Kansas fans are still smiling about Andrew Wiggins’ decision to attend the school. In this edition, I explore how the rest of the Big 12 will look in 2012-13.

For a description of the model that generated these rankings click here.

For an explanation of column headings click here.

Kansas: As I noted on Twitter, if you think Kansas should have a better projection, you may be right. The historic data may not give us an accurate read on Andrew Wiggins. If he is the best high school prospect since LeBron James, that literally means there hasn’t been a comparable freshman in my data. On the other hand, if we can learn something from past freshman phenoms, the lesson is to be careful. In 2010, pundits everywhere claimed that Harrison Barnes was the No. 1 player in the country and one of the greatest prospects on the planet. Then Barnes had such a dreadful freshman season that he stuck around for his sophomore year. And even if Wiggins is great, on a young team with an entirely new starting lineup, there will likely be a few hiccups.

Oklahoma St.: You know your team is headed in the right direction when this is one of your top off-season questions:

Can JUCO center Gary Gaskins replace what Philip Jurick gave Oklahoma St. last year? Jurick wasn’t much of an offensive player, and he was in foul trouble way too often, but he did provide some nice size, shot-blocking, and rebounding when he was on the court.

Yes, the Cowboys return 93% of their offensive possessions on a team that almost won the Big 12 last season. With Markel Brown throwing down more windmill dunks, LeBryan Nash hopefully maturing into his high potential, Michael Cobbins continuing to dominate the paint, and All-American candidate Marcus Smart returning to school, the future is bright.

The only negative piece of news I can find is this. ESPN dropped recruit Detrick Mostella out of its Top 100. (I’m still counting him as a Top 100 recruit until the final consensus rankings are out.)

Baylor: I provided a more detailed summary of Baylor’s lineup last week, but here are a few more thoughts: Losing LJ Rose and Deuce Bello is not a big deal. They had ORtgs of 69 and 86 last year. In fact, Baylor actually moved up from 25th to 24th in my model with the announcement that Rose is gone. He won’t be wasting a handful of possessions in meaningless games this year. And with the recent news that Denver’s Royce O’Neale will be transferring to join the team, Baylor could move even higher. (I want to hear more confirmation that O’Neale will be eligible immediately before I move him into the lineup.)

Iowa St.: Fred Hoiberg just refuses to have a rebuilding year. He has added four JUCO players this off-season. By bringing in transfers three years in a row, he has ensured he has enough veterans to compete each season.

Part of me thinks this is because he is hoping to jump to the NBA. Hoiberg doesn’t want a down-season to wreck his reputation. But if the quick fixes keep working, it is hard to argue with the strategy.

The only real question mark is at PG where freshman Monte Morris has been rising up the recruiting ranks, but still isn’t high enough to be a guaranteed star. Still, with all those JUCO players supporting Georges Niang, Melvin Ejim, and Top 100 prospect Matt Thomas, this team should finish in the top half of the Big 12.

West Virginia: Right now I have West Virginia as the 45th best team in the nation, which would put them squarely on the bubble. But I have complete confidence that Bob Huggins will be back in the tournament. And it isn’t just based on his history of winning. The roster turnover for West Virginia is ideal. Deniz Kilicli, Jabarie Hinds, and Dominque Rutledge had ORtgs of 92, 86, and 84 last year. They were the three least efficient players in the West Virginia lineup. And their departure should hasten the improvement in the West Virginia offense.

I will never understand why Bob Huggins felt so compelled to build his offense around Kilicli. He may have been big and bearded, but he was a poor rebounder, poor finisher, and he had bad hands. Trusting Kilicli was one of Bob Huggins worst decisions at West Virginia.

But Huggins refuses to have another team that lacks interior strength. Huggins is bringing in Top 50 recruit Devin Williams in the paint, two JUCO paint players, and three more freshman forwards. The message is pretty simple. Bob Huggins is tired of his post-play being a liability.

