OKLAHOMA CITY-
Colorado’s Xavier Silas and Nebraska’s Ryan Anderson were suspended one game each for fighting, meaning Silas will miss the opening round of the Big 12 tournament.
“The incident was ruled a fight, and of course the rules stipulate that the punishment is a one-game suspension,” Colorado coach Ricardo Patton said on the Big 12 coaches’ conference call Monday.
Nebraska coach Doc Sadler said Anderson would serve the suspension Monday night when the Cornhuskers make up a weather-delayed game against Oklahoma State.
The second-leading scorers on each team tangled during the Buffaloes’ 73-69 win on Saturday. Patton came onto the court to pull Silas off Anderson after the two fell to the floor while wrestling for the ball in the first half. Both players were ejected.
Silas averages 13.6 points and is the team’s top 3-point shooter with 33, shooting 42.3 percent from behind the arc. He will be out Thursday when the 12th-seeded Buffaloes (7-19, 3-13) face No. 5 seed Texas Tech (20-11, 9-7) in the first round of the Big 12 tournament in Oklahoma City.
Anderson averages 10.5 points for the Cornhuskers.
“All I know is Ryan is not playing tonight,” Sadler said. “In my opinion, he was just reactive to his situation like anyone else would have reacted.”
Patton said he hadn’t spoken with athletic director Mike Bohn about whether the Buffaloes would try to appeal but said: “At this point, I don’t think that there is any grounds for an appeal.”
Silas and Anderson become the third and fourth players suspended for altercations in Big 12 play this season. Oklahoma’s Longar Longar was suspended two games for elbowing Texas Tech’s Esmir Risvic in January. Oklahoma State suspended Mario Boggan one game after he head-butted Kansas State’s Cartier Martin last week.
“The thing that concerns me is there’s an awful lot of suspensions going on,” Sadler said.
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MORE BIDS?:@ Texas A&M coach Billy Gillispie voiced concerns that the Big 12 was not doing enough to secure conference teams more bids to the NCAA tournament.
“I’m really disappointed in the way that people are perceiving our league, and I think our league doesn’t do as good a job as our competitors do as far as marketing our league because we’re talking about a team in our league that needs to win a game in the conference tournament and they’ve already got 10 wins? Give me a break,” Gillispie said.
Kansas State (21-10, 10-6), which finished fourth in the regular season, is still being mentioned as a bubble team for the NCAAs. Gillispie said that’s frustrating, particularly when he hears that other conferences are looking at getting seven or more bids.
“Nobody plays better basketball than us one through 12. We just haven’t done a good enough job, in my opinion, as a league,” Gillispie said. “I think the members are taking care of the league better than the league is taking care of its members in this particular situation.”
Gillispie said he didn’t know “what the answer is but I know that some other leagues have it figured out.”
“I’m not one of those administrators or whatever, but I know the coaches and the players and the teams do a lot for the league,” Gillispie said.
“I think that they have to figure out a way, maybe study other leagues and talk to other leagues and be more proactive instead of reactive because our teams are too good and our players are too good and our coaches have done a great job. … Why are we settling for a certain number of teams in the tournament when everybody else is getting more?”
“I don’t know what more the teams and the coaches and the players can do,” he added. “We need to have more help.”
Commissioner Kevin Weiberg pointed out that the Big 12 has an associate commissioner dedicated to basketball and has worked to secure more national television appearances for the conference—including 35 on ESPN networks and eight on national broadcast networks.
He also commended the conference’s media relations staff for providing “as much information, as good quality information, as anyone.”
“On the side of just talking about the tournament, we avail ourselves of every opportunity to talk to our appointed NCAA men’s basketball committee contacts, and I know from speaking directly to them that they believe the quality of information we’ve provided to them is very good,” Weiberg said. “I think that the effort that we put into it is a pretty good one.
“I know that coaches get frustrated when they see stories being written from time to time about teams with winning conference records potentially being so-called bubble teams, and I understand that frustration and share it. But I do think that you have to, at some point, have to feel like the process is going to take care of some of that and you have to understand that we’re all working really hard to do the best we can for the conference.”
The Big 12 got six bids each year from 2000 to 2003 before dropping to four in 2004. Six Big 12 teams got in again in 2005 and four made the tournament last year.
“I think our conference is clearly among the top five or six conferences in the country,” Weiberg said. “From my perspective, if you have a winning or even a .500 conference record in the Big 12 you should be receiving very serious consideration to being in the at-large field.”
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PLAYERS OF THE WEEK:@ Kansas’ Julian Wright and Texas’ Kevin Durant split the conference’s player of the week honor. Wright averaged 17.5 points and 10.5 rebounds as the Jayhawks beat Oklahoma and Texas to clinch the regular-season title. Durant averaged 31 points and 12.5 rebounds as the Longhorns beat Texas A&M and then lost to Kansas.
D.J. Augustin, who averaged 22 points and 10 assists in the same two games, was named the rookie of the week.
