Sunday Big 12 morning rush: Headlines from around the conference

The latest morning rush headlines from around the Big 12 including a local product heading to Kansas over Texas and Baylor.

Each morning Longhorns Wire will share the top stories from around the Big 12 Conference. For this edition of the Big 12 Morning Twitter, Sports Illustrated, and 247Sports provide the headlines.

Austin native K.J. Adams chooses Kansas over staying home

Austin Westlake power forward K.J. Adams decided to stay somewhat close to home and play basketball in the Big 12 conference. However, he didn’t choose to stay in his hometown of Austin, Texas. Instead he chose Kansas over Georgetown, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor and yes Texas. The 2021 power forward is the 16th ranked power forward in the country and is set to play for the Jayhawks and Bill Self.

How Bringing in BYU Solves Every Big 12 Scheduling Dilemma

It was recently reported by Matt Mosely that the Big 12 wouldn’t consider bringing in Brigham Young University. However, desperate times call for desperate measures right? AllSooners of Sports Illustrated highlighted how adding BYU even for one season would fix their scheduling woes in 2020.

Start with the numbers: 10 games spread over 15 Saturdays, from Week 0 (Aug. 29) to Week 14 (Dec. 5), although there’s been much discussion about adding yet another week and pushing the regular-season finales to Dec. 12 — 16 weeks in all.

Try to keep the Thursday and Friday matchups where they are for TV purposes, and build around that if possible. With the final games on Dec. 12 and the Big 12 championship game pushed back to Dec. 19 (essentially what the Pac-12 announced on Friday), that would give every Big 12 team seven open dates to cope with positive COVID-19 test results if they happen, and thus manage rosters.

To start, do away with all existing non-conference games. Simple as that. Let the FCS and Group of 5 opponents figure out their own schedules.

Report: Big 12 closing in on preferred scheduling model for 2020

The Big 12 Conference is the last man standing so to speak. Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and the conference have yet to announce their 2020 schedule plans unlike their Power Five brothers. Jeff Howe of Horns 247 says that the announcement is coming in the next couple of days.

Texas has two Group of Five opponents left on the schedule, both of which are to be played at Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium: USF on Sept. 5 and UTEP on Sept. 19. If the league is planning on beginning league play in late September and goes to a plus-one scheduling model, the likely scenario would be the Miners coming to Austin to play the Longhorns before Texas opens conference play Oct. 3 with a road trip to K-State.

In theory, there’s a way Texas could play a full 12-game schedule. The Longhorns have the option to move their season opener to Aug. 29 (Kansas and Oklahoma are both due to kick off on the last Saturday in August) and they could potentially add an in-state opponent to fill the void created by the LSU cancelation, likely from Conference USA if Texas went down that road (the Jayhawks added a game with FCS Southern Illinois while the Sooners merely moved their game with Missouri State from September to August, which allowed them to begin preseason practice Friday).