Big 12 Basketball Awards

Player of the Year - Blake Griffin (Oklahoma)
You'll hear more than you want to over the next couple weeks as he racks up Big 12 and National POY awards. He's the best player in the country by a decent amount and had a great season. 22.1 points and 14.2 rebounds, both best in the Big 12, and good for 12th and 2nd in the nation, respectively.

Defensive Player of the Year - Cole Aldrich (Kansas)
In a year where the conference was devoid of a guard that was a defensive standout, Aldrich led the lead in blocks with 2.5/game (good for 21st in the country) and changed many more with his interior presence and was a huge reason why Kansas led the conference, and was 7th nationally, in field goal percentage defense. He trailed only Griffin among Big 12 players in rebounds.

Freshman of the Year - Willie Warren (Oklahoma)
By far the conference's best freshman and has played so well that there's a possibility he could head to the NBA after this season. He's been the lead guard for the Sooners the whole way and has scored 14.7 per game while dishing out 3.1 assists.

Best 6th Man - Matt Lawrence (Missouri)
Tall gunner for the Tigers came off the bench to provide offensive firepower for the team that finished 3rd outright. He averaged a shade under 9 ppg on 41% shooting from behind the arc.

Coach of the Year - Bill Self (Kansas)
Self lost all 5 starters and 6 of his top 7 off last year's national championship team and reloaded with a bunch of young, unknown pieces around Sherron Collins to win his 5th straight Big 12 championship. It was the first time KU has won 5 straight conference titles in over 80 years.

All Big 12, First Team
Blake Griffin, Oklahoma
Sherron Collins, Kansas
Cole Aldrich, Kansas
DeMarre Carroll, Missouri
James Anderson, Oklahoma State

All Big 12, Second Team
Craig Brackens, Iowa State
Damion James, Texas
Cory Higgins, Colorado
Denis Clemente, Kansas State
Josh Carter, Texas A&M

Biggest Disappointments:

Texas - The Longhorns were picked (narrowly) to finish 2nd to Oklahoma and received more 1st place votes from league coaches than anyone in the preseason. Rick Barnes shoulders most of the blame as he had what is, in my opinion, the worst season of his career. Barnes has spent the last 3 years mishandling AJ Abrams, refusing to pull him for taking bad shots, not passing the ball to open teammates (which in years past including Kevin Durant), and general not forcing him to be phyiscal which made him a suspect defender and keeps him from ever exploiting his elite free throw shooting. Barnes took entirely too long to figure out that Dogus Balbay can play Big 12 point guard even though he can't shoot at all, which should have been fairly obvious given we're not far removed from Doug Gottlieb being successful in the league. Finally, putting Damion James in a hybrid 3/4 position kept him from being as good as he could be, and even given that he became the best player on the team. It's like Barnes thought James was PJ Tucker, even though James possesses superior atheticism and a WAY more consistent jump shot. Tucker played that hybrid position because he had to, James plays it because of a coaching error.

Baylor - If Rick Barnes did a poor coaching job this season, then Scott Drew did a miserable one. The Bears returned all the pieces from an NCAA tournament team and have vastly underachieved themselves into a probable road game in the first round of the NIT. They still seem allergic to defense and if jump shots aren't going in early, this is a team that lacks the toughness to play though it. In hindsight, the high expectations for Baylor might have been misplaced. Digging a little further into last season, they did scratch together a 9-7 conference schedule, but their best win was against 8-8 Texas A&M. They took advantage of the fact that, while the top of the Big 12 was tough, the middle and bottom wasn't very good or consistent. They were competitive against Texas and Kansas, beat all the bottom feeders, and made the tournament. This year, the Big 12 is considered down because the top of the conference isn't as elite as those Jayhawks and Longhorns that shared the title last year...but overlooked is that the middle of the conference has toughened up considerably. A&M, K-State, Okie State, and Texas are all 9-7. Nebraska is a tough, undersized squad that's tough to beat in Lincoln. Missouri came out of nowhere to go 12-4. The number of teams likely to take you to the woodshed was lower, but the number of easy conference wins was also lower. Baylor suffered from this.