Men's Hoop Blog: Living on the Edge
February 17, 2015 02:51 PM | General
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| Juwan Staten sinks this shot with 3.9 seconds left to give West Virginia a 62-61 victory over eighth-ranked Kansas Monday night in Morgantown. | |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Just ask West Virginia, which needed a last-second shot from Juwan Staten and a point-blank miss from Perry Ellis to defeat eighth-ranked Kansas 62-61 last night in Morgantown.
“Juwan made a great play,” says West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “I don’t know who else was down there, but whoever else was down there didn’t let it go in. They had a great play.”
“West Virginia has benefitted twice from that play this year,” added Kansas coach Bill Self. “We had it right there at one foot away and just didn’t get it.”
Huggins and Self know what they are talking about because something similar happened a month ago when the Mountaineers defeated the Horned Frogs in overtime.
If you recall, TCU got a late basket from Trey Zeigler and it appeared they were going to leave West Virginia with their first conference win of the year.
But freshman Daxter Miles alertly grabbed the basketball, threw it the length of the floor to Jevon Carter and he was fouled by Kyan Anderson as he was going to the basket with just 0.9 seconds left on the clock. Carter sank both free throws and the Mountaineers had an 86-85 victory over the ninth-place team in the conference.
Remove those two victories and West Virginia is 6-7 in league play instead of 8-5 - that’s how razor-thin the margins are these days for teams playing in the nation’s No. 1-rated basketball conference.
TCU, which is currently ½ game ahead of last-place Texas Tech in the league standings, is about four or five possessions away from being 6-6 instead of 2-10.
Oklahoma State, which was cruising along with three impressive wins over Texas, Kansas and Baylor, got punched in the nose three nights ago in Fort Worth.
Baylor, which looked like the Boston Celtics in Morgantown 10 days ago, has looked more like a Boston rec league team in its last two games at home against Oklahoma State and on the road at Kansas.
How about Kansas State, which lost five league games in a row after its 5-2 start and was left for dead after its 76-72 loss last Wednesday night against West Virginia in Morgantown?
Well, the Wildcats came back to life last Saturday afternoon by stunning Oklahoma at home. Oklahoma, like West Virginia, is 8-5 in conference play featuring a blowout loss to the Mountaineers on the road and a blowout win against the same Mountaineers at home.
Texas can look so good at times as it did earlier this year in routing WVU and then it can look so bad in double-digit defeats to Oklahoma and Baylor. Presently, the talented Longhorns are six up and six down in league play.
Iowa State, which played so great against West Virginia in Ames last Saturday afternoon, didn’t play so great earlier this year in Lubbock when the Cyclones lost by five to the worst team in the league.
Even Kansas, which is unbeatable at home, is not bullet proof on the road with only a .500 record in conference play away from friendly Phog Allen Field House following last night’s loss at West Virginia.
The Jayhawks still have the inside track on winning their 11th consecutive conference title (a truly amazing feat when you consider how they have done it with constant roster turnover) but Kansas still has some heavy lifting left to do before it can hoist another championship banner.
Kansas has TCU on Saturday (the Horned Frogs beat Kansas in Fort Worth two years ago), plays in-state rival Kansas State on February 23, faces Texas and West Virginia at home and then wraps up the regular season at Oklahoma.
If the Jayhawks can hold serve at home, which they have ever since their long streak began, they will likely earn their 11th straight Big 12 championship. That’s because the team immediately behind them in the conference standings, Iowa State, has four of its final six games away from Hilton Coliseum where the Cyclones have become just as unbeatable as Kansas is at home.
However, the two games Iowa State has at home won’t be layups, though – Baylor and Oklahoma.
If Texas doesn’t totally collapse and wins a couple more conference games the Longhorns will give the Big 12 an impressive 70 percent of its teams in this year’s NCAA tournament (West Virginia punched its ticket with last night’s win over Kansas).
That, folks, is one heck of a basketball conference.
I’m not sure right now the Big 12 has an elite team capable of making a run to the Final Four (that could change, of course), but the league has at least three really, really good teams, a handful of good ones, and no bad teams.
And that’s why getting through the Big 12 is like walking down a knife’s edge between two pools of fire. I know this, the Friday and Saturday sessions of this year's Big 12 basketball tournament are going to be some must-see basketball.
We'll see you in Kansas City in a couple of weeks.
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