significant minutes, yet they were able to beat much bigger teams like Texas and Mizzou in Lincoln, plus a 20-point face-rape of K-State. Nebraska will play about eleventy-million quick, ankle-biting guards who will harass and bug the shit out of you. That might be enough against Baylor, which after looking like they might be this year’s NCAA Cinderella early in the year, turned into the proverbial pumpkin mid-season. After beating K-State and running their record to 15-3, the Bears went to Norman and got absolutely blasted by the Sooners, beginning a 10 of 12 losing streak. The last of those losses was to Nebraska, in Waco, when all Baylor had to do was hang onto the ball in the last two minutes of the game to win. The Bears need Curtis Jerrells and LaceDarius Dunn to light it up for them to have a chance to win. Nebraska should be able to use its speed and ballhawking (they average 8.4 steals per game) to advance to a Thursday matchup with Kansas.

Sure do like pumpkins, Cotton.

#5 Texas (20-10) vs. #12 Colorado (9-21). The Longhorns got a great draw, despite losing their first round bye. They get to play the worst team in the conference in the first round, then are bracketed with K-State should they win. It wasn’t quite that easy when the Horns played the Buffs last, though. Second team all-conference gift receiver Damion James clanked two free throws at the end of regulation that would have won the game. James made up for it in OT, though, single-handedly outscoring the Buffs to beat them in Boulder. A.J. Abrams was on that night, pouring in 29, but UT had no answer for CU wing Cory Higgins and his 34 points. I don’t know what Barnes is going to do to counter Higgins this time around, but it needs to be something different. Still, I’m thinking Texas will be fine here and should get through to play K-State on Thursday with its front line of Pittman, Johnson and James overpowering the young, small CU post players. Colorado has to hope that Higgins goes ballistic again and Texas starts playing WTF ball like they have at times this season.

#7 Oklahoma State (20-10) vs. #10 Iowa State (15-16). This will be a de-facto home game for the Pokes. Considering this is a school that includes barrel-racing championships as a “we own you” stat, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be copious amounts of deer season-orange littering the Ford. OSU is likely already in the NCAA tournament, but at least one win in the conference tournament would seal the deal. The Cowboys are on a good run right now, winning six out of their last seven. They began that run with a 19-point win over the Cyclones in Stillwater. ISU has a mirror-image streak, losers of 11 out of their last 14. Two players to watch are ISU’s Craig Brackins (20.1 ppg) and OSU’s James Anderson (18.9 ppg), the second and third leading scorers in the conference, respectively. OSU’s supporting cast is much better, though, with three other players scoring in double figures. That coupled with the intangible of OK State playing in front of a home crowd should push them past ISU and into a Thursday Bedlam rematch with Oklahoma.

#6 Texas A&M (23-8) vs. #11 Texas Tech (13-18). The Aggies might be the most underrated team in the conference. They’ve quietly rolled up 23 wins, including their last six straight. A&M has signature wins against Mizzou and Texas, both of those at Reed Arena in College Station. Their big weapon is 6’7” wing Josh Carter, who’s hitting 40% from the three point line. His size makes him a tough cover at the 3, but he sometimes has trouble creating his own shot. A&M swept the season series against Tech, although both were tight, including the Aggies’ 6-point, foul-plagued win in Lubbock. Tech has gone from the team nobody wanted to play in the NCAA not too many years ago to nearly the Big 12 doormat, losing 16 out of its last 19. Raiders’ fans would like to say they’ve seen improvement since East Central Oklahoma dropped 167 points on them back in November, but they really can’t (unless you count not having a buck and a half scored on you again as an improvement). A&M wins this one easy and advances to play Mizzou on Thursday.

Subtexts are prolific at this time of the year, one game and one week before the conference tournament and two weeks before we see just how good we really are. The implications for today’s game are clear:

• OSU needs a win to virtually lock up an NCAA tournament spot. They’re still on the good side of the bubble right now, thanks to a Top 25 RPI, a ranking primarily based on a Top 10 strength of schedule. Caveat … this demonstrates a little RPI absurdity that OSU gets a pass for playing 10 teams in the RPI Top 40 despite going 2-8 against them.
• OU is still playing for a number one seed in the NCAA tournament. Of utmost importance is stopping the three of four losing skid. The Sooners have likely already lost the top seed in the Big 12 tournament, relegating them to the Mizzou side of the bracket. This is a bad time of the year to be playing your worst basketball. The Sooners could really use a confidence-builder today.