Texas and Kansas St.: I stared at this for awhile, because it surprised me that Texas has a better defensive projection than Kansas St. The bottom line is that the teams had equivalent defenses last year, the coaches have almost identical historical defensive performance (Rick Barnes is seriously under-rated as a defensive coach), and thus it came down to two other factors. First, Texas has more Top 100 recruits. Having athletic players helps on defense as well as offense. Second, Texas returns a larger percentage of its rotation, which should help with continuity.

Still, I suspect Bruce Weber will do even better defensively than what you see here. And he’ll need to given what Kansas St. loses. The Wildcats return just 44 percent of their possessions from last season, and with no elite recruits coming in and no high potential players on the roster, the offense is simply going to take a huge step back.

The Kansas St. player most likely to break out is probably Thomas Gipson. He has been a relatively efficient aggressive player his whole career, and with more playing time, his PPG and RPG numbers should skyrocket.

Shane Southwell and Will Spradling are also quality players, but both have flags that make the model question whether they can become stars. For Southwell, there is a concern whether last year’s hot three point shooting will be sustainable. Southwell suddenly jumped from being a guy who couldn’t buy a three pointer to a 44 percent three point shooter last year, and there may be some regression. And Spradling was super-efficient, but rarely shot. It isn’t clear whether Spradling can maintain his efficiency while taking a larger role on the team.

But even if the Kansas St. offense falls off dramatically, the Texas offense still looks worse on paper. Returning Top 100 recruits Cameron Ridley, Prince Ibeh, Javan Felix, and Jonathan Holmes should make some progress. But even if they do, this still won’t be a good offensive team.

Oklahoma: The Big 12 is really becoming the land of JUCO transfers this year. When Amath M’Baye unexpectedly declared for the draft, Lon Kruger realized he would be starting over in the paint and brought in three JUCO big men to try to fill the void. But I’m surprised he didn’t bring in a JUCO transfer at the PG position. With Sam Grooms departing, there is a real empty spot at that position too. Isaiah Cousins has the highest assist rate of any returning guard, but he struggled with turnovers. And that probably means that unranked freshman Jordan Woodard will be asked to run the show. Without high potential players in the paint or at the PG spot, there just isn’t a lot of upside for this team. The model projects them to win five less conference games than a year ago.

Texas Tech: I stared at the Texas Tech projection for awhile because it really doesn’t make sense to me. Certainly, I expect Tubby Smith to turn Texas Tech’s defense around. For Texas Tech’s defense to improve to 102.7 seems like a cakewalk. But I was puzzled that the model is so optimistic about Texas Tech’s offense. Basically, this is a case of addition by subtraction. The only key player Texas Tech loses is Josh Gray.* And Gray used way too many possessions (15 of 80 from 3) for an inefficient player (81 ORtg) while running the point for the Red Raiders. Of course backup PG Daylen Robinson wasn’t any better (70 ORtg). And you can see why Tubby Smith’s first move at Texass Tech was to go sign a JUCO PG in Robert Turner. Turner may not have major upside, but his job should simply be to get the ball to the other players and stop wasting possessions. Jaye Crocket, Jordan Tolbert, Dejan Kravic, and Dusty Hannahs may not have been good players, but they were average. And just making sure the team gets an average shot each possession will be a serious upgrade from last season.

Of course, to some degree the model may be falling for the “bad shot fallacy.” I.e., when a team runs its offense and can’t get a good shot, the PG often ends up jacking up threes as the shot-clock expires. Josh Gray wasn’t the only bad player on the team last year. But with a new coach and most players back, some upward trajectory is certainly possible.

*Ty Nurse is also gone but he almost never shot the basketball.

TCU: It feels like TCU should be making a bigger move in the right direction. Kyan Anderson was a remarkably solid PG on a dreadful offensive team. Devonta Abron looks like he might be a legitimate Big 12 post player. Meanwhile transfer Karviar Shepherd is the first consensus Top 100 freshman to attend TCU since at least 2000. But TCU was an absolutely dreadful D1 team last year. And with only 44% of the teams minutes returning, the Horned Frogs will be breaking in a bunch of new unranked players again next year. When transfer Trey Ziegler joins the team in 2014-2015, there might be some real upward mobility. Until then expect more of the same.

