1)
Baylor
Bears (15-0, 2-0)
There is no question or argument
for any other team to sit atop the very first Big 12 Men’s Basketball Power
Rankings of the season.
Scott Drew, who is in his ninth
season as the head coach, has taken the Baylor men’s basketball program to new
heights that have never before been reached by the Bears.
With a lineup with at least a
couple NBA draft picks in it, the Bears have rolled through non-conference and
now two games in conference to an undefeated start and a No. 4 ranking in the
Associated Press Poll.
In the first week of Big 12 play,
the Bears were tested at home and on the road, but were able to pull out
victories in both.
Baylor took down Texas A&M and
Texas Tech this week to open conference play and won both games by nine points
and 13 points, respectively.
Perry Jones III and Pierre Jackson
led the team in scoring, Jones had 14 against the Aggies and Jackson had 19
against the Red Raiders.
Baylor gets Kansas State and
Oklahoma State this week.
2)
Kansas
Jayhawks (12-3, 2-0)
The Jayhawks are once again off to
another hot start with their only losses coming to Duke, Kentucky and Davidson,
two of three, which currently sit in the Top 5 in the AP Poll and USA
Today/ESPN Coaches Poll.
Kansas currently sits No. 4/5 in
the polls and will more than likely move up this week following wins against
Kansas State and Oklahoma.
Junior Travis Releford has been
leading the way for the Jayhawks, in the last three
games he has scored 58 points and grabbed 21 rebounds. In Kansas’ win against
Oklahoma Releford finished with a career-high 28 points.
Kansas takes travels to Lubbock
this week to take on Texas Tech and then return home to take on a surprise team
in Iowa State.
3)
Iowa
State (12-3, 2-0)
Iowa State has been one of the
biggest surprises of the season so far along with Missouri, who comes in at No.4 in the Power Rankings this week.
The Cyclones enter this week
coming off wins against Texas and Texas A&M, which snapped a 10-game losing
streak in Big 12 road games.
In the tenure of Frank Hoiberg that win marked the first road win in Big 12 play,
while the 24-point victory marked the largest margin of victory in a Big 12
road game.
Royce White, a junior at Iowa
State, recorded
only the fourth triple-double in program history with 10 points, 18 rebounds
and 10 assists. It marked the 12th triple-double in Big 12 history.
The Cyclones have a tough week
ahead in having to take on Missouri at home then traveling to Kansas to take on
Bill Self and the tough Jayhawks.
4)
Kansas
State (12-2, 1-1)
Frank Martin has his Wildcats in
the Top 5 of the Power Rankings this week, but that might change this week with
a tough slate with Baylor and Oklahoma on tab for Kansas State.
Now this past week on Saturday,
Kansas State did hand No. 7/6 Missouri its first loss of the season after
losing their Big 12 opener to by 18 points to Kansas.
With the win against the Tigers it
marked the 1,500th win in program history and was Martin’s 18th
win against a ranked opponent and sixth against a team in the Top 10.
Rodney McGruder
has been key to Kansas State’s success as he has led the Wildcats in scoring
for four straight games and dropped 20 against the Tigers. In the past four
games McGruder has scored 77 points.
The Wildcats get back to Big 12
play this week taking on the No. 4 Baylor Bears and struggling Sooners.
5)
Missouri
(14-1, 1-1)
People might wonder why Missouri
sits in the middle of the pack right now, but it is mainly for the fact that,
there is no telling if the Tigers will be able to hang with the best in the Big
12 like a Kansas, or Baylor down the road.
The Tigers had one of the best
starts in Big 12 play, joining Baylor, as the only squads to enter Big 12 play
undefeated.
A senior leads the way for the
Tigers as Marcus Denmon scored 17 points against the
Wildcats to lead the team, and has scored 56 points in the past three games.
The Tigers will continue to be
tested as the season carries on and this week take on Iowa State and Texas.
6)
Texas
(11-4, 1-1)
The University of Texas, which has
been known in the past for making the tournaments and making marches towards
the Sweet Sixteen and sometimes even farther, but might be harder this season.
Texas is coming off an opening
week of conference play with a road loss to Iowa State and a
home win against Oklahoma State.
Freshman Myck
Kabongo led the Longhorns with 15 points against the
Cowboys and is not afraid of feeding his teammates the ball as he has five or
more assists in nine games this season and ranks second in the Big 12 in
assists with 82 this season.
The Longhorns will look to get
their second straight home conference win of the season this week against Texas
A&M before traveling to Columbia to take on the surprise Missouri Tigers.
7)
Oklahoma
(10-4, 0-2)
The Sooners have struggled of late
losing three of their last five games and are 6-4 in their last 10.
Oklahoma opened Big 12 play with
losses to two Top 25 teams, Missouri and Kansas, and now go into week two of
league play looking to notch its first conference win of the 2011-2012
campaign.
Despite not getting a win thus far
in conference play, the Sooners have been very good in the rebounding category
outrebounding teams by a margin of 7.9 so far this season. Sooners have
outrebounded 11 of 14 opponents this season.
If the Sooners want to get rid of
that goose egg in the win column of their Big 12 record they will have to take
down either Oklahoma State or Kansas State.
8)
Oklahoma
State (8-7, 1-1)
The Cowboys were able to take down
the Red Raiders in their home opener of Big 12 play, but then went on the road
and fell to Texas down in Austin on Saturday.
Oklahoma State had a rough
non-conference schedule as the Cowboys did suffer a three-game losing skid to
Pittsburgh, New Mexico and Alabama.
Now opponents might be beating the
Cowboys, but not from behind the arc. Oklahoma State is holding opponents to
29.1 percent shooting from 3-point range, and have allowed more than five
three-pointers in a single game just six times this season.
The Cowboys battle in-state rival
Oklahoma and then travel to Waco to take on the Baylor Bears.
9)
Texas
A&M (9-5, 0-2)
The Aggies have not been a force
to be reckoned with so far this season and also thus far in Big 12 play,
dropping their first two games of league play.
Texas A&M fell to Baylor and
Iowa State this past week, which Baylor is No.4 in the country and Iowa State,
which will more than likely break into the Top 25 this week.
With the loss to the Cyclones,
that snapped a five-game winning streak in Big 12 home openers for the Aggies.
Now Texas A&M didn’t start off
this bad, as the Aggies started the season 8-1 before losing their last four of
five games including the two Big 12 games.
Texas A&M will try and figure
out what’s been going wrong this week and get back to the winning ways against
Texas and Texas Tech.
10)
Texas
Tech (7-7, 0-2)
Now the Red Raiders have a new
coach and a bunch of new players this season and the inexperience of the
players is showing.
The Red Raiders didn’t have a bad
non-conference schedule finished 7-5 and rattling off two straight wins heading
into conference play.
Tech started Big 12 play on the
road and fell to Oklahoma State, but had freshman Jordan Tolbert go off for 13
points and 13 rebounds.
Tolbert leads the team in scoring
with 14.8 points per game, but only went for nine points against Baylor before
fouling out with one minute and 26 seconds left in the game. That performance
snapped a seven game streak of double-digit point performances.
With the loss to Baylor at home
73-60, after trailing at the half by only one, dropped Tech to 7-7.
Now Gillispie has to figure out
what has not been working before the nationally ranked Kansas Jayhawks rolled
into the Hub City.
After playing Kansas on Wednesday,
Gillispie returns to a place he knows very well since he held his first Big 12
head coaching job there – Texas A&M.
The Red Raiders and Aggies clash
on Saturday in College Station to mark the first time Gillispie returns to his
old school.