KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Big 12 Conference opened its men’s and women’s basketball media days on Tuesday with a new format. On Tuesday, eight men’s and women’s programs were at T-Mobile Center to talk about the season — Baylor, Texas Tech, Colorado, Arizona State, Iowa State, Utah, Cincinnati and Kansas. Coaches and played did interviews throughout the day with the regular season set to open on Nov. 2.
Here are five takeaways from the first day in KC.
When is JT Toppin Returning?
The Texas Tech forward tore his ACL in February and has been rehabbing the injury this summer. He’s one of two Big 12 returnees that are dealing with the same injury, with Oklahoma State’s Parsa Fallah being the other.
When JT Toppin was asked about his recovery and when he might play, he kept it positive but vague.
“I’m great right now. … I’m right on schedule,” Toppin said. “Been taking it slow. I feel like I’ll be coming back very, very soon.”
I asked Texas Tech head coach Grant McCasland about a timeline and he said there isn’t one and that’s by design. He’s deferring to the team’s medical group and to Toppin. They’ll let him know when he’s medically cleared and Toppin will let him know when he’s ready.
“I trust JT Toppin — that I can tell you,” McCasland said. “I’ve been through it all with him before and I think there’s enough experience there where he’ll be 100% when it’s time for him to play. And I do feel great about him playing at some point this season.”
McCasland reference a six-week stretch in Toppin’s first season in which he missed time due to an injury and managed it properly. He also told CBS Sports that Toppin wasn’t yet ready to practice and that if the former NCAA eligibility rules were in place he would have been redshirted this year.
Bill Fennelly’s Swan Song
Iowa State women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly announced earlier this offseason that he would retire after the season. He is the longest-tenured coach in the Big 12, men’s or women’s, and has won 656 games at Iowa State in a career in which he’s won 822 games.
So, Tuesday was the first of his “lasts,” as in this is his last Big 12 media days. He was asked many questions about his retirement, and he was quite reflective about it — or as reflective as he could be given that he still has a season to prepare for.
One hope? That the “Iowa State Way” he built over more than three decades persists beyond his departure.
“We wanted to create a program that embodied our fan base, embodied our community the great state of Iowa,” he said. “I grew up in Iowa, my wife grew up in Iowa so it’s home for us. Hopefully we’ve created a program that’s added to the Big 12 and added to Iowa State. I’ve been truly blessed over my time that I’ve been able to coach and be around so many phenomenal people let alone players and staff members that have invested so much in me and in our school.”
Bill Self Talks Trey Kaufman-Renn
With so many players spinning court cases to remain eligible, the case of new Kansas forward Trey Kaufman-Renn is outside the norm.
While most of the cases have in the five-for-five realm — Class of 2022 players who didn’t redshirt and are seeking a fifth year based on the NCAA’s new age-based criteria — this would be Kaufman-Renn’s sixth year of college basketball. He was a Class of 2021 player who played four years and redshirted one year. He was also selected No. 59 overall in the NBA Draft but never signed a contract.
Kaufman-Renn’s attorneys are making the case that had the NCAA had the five-for-five rule before his eligibility expired, he wouldn’t have used his redshirt.
He recently received a temporary restraining order that allows him to practice and play with Kansas until his case is fully heard.
Naturally, that led to a lot of questions for head coach Bill Self, who has two other Class of 2022 players competing on TRO’s — Tre White and Melvin Council Jr. Both played for him last year. Kaufman-Renn played at Purdue. Self addressed several questions about it during the breakout interviews, including whether he was a “disruptor” for signing Kaufman-Renn so late.
“If we don’t play with them, we’ll play against them,” he said.
Earlier in the day, commissioner Brett Yormark drew a distinction that indicated Kaufman-Renn wasn’t breaking the Big 12 rules on professionalism by returning, saying that because he was automatically put in the draft and didn’t “declare” for it he wasn’t in violation of the league’s rule.
The cases for all three players is ongoing.
That ‘Dawg’ Mentality on the Continuum
This is a big transitional year for Baylor women’s basketball under head coach Nicki Collen. The program lost Darianna Littlepage-Buggs, Bella Fontleroy and Jana Van Gytenbeek to graduation. So she’s breaking in a relatively new team with just one returning starter, Taliah Scott.
She and her players talked about developing a “dawg” mentality with a new group of players and it hasn’t been easy. Collen was happy to use the analogy to explain where her team is at right now.
“I’ve joked that there are days we’re dog-less, then we have Chihuahua days,” she said. “We want to get to where we are consistently German Shepherds or Pitbulls, something where you know there’s a consistency about the way we show up.”
Collen seemed happy her team isn’t opening the season in Paris against Duke. But they Bears still have several non-conference showdowns against great teams, including a trip to Nashville to face Tennessee.
“Those are home games for those teams,” she said.
Baylor enters the season with the second-longest streak of 20-win seasons in the country with 26, behind only UConn.
Why New Coaches Took New Jobs
Two of the league’s new head coaches spoke on Tuesday — Arizona State’s Randy Bennett and Kansas State’s Jerrod Calhoun.
Bennett spent more than a decade at Saint Mary’s, where he built the Gaels into one of the best mid-major programs in the country. For him, Arizona State was really the only job that was going to get him to leave. After all, he’s an Arizona native.
“I grew up in Mesa, which is 10 minutes away from Arizona State University where I lived,” he said. “I grew up as a Sun Devil. That’s who I rooted for. I knew which team in the state that I was rooting for the whole time. So just how many guys get a chance to coach in their hometown at the big school?”
Calhoun left Utah State to take over at Cincinnati and, like Bennett, local roots were important. He grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, and at one time was a student assistant under Bob Huggins at Cincinnati.
That, combined with a family, means Calhoun has been busy at his new job.
“The number of things you have to do outside of basketball, the time commitments [are different],” he said. “You know having three young daughters, trying to balance all that, has been a little difficult because I don’t tell a lot of people no.”