New Year, New Start

How D1 Transfers Have Performed So Far

A number of high profile transfers have become eligible over the last few weeks.

Jabari Brown has joined Missouri and his 14.7 PPG is helping mediate the loss of Michael Dixon.

Sidiki Johnson is now eligible at Providence. Oddly his debut has coincided with two of Providence’s worst games of the season, losses to Boston College and Brown.

And Khem Birch has finally joined the UNLV active roster.

It is far too early to evaluate these players, but for the D1 transfers that debuted in November, we’ve already collected a fair amount of data. Today I look at which transfers are performing at a high level, and which transfers have failed to crack the rotation.

With hundreds of D1 transfers, I will not have time to examine them all in this edition, but I’m going to focus on transfers into high major programs, former Top 100 recruits out of high school, and a few other small conference players who have caught my eye.

Let’s start with some of the super transfer teams. Missouri forward Laurence Bowers has overshadowed Alex Oriakhi this season, but by averaging 10 PPG and grabbing 20% of the available defensive rebounds, Oriakhi has certainly been a key cog for the Tigers. Keion Bell was a high volume shooter at Pepperdine, but he no longer has to force bad shots at Missouri. While Bell’s PPG has been cut in half, Bell has become an efficient player with his new team.

Transfers who have gone from one BCS school to another have generally fared very well the last few years, but Kevin O’Neil continues to be offensive kryptonite. Neither JT Terrell or Ari Stewart have been able to play any better offensively in their new home. Their ORtgs of 82.8 and 70.5 are horrific. Eric Wise has been better. Much like Keion Bell, Wise has found efficiency through judicious shot selection.

For Utah, Aaron Dotson was a Top 100 player out of high school and he originally played for LSU. Thus Dotson was earning a lot of press heading into this season. But of all of Utah’s D1 transfers, Dotson has easily been the worst.

At Boston College, Matt Humphrey was a starter and key contributor. At West Virginia, he is getting lost in the shuffle. Perhaps he got tired of the losing at BC, but right now it doesn’t seem like his transfer has worked out.

Gene Teague has been a huge surprise for Seton Hall. The former Southern Illinois center is turning the ball over less often, and that has allowed the aggressive low-post player to become an incredibly dangerous offensive weapon.

Oregon St. recently lost to Towson and while that was an embarrassing loss, I think it is important to note that this is not the same Towson team that won only one game last year. Jerrelle Benimon, Mike Burwell and Bilal Dixon all played in the Big East previously, and while none of them were obvious stars, all three have blossomed and raised their level of play at Towson.

Focusing now on individuals, the transfers I was most interested in watching this fall were mostly at the point guard position.

UCLA’s Larry Drew may not be scoring much, but he has become the ideal passer for Ben Howland’s system.

Arizona’s Mark Lyons has turned the ball over more often, but his scoring (particularly his ability to drive to the basket late in the game) has kept his ORtg above 110.

Other transfers point guards have not fared as well. Korie Lucious is shooting the ball better at Iowa St., but his turnovers are up which has negated his efficiency.

Ryan Harrow has finally earned John Calipari’s trust and he played major minutes in the loss at Louisville, but he is off to a much slower start than expected.

And Tavon Sledge has had the unenviable task of trying to replace Scott Machado at Iona. Sledge hasn’t been horrible, but he hasn’t quite been a superstar transfer either.

Two players whose efficiency hasn’t been perfect, but who probably do deserve more praise are Penn St.’s DJ Newbill and Illinois-Chicago’s Josh Crittle. DJ Newbill wasn’t expecting to be the full-time point-guard for Penn St., but with Tim Frazier going down to injury, Newbill has elevated his game.

Despite posting point guard like stats, Crittle is actually a 6'9" forward, but his passing and scoring has helped add to UIC’s depth. The Flames started the season 9-1 before losing their last three games.

Need some physical rebounding inside, the next group of transfers has delivered that. Let’s start with a lesson about two players who were not very efficient with their former schools.

At Minnesota, Colton Iverson was nicknamed the human two-by-four because of his brutal physicality and lack of a polished scoring game. But suddenly Iverson is a star for Colorado St. His turnovers are down and his scoring is way up. 

