Thanks to A.J. Abrams 23 points, Texas beat OU Saturday night.

Abrams scored 18 of his 23 points during the final eight minutes, including 16 straight for the Longhorns as they defeated second-ranked Oklahoma 73-68 in front of 16,755 fans, the third sellout this season in the Erwin Center.

"I asked him if he could stop hitting shots," said Willie Warren, the Oklahoma freshman guard who scored 27 points. "But he didn't listen at all."

It's finally coming... spring practice. Kirk Bohls has a preview.

Longhorn basketball recruit Avery Bradley has been named to the 24-player McDonald’s All American team.

From the NLF.com combine blog:

Texas’ Brian Orakpo made clear he is comfortable playing 4-3 end or 3-4 linebacker. "I’m versatile. It really doesn’t matter. I can fit well in both schemes. I’m very effective in both."

You can learn about the sessions and find information on players participating in the combine here.

Football

The drama in Lubbock is finally over. Mike Leach won the war with Gerald Myers, but there was plenty of blame on both sides.

If there's a loser here, it's Tech's athletic director. Hance not only cut Myers out of the negotiations, he also worked it so that Leach will have to notify the school, not Myers, if he chases another job.

Myers isn't having much luck keeping his head coaches in check this decade. If Bob Knight wasn't barking at an administrator at the salad bar, Leach is telling media outlets that Tech is trying to "extort" money from him. Myers is a lion tamer without whip or chair, and Hance locked the gate.

Leach deserves a large share of the blame for how this all played out. He tried to grab more power than any coach would have the nerve to do, and without playing by the rules. He acts without considering consequences. Sometimes the results are charming. Sometimes they leave him surprised when the opposing coach is coming fast across the field, and it's not Leach's hand he wants to grab.

The Pirate sorely misjudged his hand, too. While he was galavanting around the globe last weekend, his supporters had to wonder: Could $2.5 million a year for five years in this economy really be so bad, even with clauses that ultimately were thrown out? Couldn't he at least try to schmooze at fundraisers a little more?

Mack Brown, cordial as ever.

Brown also weighed in on Leach’s contract saga, which finally ended Thursday when the Tech coach signed an extension that will keep him in Lubbock through 2013. Brown said Leach and is good for the Big 12 Conference and especially for the South Division, which boasted three top-10 teams last season.

"Mike’s done a great job and I was sure they’d work it out, because he’s won and this business is about winning," Brown said. "Tech’s doing a great job right now — they had another very good recruiting year — and I’m glad they all got it worked out."

At least the Lubbock economy will pick up now that Leach is staying.

Dr. Saturday looks at the state of the Aggie football program and it isn't pretty.

Former Kansas State coach Ron Prince has taken a job at the University of Virginia as special teams coordinator.

The Sooner thievery continues. OU has gotten a commitment from Pflugerville, Texas's offensive tackle Tyrus Thompson.

Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback Patrick Witt has decided to transfer.

Basketball

The Big 12 title is within reach of the Kansas Jayhawks.

For Kansas, it’s relatively simple. Win its last five conference games and Kansas will hoist its 52nd conference title.

Barry Tramel puts OU's loss in perspective. It was the best kind of loss.

OU’s 73-68 loss at Texas on Saturday night was the best kind of defeat a team can have. No matter what Jeff Capel said about wanting no moral victories, the Sooners grew as a team down in Austin.

They were staggered with two mighty blows: 1) the loss of Blake Griffin, first for foul trouble in the first half and then with a concussion for the rest of the game; and 2) a Texas run that appeared to make the game primed for blowout. And yet OU did not wither.

Blake Griffin is questionable for the Kansas game.

Sooners coach Jeff Capel said Griffin would be held out of practice Sunday, but he won't know until game day whether his star player will be able to go against the 15th-ranked Jayhawks on Monday night in a game that will give one team the lead in the Big 12 title race.

Our own Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe is a new member of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee.

FoxSports predicts the NCAA tournament brackets.

Baseball

It is the year of the pitcher in Big 12 baseball.

As college baseball opens this weekend – conference play begins March 13 – it's looking like the year of the pitcher in the Big 12.

Ten pitchers are among the 19 conference players on the preseason watch list for the Brooks Wallace Award, given to the nation's top collegiate baseball player. Three schools – Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State – have two pitchers on the list, and likely high draft choices are plentiful.

It's Rhett Bomar day here at BDR. The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and FoxSports check up on everyone's favorite former OU quarterback.

The economy really stinks for one Sooner. The IRS seized all his OU sports memorabilia to pay back taxes.

The Mountain West Conference wants more access to the BCS system.

The Mountain West has gone rogue. The league plans to formally ask its Bowl Championship Series peers for more access to the lucrative postseason system, the league's commissioner said Friday.

Craig Thompson said his league would be sending "a proposal for change" to the BCS commissioners in the next two weeks. The Mountain West is one of five "non-qualifiying" conferences in the BCS. Automatic bowl berths go to the champions of the six power conferences -- Pac-10, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, SEC and Big East.

Thompson was not specific but it is assumed that the 10-year-old Mountain West believes its performance on the field merits some kind of automatic berth. In two of the past four years, it has produced an undefeated league champion (Utah) that has won its BCS bowl. But the Mountain West proposal might ask for one automatic berth encompassing all of the 54 schools in the non-qualifying leagues -- Conference USA, Sun Belt, WAC, MAC and Mountain West.

ESPN and Sports Illustrated have news from the NFL combine.

More of our tax dollars at work. There was a second round of steroid testing for high school athletes in Texas.

The second round of steroid testing for high school athletes in Texas found only seven positive results in nearly 19,000 tests, about the same minuscule outcome as the first round last year.

The University Interscholastic League on Friday released the latest results from random tests on male and female athletes in Texas from September through December. All seven athletes who tested positive were male.

Former Indianapolis Colt and Tampa Bay Buccaneer coach Tony Dungy writes about the lack of monority football coaches in Division 1.

What's possibly next for Mack Brown? Twitter? Well, David Cutcliffe tweets.