Eight in a row and we’re all saved.

But first, what the hell is going on in the Big 12 (I refuse to use the official Big XII – it’s stupid)? I think conferences are always cyclical, but this is a bit different. The current state of the Big 12 is bad bad, and it's due to the bad management of key basketball programs.

Missouri is the big one. Once a cornerstone of the conference, Missouri has slipped to the bottom. No longer are they consistently ranked and in the NCAAs. Anyone who pays any attention to the league knows what has happened there in the past ten years, so I don’t feel like running down all the infractions and embarrassing waste of talent. Instead, I want to just look at what happened when Snyder was hired and Norm (was) retired. Of course, I haven’t actually spoken to anyone involved so this is pure conjecture.

I think the Roy Williams hire and his success led to the disaster that was the Snyder era. This story from SI in 1999 sums up the attitude of the team when Snyder was hired and really shows what was wrong from the start. First, Snyder was 32 and this was his first head job. Williams was successful in his first head job, but his path was very different from Snyder’s. Williams was not a Carolina great as a player, he started at the bottom at Carolina and worked a dozen years or so there as a coach with other talented assistants and of course Dean Smith, who has more wins than any other coach in the history of college basketball (and you KU fans that "hate" Smith for the Roy stuff, you are RETARDED, and that's all I'm saying about that for now). Snyder was a hotshot player for Duke and got that ex-player spot, which I think is probably more often going to be undeserved than spots earned by coaches who weren't stars as players.

To step into Mizzou with the idea that you're going to bring hot shot recruits and uptempo basketball is stupid. First, a young unproven coach is not going to bring enough talent into Mizzou to make up for not playing any defense. Snyder got talent for sure, but not that much. You're simply not going to go into Allen and outrun Roy, or take soft undisciplined teams into Okie State or OU or many places and win. We all saw what happened: high expectations, no defense, lots of 3s, and 6th place finishes.

K-State is the other problem. Their athletic department has done nothing but run the basketball program down in some misguided view that football "dominance" requires ignoring the other sports. Running off Dana Altman was bad, hiring Tom Asbury and Woolridge was worse and worser.

At OSU it's unclear what's happening. Eddie Sutton is slightly crazy, but his teams produced, actually getting to some Final 4s and often being highly ranked. My feeling is that it's a mistake to hand the team to son and heir-apparent Sean Sutton, who's proven nothing. I think he should've gotten a head job somewhere (Oral Roberts or Tulsa perhaps, though I don't know their coaching situations over the past 5 years) and gained some seasoning.

As for the rest of the league, Tech sold their souls for a few NCAA tournament appearances, Patton does as well as he can there in Boulder (but he's nuts as well), Wayne Morgan is a disaster. I think A&M with Billy Gillipsie and Baylor with Scott Drew have the best young coaches. Barnes is an ass, but obviously knows what he's doing. And Self's doing fine.

The lesson? The Big 12 stinks, and it's all Mizzou and KSU's fault.

But to the game last night. Hard to watch for sure. OSU is in a bit of disarray, but has some talent. Looked very physical as well. Impressive to watch Julian Wright get better and better. The guys always play with incredible enthusiasm; last night they kept their cool and knew their layups would eventually start falling.

Seriously though, this team has to value the ball more. They throw the ball away all the DAGGUM TIME. I think the problem is that these Big 12 teams are so bad they're not being punished for it, and they're not learning to value every possession. The one thing that helps is Julian and Mario throw high-risk/high-reward passes, so they're either TOs or we get an easy bucket. I don't know what the math is, but I gotta think that more shots and lower TOs, even if we shot a lower percentage, would mean a more productive offense. Instead of 20+ turnovers, if we could be around 15 then that's an extra 5-6-7 shots a game at least. Plus, it takes away the opponent's transition game as there won't be as many run-outs off of Mario's lob passes off the shot clock.

I think the NCAAs is a toss-up, of course. It's all match-ups - if we get a west coast team like gonzaga or UCLA as the higher seed I think Elite 8. If we get a Big East team we're done. West Virginia, G-Town, Nova, and of course UCONN, would all kill us, they're just way too tough to turn the ball over against 70 times like we like to and win. We go 4-5 minutes without scoring and turning over the ball 5 times they'll be up by 20 on us. Of course, this would be in the Sweet Sixteen, where a loss wouldn't be all that surprising or disappointing.

Teams playing well right now: Ohio State, Tennessee, North Carolina, the above Big
East teams, Duke, UT.
Unkowns: Zags, Memphis, George Washington, Florida.
Overated: PAC 10, OU, Illinois, Mich. State.
Done: Mike Davis and Indiana.