Most importantly, though, today is the last time we’ll see Blake Griffin on the floor of Lloyd Noble Center. I’ll run down just where Blake fits on the lanai of OU basketball history in a later post. I don’t think anyone bothering to cruise an OU blog has any trouble understanding the significance of the first potential #1 NBA draft pick ever at OU finishing up his collegiate career.

So what needs to happen today to get OU on the right track headed into the postseason?

Blake needs to just be Blake. OU’s only lost twice with him on the floor this year (you’ll see this meme repeated ad nauseum on TaW, so humor the lazy writer), neither of those games played in the state of Oklahoma. OSU simply does not have an inside presence that can do anything with him and it showed on their home floor earlier this year when he went for 26 and 19 (three more than the Pokes got all game) in an 8-point win.

So, we know what OSU will try to do in order to neutralize OU’s superior halfcourt game: put on a full-court press like Bernie Madoff at a south Florida retirement center. OU turned the ball over 23 times in Stillwater. The Sooners gave the ball up 21 times at Missouri the other night. They cannot be that sloppy with the ball against a team as good at forcing turnovers as OSU. Working in OU’s favor is that Capel likes to have Blake bring the ball up the floor a lot of times. That will definitely be an advantage over OSU’s four-guard trapping as the big man can throw right over them.

What’s changed from then to now? OU’s lost three of four (two of those with Blake watching /meme) and OSU is riding a six game winning streak, including convincing wins over Texas and Kansas State. James Anderson is averaging 24 points over the past seven games, including two games of 30 or more. Considering that Crocker’s defense on him will be to break the wrong direction, then flap his sleeves in hopes that the vortex will slow his man down, this is a mismatch in favor of OSU.

The Pokes’ four-guard offense could also test OU’s dysfunctional backcourt. If AJ and Willie can quit comparing manhood sizes for a couple of hours and play like they were just a couple of weeks ago, they can neutralize OSU’s quick, slashing scorers. In the past two games, Warren has 7 more points than I do, on 3-11 shooting. AJ’s in an even bigger slump, shooting 30 percent from the field while averaging just under 7 ppg over the last 7 games. What got OU to 25-1 was their inside-outside game with the long-range sharpshooting from AJ and the always-reliable shooting and slashing from Willie distracting from The Terminator down low. Simply put, if AJ and Willie can’t figure it out in a hurry (read: immediately), OU’s chances of a deep tournament run are in serious jeopardy.

This is just too freaking cool. The guys at Atomic Teeth have put together an interactive spreadsheet that allows you to plug in the various scenarios to predict Big 12 tournament seeding.

Here are some of the scenarios I ran:

• Obviously if OU wins out, they’re the #1 seed. It’s very possible that could happen, although games at Austin, Kansas in Norman two days later, and at Columbia are still looming. The Sooners can go 1-2 and still get the #1 seed, as long as those two losses are on the road and they hold serve at home. Basically, OU cannot lose to Kansas and get the #1 seed without help (Kansas losing again to, say, Missouri).
• Likewise, if Kansas wins out, they get the #1 seed, putting OU on the Missouri side of the bracket. Kansas plays four out of its last five at home, the one exception of course is their game in Norman. I think KU will handle UT at the Phog, so the Hawks basically have a two-game season: Mizzou and OU.
• Here’s where things get a little interesting. Mizzou can get the #1 seed if OU loses to both them and Kansas. In that scenario, the Sooners would fall to the #3 seed and likely meet Kansas on Saturday. Just like OU and Kansas, if Mizzou wins out, they’re the #1 seed.
• Barring a major collapse, UT will end up as the 4 seed, on the same side of the bracket as Oklahoma. Texas has two steep hills to climb with OU in Austin this weekend, then having to go to Lawrence on March 7. They can drop those two games, win out and still be 11-5 10-6 in the conference, which would put them solidly in the 4 slot. Now, say something completely bizarre happens like a Russian sattelite meteor hits Austin and the Longhorns run the table. That would put them on the opposite side of the bracket as OU (provided OU beat everybody except Texas, and Missouri won at Lawrence). However, if UT wins out and OU loses just once (to UT), UT’s still the 4 seed if Kansas beats Mizzou, meaning they’ll have to deal with Blake Griffin on Saturday.
• I didn’t run any scenarios for OSU because, frankly, I didn’t care. Knock yourselves out.