On the other hand, Wally Judge didn’t mesh with Frank Martin at Kansas St. And now at Rutgers his turnover rate is at a career high. At one time Judge was considered to have more potential than Iverson, but Iverson is the player who has succeeded more in his new home.

The story of Allan Chaney returning to basketball after missing three seasons remains a touching one and he has done the job at High Point. But big man DeShawn Painter cannot be happy with his debut at Old Dominion. While Painter has been scoring efficiently and rebounding at a high rate, ODU is having one of the worst seasons of head coach Blaine Taylor’s career.

Valparaiso has a handful of transfers who have been little more than bench players, but with Indiana now near the top of the rankings, it is fun to recall the time when Bobby Capobianco was counted on to be a significant contributor for the Hoosiers.

Need some big time scorers? This next group of transfers has provided some scoring punch.

First, I have to laugh that the story in the offseason was that Rotnei Clarke might be the point-guard for Butler. His passing has improved, but Clarke will always be at his best as a perimeter scorer. Clarke is shooting 47 percent from three-point range this season.

Dez Wells on the other hand, was expected to be a primary off-guard for Maryland. But with Pe’Shon Howard’s continued turnover problems, Wells' passing has proven to be a nice asset.

Bryce Jones was a top 100 pick out of high school, and has always been capable of putting points on the board, but he has never been an efficient scorer. And on a deep and talented UNLV team, his low ORtg is a killer. But he played probably his best game of the season in the narrow loss against UNC, and his athleticism continues to earning him playing time.

Taran Buie’s 97.8 ORtg might be justifiable given his aggressive shooting (27% of possessions when on the floor), but I mainly included him in this table to remember how much more talent Buie could have had around him. UConn transfer Jamal Coombs-McDaniel was expected to be playing at Hofstra and Hawaii transfer Shaquille Stokes was supposed to be in the mix as well. But Coombs-McDaniel is out for the year with a knee injury and Shaquille Stokes was arrested and suspended. Not every transfer works out.

This next group of transfers has just kind of been there. None of these players has been terrible – they have all made their team’s rotations – but they don’t seem to be doing too much.

Sam McLaurin of Illinois is a huge puzzle. The forward has grabbed 14 percent of the offensive rebounds this year, but only 8 percent of the defensive rebounds for the Illini.

I think Luke Hancock is a bad fit at Louisville. He isn’t really a spot-up shooter; he’s actually a versatile wing player. But at Lousville, he isn’t a better driver than Peyton Siva or Russ Smith. And so Hancock never gets the ball in his hands. The result is that his free throw rate is at the lowest point of his career. I think he was a much better fit at George Mason where he would get the ball in an attacking position much more frequently.

And finally, we have a group of transfers who have been disappointing. These players haven’t really brought anything to the table, no passing, no rebounding, and no efficient scoring. Bo Barnes hasn’t even scored yet in 10 appearances. Barnes did start a few games as a freshman at Hawaii, so it wasn’t out of the question for him to do something this year.

And Trey Zeigler has looked nothing like a former Top 30 recruit out of high school. Clearly his DUI caused Jamie Dixon to lose trust in the versatile guard, but for Zeigler to be averaging one third of the PPG he averaged last year has to qualify as a major disappointment.

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Final exams are here in college basketball, making this the quiet period of the season. After the excitement of the Champions Classic, the Holiday Tournaments, and the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, college basketball must make it through a relatively boring stretch on the schedule.

The marquee game last week was supposed to be UCLA taking on Texas at Reliant Stadium in Houston. But with UCLA losing a bunch of early games (including blowing an 18-point lead against Cal Poly), and with Texas struggling (including a loss to Chaminade in Maui), this game had lost most of its luster. In fact, it lost so much luster, that less than 3000 fans showed up to watch a game being played in a dome stadium.

Fittingly, the game lived up to its billing. Texas turned the ball over possession after possession down the stretch allowing UCLA to come from behind at the end. But UCLA couldn’t make free throws that would seal the game. Then Texas air-balled a three at the buzzer that would have won the game. UCLA prevailed, but neither team was able to shake its reputation as a disappointment early in the year.

