The Big 12 Conference men’s basketball tournament has concluded on Sunday afternoons the past 10 years, the last strand of net cut by the winning team’s players an hour or so before the NCAA Tournament selection show.
Things may not be so hectic for conference tourney finalists in the future.
League Commissioner Kevin Weiberg indicated Thursday he had formed a task force to look into changing dates of the tourney so title games aren’t played on Sunday, with first-round NCAA games looming as soon as the following Thursday.
“We will have a better sense of the format by January 2007 so that we can move forward with our television partners,” Weiberg said at the conclusion of the Big 12 spring meetings in Colorado Springs, Colo.
KU coach Bill Self, who attended the meetings, said he was all for giving the league’s championship-game participants an extra day of rest before the all-important NCAAs.
“I think it would be good (to change to Saturday) unless our television exposure gets a lot better,” Self said Thursday night. “There are some disadvantages for teams that play (on Sunday). Obviously, playing on Sunday didn’t help us this past year.”
The Jayhawks, who beat Texas in the title game, 80-68, on Sunday, March 12, in Dallas, fell to Bradley five days later in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Detroit.
¢ What kind of rule is this?: Gregg Doyel of cbssportsline.com has sparked a national discussion of what he this week called a “new, bizarre NCAA rule that will go down as one of the worst ideas in recent college sports history – a rule that could make a free agent of the leading returning scorer in college basketball.”
Here’s the rule explained by Doyel:
“A student-athlete who earns an undergraduate degree in four years but still has one year of eligibility remaining (a medical red-shirt, for example) can transfer into another college’s graduate school and finish his career there immediately. No sitting out a year. It’s graduate, transfer and play.”
This means the country’s leading returning scorer, Towson senior Gary Neal (26.1 ppg), who has graduated in four years but has a year of eligibility left following his transfer from LaSalle, can leave the Maryland school immediately and play anywhere he wants.
“It is a terrible rule,” Self said. “Kids who graduated, red-shirted or whatever or transferred in can graduate and be recruited by other schools and be recruited on their own campus : I think it’s terrible.”
Doyel says athletics directors are mobilizing to get an emergency hearing on this rule.
“I don’t know if anything can be done right now,” said Self, a board member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, who nonetheless hopes something can and will be done to kill the rule.
Towson plays KU on Nov. 19 in Allen Fieldhouse.
¢ Newest Jayhawk: Self, on incoming walk-on Brennan Bechard, a 6-foot, 180-pound sophomore-to-be out of Lawrence High and Barton County Community College:
“We are excited about Brennan. He is a fine young man, good student and certainly will understand his role on the team,” Self said. “I look forward to him being a part of it. Every team needs players that are willing to sacrifice and do whatever they can to make the team better. I know Brennan will do that.”
Bechard, who averaged 12 points a game his senior year at LHS, averaged 2.6 per game in a reserve role last season at BCCC in Great Bend.
¢ Meetings revisited: The Big 12 coaches met with the league’s athletic directors at the two-day meetings.
“There really wasn’t much talking about rule changes and issues. There was discussion about how we can help the league, whether through TV, marketing : in different areas,” Self said. “There was discussion about tournament practice times, things like that.”
There also was general discussion of teams improving their nonconference schedules, like the Missouri Valley Conference did last season. The Valley had as many teams as the Big 12 in the Big Dance – four.
“We almost scheduled our way out of getting four teams in the tournament,” Self told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at the conclusion of the basketball portion of the meetings Wednesday. “We should send at least six teams every season, and we should be considered one of the two best conferences in the nation. That’s not how people view us right now.”
The Missouri Valley teams scheduled several games against teams that ended the season rated between 50 and 125, with six teams in the RPI’s top 35.
“We didn’t help the problem,” Texas A&M’s Billy Gillispie told the Star-Telegram. His Aggies played six nonconference opponents rated 200 or worse. “But we can certainly learn from what the Missouri Valley has done.”
¢ Future tourney sites: The Big 12 tournament will be held in Oklahoma City next season. And the 2008 championships?
“There’s obviously a great chance for Kansas City in ’08,” Self said of the tourney being held in the new Sprint Center. “It has not officially been decided yet.”
¢ Aldrich update: Future KU player Cole Aldrich, 6-11 senior-to-be from Bloomington, Minn.’s Jefferson High, is one of 22 athletes invited to try out for USA Basketball’s Under 18 team (June 16-18 in San Antonio). The finalists will play at the FIBA Under 18 tourney June 28-July 2 in San Antonio.
