Early rounds of the Big XII tournament was completed last night. Three upsets.
First upset: What a great treat it was to see BYU get beat by the third worst team in the conference. Talk about laying an egg. Congrats to UCF for getting rid of them so quickly.
Second upset: Congrats to ASU, who is the second worst team in the conference beating Cincinnati.
Third upset: Texas Tech with a nice win over Kansas and now plays Utah.
So, UCF plays K-State, Colorado plays Arizona, ASU plays ISU and TT plays Utah tonight at 7PM MST.
I was actually rooting for Kansas to win. Even though we beat both TT and KU this year, KUâs best player had been playing hurt and I think would have been an easier out. That said, we did beat TT in Lubbock, with Gianna having an off-night scoring just 6 points. But, Johnson scored 20, McQueen scored 18, and Toure scored 12. TT shot 49% from the field and 53% from three in that game and the Utes won by 6 points. It will be an interesting game, a loseable game for sure if the team doesnât show up.
Edited to add that the court they are using is an eyesore and I am surprised it doesnât come with a seizure warning.
First two games of todayâs play are finished with Kansas St winning as expected (though UCF put up a fight for most of the game) and Colorado upsetting Arizona. I hate Arizona (both menâs and women) and I am very happy they are gonzo!
I remember when we played Colorado, they had a couple of freshman that really impressed. Today, Colorado was down 8 starting the fourth and led by their freshman came back and won. That team will be a handful soon.
Yes, this loss was an awful loss. But at worst, at absolute worst, we slide to the 9 seed line. We are in absolutely 0 danger of falling out of the tournament.
The win against Notre Dame is proving very crucial to not slipping out.
As for the game, I was thinking after this morning that McQueen and Wilke just donât shoot enough. I know that Petersen has talked about that a lot, but when McQueen goes to the free throw line in the 4th quarter and has 0 points, something is wrong. I think when shots arenât falling (and there were a lot of open looks missed) Kneepkens does the hero ball thing, and McQueen and Wilke shrink back from shooting because they missed a couple. McQueen and Wilke defer way too much.
Also, we donât use Toure enough inside. She was pretty efficient but if she misses once, we go away from it. If we could use her and Johnson more for offense down low, it will open up the rest of the offense more. Also, Vieira has just stopped scoring period. Last year she was good for 8-10 points every game just from quick bursts to the basket and an occasional three, but nothing from her as well.
One more thing I was thinking about this morning. This was the third straight game where the opposing player guarded by Vieira went off. Bailey âTales of the Cityâ Maupin really had a great game scoring 22 and going 11-11 from the free throw line.
Not sure about Lynne. That said, we had so much high level success was because of Pili. She was a true inside threat, who could also shoot, that created such good spacing for our shooters; and, if our shooters falter, Pili had the ability to carry the team.
The Utah of this year relies so much on outside shooting with limited athletic abilities. To me, as much as I think Toure is a nice player, she relies on flows of the offense to score and has certain limitations â nothing wrong with that, btw.
We are definitely missing Pili this year. That noted, this yearâs team has been coached up very well and done a good job. Unfortunately, there is one thing you canât teach - big. Most of the time when we have been beaten, it is because of a lack of bigs. Hopefully we can find a few in the pipelines for next seasonâs team.
I will be surprised if we arenât one and done in the tourney.
Gavin said in the postgame that the big difference from the PAC to Big is that PAC trams were more finess and skill and Big is more physical and they will need to adjust their recruiting to match.
Interesting. Did he not know Utah announced to join the B12 in August 2023? Neither the 2024 nor the 2025 recruiting class had any 4/5 position players.
And, none of the 2024 recruits have had meaningful impact. The 2025 class is rated very high, 17th nationally and 3rd in B12, but none over 6â tall.
The year before Pili, the team went to the second round and played the 2 seed Texas in Austin. McQueen scored 18 points and Johnson scored 14 in the loss, both as freshman.