(Quick side note about Texas. The Longhorns' defense has actually been shockingly good this season. No team has a better eFG% defense at this point in the season than Texas, meaning the Longhorns are forcing teams to miss both their twos and threes at an impressive rate. Rick Barnes simply doesn’t get enough credit for his ability to teach defense. Unfortunately, without point guard Myck Kabongo, Texas’ offense has been dreadful. Only Sheldan McClellan and Julien Lewis have shown a consistent ability to put the ball in the basket this year, and the Longhorns other four Top 100 prospects out of high school have been nothing short of horrible, sporting ORtgs of 61 to 83. No team can win consistently when only two players have ORtgs over 100.)

But the beauty of college basketball is that even on a weekend with few marquee games, the plethora of games ensures there are always some fantastic finishes:

- UNLV’s Quintrell Thomas caught the ball under the basket and put back in a lay-up that gave UNLV a last-second win against California. Both teams will be likely be in the NCAA tournament this year, so it was an important win for both UNLV and the MWC. UNLV’s Mike Moser injured his elbow in the game, and that bears watching.

- Elsewhere, West Virginia handed Virginia Tech their first loss of the season on a Juwan Staten lay-up in the final seconds. West Virginia had high hopes for the elite transfer Staten, but his debut was an ugly 0-6 two turnover performance against Gonzaga. Fortunately Staten had bounced back, scoring in double figures the last four games and living at the free throw line. And against Virginia Tech, Staten drove the lane in the final seconds and hit a lay-up that proved to be the game-winner.

- Meanwhile, Purdue and Mississippi were reminded why major conference teams hate to play at mid-major venues. Purdue fell 47-44 at Eastern Michigan. This is not a great Eastern Michigan team, but with Eastern Michigan turning the ball over only four times, while Purdue turned the ball over 18 times, those 14 additional possessions made all the difference in the upset win. Meanwhile, Middle Tennessee’s Kerry Hammonds made a jumper in the final minute to break a tie and give Ole Miss its first loss of the season. Unlike Eastern Michigan, Middle Tennessee has been playing pretty good basketball this season, and this loss might not hurt quite so much come selection Sunday.

Other notes

- Illinois was back to making three-pointers in Saturday’s win over Gonzaga, sinking 11 in the win. With over 10 made threes per game, I am very curious whether this will continue in conference play.

- Last season, Florida St. had a scatterbrained resume of puzzling losses to bad teams and amazing wins against Top 10 teams. It was largely because of their one-sided play. When you play elite defense, all you need is for a few surprising shots to fall and you can beat an elite team. And when you have lousy offense, all you need is for your opponent to hit a few surprising shots and you can lose to anyone. Georgetown looks like that team this year. They lost to Indiana in OT and have thus far pulled out close wins against teams like Towson. Still, the Hoyas have some head-scratching games ahead, given their great defense and poor offense.

-Michigan’s Nik Stauskas continues to be way more athletic than I anticipated. When the Arkansas game tightened up near the 12 minute market of the second half, Stauskas had the ball at the wing and I thought a turnover was coming. Instead he shook his man, drove all the way to the edge of the free throw line, and banked home a long-layup. To me, it was a game-changing play.

Of course, I have already learned to love Illinois’ three-point shooting, Stauskas’s game, and Georgetown’s defense.  In fact, I wonder if sometimes the computers learn more from these December games than the media. We all know that Kansas is going to be the favorite in the Big 12 in conference play, and that Bill Self’s teams play lock down defense year-after-year. But with ugly games against teams like Chattanooga and San Jose St., Kansas was no longer looking like a Top 10 team in most computer rankings. That changed on Saturday with the Jayhawks 36 point thrashing of a solid Colorado team. I tend to struggle with what to say about a 36 point loss, but in the grand scheme of ranking teams, all these games provide important information.

The other takeaway from the Colorado-Kansas game is that regional rivalries don’t have to die when teams switch conferences. Missouri and Kansas might not play again, but if they do not, that is a dumb choice by the teams. It is not a necessity.

