Big 12 Basketball Update & Power Rankings

December 18th Big 12 Basketball update

The Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M Aggies play a very interesting doubleheader Saturday in Houston at the Toyota Center.

The Longhorns start with Michigan St. at 1 p.m. The Aggies finish it with a 4 p.m. contest against LSU.

No. 5 Texas (9-1) and No. 22 Michigan State (7-2) have played some very interesting games over the last several years. The teams have split four meetings since 1999. The most notable was Texas’ 85-76 win in 2003 in the Midwest Regional Final in the NCAA tournament. The Longhorns went to the Final Four.

Last year in Detroit, the Spartans won, 78-72. Michigan State will be the fourth ranked opponent Texas has faced. Texas has also faced UCLA, Notre Dame and Villanova.

The Longhorns have been riding senior guard A.J. Abrams’ hot hand. He is averaging 28.5 points per game in his last four games and is shooting nearly 55 percent from 3-point range.

Abrams and teammate Damion James were named to the Naismith Trophy Watch List.

A&M (9-1) has quietly gone about its business with nice wins over Arizona and Alabama. The only hiccup was a loss to Tulsa. The Aggies have been receiving quality play from Josh Carter and Donald Sloan. The guard duo is averaging 14.5 and 12.5 points per game.

Second-year coach Mark Turgeon has continued to maintain the momentum that Billy Gillispie left behind. Should the Aggies get past the Tigers, the schedule is favorable enough for them to potentially take a 14-1 record into Big 12 play.

No Trees in Nebraska

Take a look at Nebraska’s roster this year. Not one player is listed with a height above 6-8. Technically, coach Doc Sadler has 14 guards on the roster and three forwards.

That means the Cornhuskers better be a good perimeter shooting team. They haven’t been great for the season at 43 percent but they have been pretty decent from 3-point range converting 38 percent. The biggest weapon has been Paul Velander who is at 50 percent for the season (21-42).

But that kind of roster doesn’t have a recipe for being long to contend for the Big 12 championship. As much as perimeter shooting is a factor, the inside game needs to provide some balance. No player is averaging more than 4.4 rebounds per game, but that kind of falls to coach Doc Sadler’s apparent philosophy of playing a bunch of kids.

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Notable

Texas Tech has been taking some sucker punches lately. The Red Raiders have suffered consecutive losses to Lamar and UTEP and now have to play New Mexico on Saturday. The Lobos and Red Raiders have traditionally played each other for the last 10 years….Kansas has an interesting next 13 days coming up. The Jayhaws, reeling from a 61-60 loss to UMass last week, play Temple on Saturday are at Arizona on Tuesday and then play Tennessee on Jan. 3. They are still missing juco transfer guard Mario Little with a broken left hand. It’s unknown if he will return this season….Baylor and Oklahoma State are the only teams in the Big 12 with five players averaging double figures.

Power Rankings

Oklahoma
Texas
Baylor
Kansas
Texas A&M
Missouri
Oklahoma State
Kansas State
Texas Tech
Iowa State
Colorado

By Kevin Lonnquist
Big 12 Fans Correspondant