Big 12 Football Week 12 in Review: SB Nation Whiparound

I can’t believe I forgot to do this! After one of the weirdest weekends in Big 12 history, I forgot the whiparound!

I blame millennials.

Let’s get right to it. We’ll start with the two boring games first.

Kansas State 42 @ Baylor 21

A mistake prone first half (by both teams) led to a pedestrian 14-7 halftime score, but then the Wildcats finally figured things out in the third quarter and just buried the Bears.

Courtesy of Bring on the Cats:

The offense? We’re just not even going to discuss the first-half offense, whose primary feature seemed to be Jesse Ertz getting sacked instead of getting rid of the football.

Then the second half started, and everything changed.

Let’s have Our Daily Bears wrap up the rest of the game:

Baylor was outcoached, outplayed, and outfought in the second half, giving up TDs on five of six drives, and that was it.

I think we’re all just ready for the 2016 season to be over and to reboot the program to start again. If things go as expected, it should only be a couple of weeks. Until then, we can just be a basketball school.

If by “reboot” you mean “fire everyone, clean house, and self-impose sanctions such as bowl restrictions and fewer scholarships” then you’re still too late, but I’ll take it.

Oklahoma State 31 @ TCU 6

Boring game #2 was, well, boring. It was only 10-6 at halftime, but TCU couldn’t score in the second half.

Cowboys Ride For Free was impressed:

Well, that was different. The Cowboys put together what was arguably their best performance of the entire season (the only challenger here is the West Virginia game) and, for what may have been the first time in all my years of watching Oklahoma State football, they didn’t make it harder than it needed to be down the stretch.

Frogs O War didn’t spend too much time recapping this one.

The Frogs were hyped to play Baylor and if showed. They came out completely flat against the Cowboys and got drilled. 11am starts are tough, but the Pokes managed the early start alright.

Can you at least tell us what went wrong, though?

Hill hardly had time to throw, and there was no space to run for Hicks and Co. The line’s poor play is part of the reason for six points scored.

Oklahoma 56 @ West Virginia 28

Now it starts to get a little weird...

A lot of people were really looking forward to this game, but before you knew it, it was 21-0 Oklahoma - and that was before the snow stopped coming down. The Sooners would build a 34-7 halftime lead and cruise in Morgantown.

Smoking Musket gives us a good idea how things snowballed, pun intended:

At Texas, the team was lucky that none of the turnovers hurt them enough to cause them to lose. Against Oklahoma State, three turnovers deep inside West Virginia territory resulted in 17 points, the margin of victory for the Cowboys. Saturday night, four West Virginia turnovers resulted in 28 points for Oklahoma, who beat us by 28. Themes are emerging.

Crimson and Cream Machine seems to agree:

In one sense, this game wasn’t as close as its final score would suggest—the Sooners took a 34-7 lead into halftime and had scored five times before West Virginia ever got on the board. But in another way, this was the closest blowout OU’s played all season. After all, the Mountaineers outgained OU 579-485 in the contest, and ran the ball at will through large stretches of the game. Turnovers and undisciplined play proved to be West Virginia’s undoing in this one, as the Sooners punched hard right out of the gate and then took the ball away when WVU tried to punch back.

Texas 21 @ Kansas 24

Now it REALLY gets weird!

That’s right. KU is better than Texas - at football!

From the Burnt Orange Nation immediate post-game recap:

You can read this or just watch cat videos. Whatever makes you happy.

Lol. Nice. There was the typical recap of what happened during the game, but not a lot of “What did we learn?” or “5 Takeaways” or anything like that. There was mostly a lot of this:

This just wasn’t acceptable and the decision facing president Greg Fenves should no longer be difficult.

Barking Carnival was much the same as BON, but with a bit more snark (as is their custom):

There’s not much point in dissecting this thing, even to note that it's undoubtedly the death knell for Charlie Strong’s time at Texas.

I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue, but I definitely picked the right game to be on a plane and intermittently following the game via GameCast.

I didn't see any video of this one outside of Warrick’s first touchdown. I certainly don't intend to see any more, and I don't envy those of you who watched the whole thing.

BC says better things are ahead:

Ultimately, this loss will prove to be a blessing. What was evident to some of us with respect to process early in the year is now apparent to everyone with tangible on-field results. This was a good thing long term. You don’t want to read that right now, understandably.

So... Charlie Strong is done in Austin now, right?

Thank a good man for stocking a young roster with athletes and let’s move on.

Obviously, we at RCT were pretty stoked:

It was ugly. It was sloppy - the two teams combined for 16 penalties and 8 turnovers. Both coaches made mistakes. But in the end, Kansas made plays, Texas panicked, and the Jayhawks sent Charlie Strong to the unemployment line (behind Dan Hawkins, amirite?) when Kansas notched its first win over a Big 12 opponent not named Iowa State since 2013.

Texas Tech 10 @ Iowa State 66

And now the weirdest one of all, in my opinion. I certainly did not see this coming. Did you, WRNL?

Despite Texas Tech having an extremely potent offense, and probably the best quarterback in the conference in Patrick Mahomes, this game never really seemed to be in doubt. Who on earth saw that coming?

If you guys didn’t, then no one did. So what happened?

In all seriousness, the Cyclones dominated every aspect of the football game. This is hard to comprehend considering the fact that Texas Tech, though 4-7, took Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to the wire - and put up video game numbers on offense.

Looks like Iowa State is making tangible progress in year 1 of Matt Campbell.

We are a few simple mistakes and 4th quarters away from playing for a bowl game next week — but that is now a thing of the past. Players with multiple years of eligibility left are gaining valuable experience and many freshmen have earned playing time, which is something we rarely saw the prior six years under Paul Rhoads.

I assume that Viva The Matadors was equally as stunned as the rest of us?

Overall it was a terrible, good for nothing day.

That doesn’t seem stunned, but it does sound pretty... sad.

The game was pretty much over by the 2nd quarter. The defense forced a couple punts to start the second half, but it was way too little way too late. When the backup quarterback runs for 5 touchdowns and 10 yards per carry, something has gone horribly wrong.