Missouri Beats Baylor, Kansas Beats Texas

#5 Missouri 89, #3 Baylor 88
This was a wild game played at a frenetic pace, even if it was a bit sloppy (37 combined turnovers). At 77 possessions, this was the fastest-paced game Mizzou has played all season, and one possession short of the fastest-paced game Baylor has played. Ricardo Ratliffe had 27 points on 11-for-14 shooting, but he is a player who creates little of his own offense. So much of scoring comes off layups/dunks set up by the Baylor guards. And Flip Pressey was the star in this game, scoring 18 points with 7 assists and 6 steals. Baylor's Pierre Jackson had an excellent game in his own right (20 points, 15 assists), with many of those assists setting up Quincy Miller, who had a career-high 29 points.

Baylor is 17-2, though they've lost their last two games. I wouldn't say that it's panic time seeing as how both losses came to excellent teams (the other loss was to Kansas), but they do have clear deficiencies that need to be fixed if they're going to be a Final Four contender. The biggest, of course, being defensive rebounding. With their athletes, there's no excuse to be so bad at defensive rebounding. It's all about discipline. Their upcoming schedule eases up a little, though. They'll play at Oklahoma on Tuesday and then at home against Texas.

This was a statement win for Missouri, for sure. While I think that Kansas has been the best Big 12 team so far, I think it's fair to say that Missouri has been second best. Here is the Big 12 ranked by PPP margin:

+0.26 Kansas
+0.20 Missouri
+0.12 Baylor
+0.03 Iowa State
-0.02 Texas
-0.05 Kansas State
-0.09 Oklahoma State
-0.12 Oklahoma
-0.15 Texas A&M
-0.22 Texas Tech.

For Mizzou, those two games upcoming against Kansas are looming. They'll get Kansas at home on February 4th, and then will head to Kansas for a game on February 25th. Their next game will be on Wednesday at Oklahoma State.

#7 Kansas 69, Texas 66
Sometimes it feels like Texas plays best when Rick Barnes gets out of the way. Early in this game the team looked very confused, like they were over-thinking it. Kansas opened up an early 15 point lead. But as the game went along, Texas just started playing basketball - guys were making their own plays and breaking free of the system. And this Texas team has some flat-out scorers, none better than J'Covan Brown (24 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds here). A lot of credit also has to go to Clint Chapman, whose 15 points and 9 rebounds don't tell how important he was in the paint, particularly on defense (he had 4 blocks).

There's a lot of talk about "good" Tyshawn Taylor and "bad" Tyshawn Taylor because of how inconsistent he can be. But if that's true then they had "good" Tyshawn Taylor here. He scored 22 points on 7-for-13 shooting and led the Jayhawks with four assists. Jeff Withey also gave the team a lot of good minutes, scoring 12 points by getting to the line nine times.

This is the 7th loss Texas has had this season, and all but one have been close in the final couple of minutes. You would think that with a cold-blooded assassin like J'Covan Brown they'd actually be a "clutch" team, though obviously they're very young overall. Still, I think it would be a huge mistake to count out this team. Every year we see teams that struggle with their won/loss record early in the season and turn it on in February and March, and it's hard to think of a team that's a better candidate for that profile than this year's Texas Longhorns. They have an important home game coming up on Tuesday against Iowa State. A loss there would drop them to 2-5 in Big 12 play with a road game at Baylor looming.

Kansas moves to 5-0 in Big 12 play with this win, and they've dominated for the most part (as I said higher up in this post, they're outscoring opponents by a mind-boggling 0.26 PPP). But that said, their conference schedule so far has been soft, and it's going to get harder as we move into February. They play Texas A&M next, on Monday. In February, however, they'll have to play a home-and-home with Missouri and also will head to Baylor and Kansas State.

West Virginia 77, Cincinnati 74, OT
This was a very emotional and hard-fought game. Neither team could open up a big lead at any point. It's always a bit meaningless to try to draw large conclusions from a game like this, where either team could won if a few extra breaks had gone their way. If there's one thing that stood out to me it's that West Virginia managed to beat a quality team like Cincy despite a horrific performance from Truck Bryant, who finished 2-for-16 from the field and also committed a terrible turnover late in the game that gave Cincy a final chance - with the ball with 20 seconds to go he tried to push it up the floor instead of just standing in place and getting fouled, and he turned it over.

From Cincinnati's perspective, I'm wondering why Sean Kilpatrick doesn't get more of the ball early in games. Late, he's always the one taking and making the biggest shots, yet he never is a big part of the offense before the final minutes. In regulation he only took 9 shots and had 1 assist. But even with this loss, Cincinnati is still 5-2 in Big East play with a home game coming up against Syracuse on Monday, in a game where Fab Melo will not be playing because of (reportedly) academic issues. They have wins over Georgetown, UConn and Pittsburgh, along with bad losses to Presbyterian and St. John's. They'd be in the NCAA Tournament if the season ended now, though not with a huge margin of error. I think that they need to get to 10-8 in conference play and then need to win a game in the Big East tournament to get into the NCAA Tournament.

This win moves West Virginia to 5-2 as well. They have victories over Georgetown, Kansas State and now Cincinnati, with a bad loss to Kent State. They'd be in better position than Cincinnati if they finish 9-9 in Big East play, but I think a 9-9 West Virginia team would still enter the Big East tournament with work left to do. That said, looking at their remaining schedule, it's hard to see West Virginia winning fewer than 11 games. I think they'll be in the Field of 68 with plenty of room to spare. Their next game will be Wednesday at St. John's.