What could have been

KU beats KSU in Manhattan to ensure staying atop the league until at least the next iteration.

Tuesday Baylor could have made some noise and added some cushion for KU against OU with a much to be valued road win in Norman, but once again blew a great opportunity late and allowed OU to escape at home.

WVU went to Ames and ran into a cyclone, giving KU another game edge over the Mountaineers.

Texas and its apparently overrated coach rolled into Lubbock and had the win in its grasp after coming back from 13 down in the second half to have a 4 point lead with 2:33 to go. Even after Matt Coleman, a 74% FT shooter, misses 3 FTs after being fouled shooting a trey, Texas still bumped its lead to 5 points with 1:25 to go in regulation. But poor execution in the last 1:25, starting with Kerwin Roach II (65% FT) missing what would have been the second and game winning free throw with the clock stopped at 1:25, cost them the game. It should have cost them the game in regulation, but Tech’s Keenan Evans (83%) made the game tying but missed the game winning FT at :03 in regulation. And with Texas’ Mamba fouled out (on a very egregious call) at the end of regulation, Tech never trailed again in the game, with Keenan hitting the tie-breaking game winner as time ran out in OT.

Home court won out in 3 of this week’s 5 games (the exceptions being KU winning in Manhattan and TCU winning in Stillwater), but easily could have been 1-4 these past three days if Drew and Shaka were better coaches. Both their teams blew golden opportunities for a highly valued road win. Happening once or twice would be one thing, but as these teams do this consistently, it really does come back to the coaching IMO.

Would have been great — and was possible — for KU to have a 2 game lead over its closest competition with the season half over. Instead Tech and OU hang tough and stay just a game out of first.

Of course, if KU wins out it doesn’t matter what any other teams do.

But, since the odds of that happening aren’t great, it would be nice to get a little help from the other members of what is supposedly the toughest conference in the country.

JRhawk wrote: HE - thanks for the TT-UT game summary - I saw that Evans missed the last ft in regulation.
Re the "supposedly toughest conference in the country", I think that was addressed by the SEC challenge, even without the SEC leading Auburn in the mix.

Your welcome... and word.

Am I correct that the Big 12’s dominance in the Big 12/SEC Challenge has disappeared in conjunction with the games being moved to later in the season? Seems to be the case to me.