Undefeated but Overrated

As the number of undefeated teams dwindles (we are down to 14 after Sunday), columnists tend to write about which teams with strong starts are over-rated. But I hate that tone. Nobody honestly believes that Charlotte is an elite team after a 9-0 start. But why rain on the parade of a team that has exceeded expectations.

It is one thing to say that you don’t necessarily expect a team to keep it up. If a team is winning close games, it is reasonable to ask whether they will still have a strong season in conference play.

It is one thing to criticize strength-of-schedule and say you wish that an elite team had played more quality competition. For example, I wish Arizona would have scheduled a few more marquee games, because until they play Florida next weekend, I still have no feel for how good this team can be.

But I hate it when people criticize a team for doing what they are supposed to do and winning games. Wyoming is my favorite example. Larry Shyatt had a disappointing run as Clemson’s head coach, but after joining Billy Donovan’s staff and helping Florida win two national championships, he finally got a second chance with the Cowboys. In his first season, he completely turned Wyoming’s team around by emphasizing defense, and now in his second season, his team’s offense is starting to come around. Wyoming isn’t an elite team, but after they came from 18 down to beat Illinois St. and preserve their undefeated mark, they deserve praise, not criticism for an undefeated start.

Do December games matter if everyone is focused on the NFL?

The NBA wants you to think its regular season is extremely important. But when San Antonio can choose to rest four key players at the Miami Heat, that undermines the NBA’s credibility. Chuck Klosterman wrote a fantastic piece recently asking some key questions about whether San Antonio owed it to NBA fans to play its star players against the Heat.

The beauty of college basketball is you never have to ask those questions.

- Almost every player is young, and even with some teams now playing 40 games, the season is still relatively short. The number of key players debating whether to play through a nagging injury is relatively small.

- For most of these kids, this is the moment. Was Louisville’s Peyton Siva really going to complain about playing three games in three days in the Bahamas and not want to give it his all against Duke? Of course not. This season is his moment in the sun and he wants to take full advantage of it.

-Every game matters for selection Sunday. I’ve long said that there is no resting your starters in college basketball because nothing is ever clinched. With so many teams with similar resumes at the end of the year, every loss counts for seeding. In the NBA, if San Antonio drops a game against New Orleans in November, it probably won’t matter much to the team’s ultimate probability of winning a championship. But if UCLA drops a game to Cal Poly in November, it is a critical red-mark on the Bruins resume, and it might be the reason the Bruins don’t play in the regional round in Los Angeles in the Staples Center in March.

The Dreaded Early RPI

Even if the loss to Middle Tennessee (discussed above) doesn’t cost Ole Miss an NCAA tournament spot, the sum total of these wins and losses does matter for the conferences. And at this point, the SEC might have needed that win more than Ole Miss.

Through Saturday, the conference RPI standings were as follows:

At this point the SEC is sitting 8th among all conferences in terms of RPI rankings, and the plethora of bad losses by teams at the bottom of the conference is going to make it hard to earn quality wins in SEC play this year. And as bad a measure of team quality as the RPI may be, it is still a very strong predictor of NCAA selection.

Rob Dauster noticed it earlier this week, but even if the Pac-12 has lacked signature wins in the early season, because its teams are chalking up fewer head-scratching losses this preseason, winning Pac-12 games will mean something this year. Right now it looks like a team that goes 11-7 in Pac-12 will be in the discussion for an at-large bid, something you couldn’t say last season.

The bigger concern might be how many teams can make the tournament out of the Big 12. I thought the Big 12 might be the deepest conference in the country this year, but none of the Big 12’s bubble teams have been coming through. Kansas St., Iowa St., and West Virginia certainly don’t look like terrible teams based on their margin-of-victory so far this season, and Texas probably won’t be a terrible team in January and February (assuming Kabongo plays eventually). But none of those teams have done anything in their marquee games. The Big 12 might have eight legitimate teams eventually, but unless the conference has a stellar last few weeks of non-conference action, the league may be capped at four or five NCAA bids.

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