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Every weekday, a panel of our college hoops experts discuss the biggest issues, trends and themes in and around college basketball.
1. Kansas State was a mess in the nonconference. Now the Wildcats are a tough out in the Big 12. What changed?
Andy Katz: Marcus Foster and coach Bruce Weber got on the same page. Weber had to send a message to Foster; he benched him, and it worked. The Wildcats are defending and making better late-game decisions.
Eamonn Brennan: Foster has played better. That sounds simplistic, and it's not the whole answer (see: Williams, Nino), but if you track Foster's splits, you tend to find that his least-efficient games -- particularly that three-game stretch in late December, when K-State's season looked doomed -- have aligned with Wildcats losses. This is a solid defensive team. When Foster is playing well, it has just enough scoring to be dangerous.
John Gasaway: Weber has tried to bring the pace down to less than 60 possessions, and in conference play Nino Williams has blossomed as a 2-point-making machine. One thing to watch with K-State, however, will be rebounding. In Big 12 play, the Cats have been a hair below average on the glass at both ends of the floor.
2. Can George Washington handle 'Havoc' on the road against VCU?
Katz: Yes. I don't think they will win, but the Colonials have been able to win away from home. VCU is playing its best basketball of the season at the right time. GW could use another high-profile win.
Brennan: Even if the Colonials do curtail the turnovers, the problem VCU presents is that it is lethal on the counterattack -- Treveon Graham and Melvin Johnson are shooting (and making) a bunch of transition 3s and averaging 1.15 points per trip on transition plays combined. Three-point defense is a tricky statistic in that it's hard to know how much impact a defensive team can really have. Whatever the root causes, GW hasn't been good at guarding the perimeter in A-10 play. The Colonials have more than one side of the ball to worry about.
Gasaway: Maybe not. The Colonials have given the ball away on 24 percent of their possessions on the road in A-10 play. That number has to improve for coach Mike Lonergan's group to pull off the upset.
3. What is the one thing people should know about Colorado State?
Katz: Toughness. The Rams are a collection of players who weren't highly recruited, and the chip on their shoulders plays out in the form of gritty play. CSU will always go down swinging.
Brennan: Senior J.J. Avila is one of the nation's trickier bigs. In addition to being the primary offensive weapon on a very good offense, there aren't too many players in the country who rebound more than 10 percent of their team's available misses and force four steals per 100 possessions on the other end of the floor. Avila is one of them.
Gasaway: The Rams are in the midst of an extraordinary run on offense, having scored a combined 1.32 points per possession in wins over Air Force, Nevada, San Jose State and (much more impressively) San Diego State. Coach Larry Eustachy's men can really light up a scoreboard.
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