Big 12 men’s basketball media day notes: Bob Bowlsby addresses FBI investigation

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The college basketball world was rocked on Sept. 26 when the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern district of New York announced federal corruption charges. Four NCAA assistant coaches were named in the suit, including former Oklahoma State coach Lamont Evans.

That was at the top of Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby's list of men's basketball media day talking points Tuesday.

'We certainly have always known that all of the best parts of college athletics and all the worst parts of college athletics are embedded in the sport of men's college basketball,” Bowlsby said. 'Lots of high-risk academic people and high-risk social people and lots of third parties that are involved, and I think it's impossible to know at this point how far this goes or who might be involved in it.

'One thing about it, when DOJ and the FBI get involved they have both the power of subpoena and the weight of perjury which the NCAA doesn't have its disposal. As a result, I think this is going to be around for a while, and I think we are likely to be in the same situation we're in now, and that is that we don't know very much information, we aren't going to get heads-up before things happen and as a result of that, it's a period of some discomfort.”

Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton is in his first year coaching the Cowboys. He doesn't think he's had to do anything too different to try to block out the noise surrounding his program.

'Kids are pretty resilient and really for the most part all they want to do is play basketball and go to school,” Boynton said. 'Because of that and being able to get to practice pretty quickly after this all happened was something that was really beneficial to us because we got back to being able to focus on the things that we were trying to focus on before this all happened, which was trying to be the best Oklahoma State basketball team that we could be this year.”

Charity basketball scrimmages

Schools all around the nation are playing in charity basketball scrimmages to help with hurricane relief efforts or other natural disasters.

Big 12 schools Kansas and Kansas State got in on the action.

When Kansas and Missiouri played at Sprint Center, they raised about $2 million.

Kansas State coach Bruce Weber wants to make them a permeant fixture. Rather than having secret, closed scrimmages, have a game where the proceeds go to charity. He said it's better competition, his players got more out of it and it helped a great cause.

'Now to have an exhibition game and do something good out of it, I think it's a positive thing,” Weber said. 'It was good basketball-wise and raised some money and hopefully it helped some people out.”

Big 12 women's basketball tournament moved

The Big 12 women's basketball tournament will be moved in 2020 to coincide the same week as the men's tournament in Kansas City.

The games will be played at Municipal Auditorium.

'We feel like there is synergy between men's and women's tournaments and the men's and women's crowds,” Bowlsby said. 'we are looking forward to coming back with the women's tournament in 2020.”