KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This was not the original column you were going to read.
Thanks to howling winds outside my hotel on this blissful evening, I was unable to sleep, preparing for my drive back to Lubbock after my three-day stay at the Big 12 Tournament, which ended earlier than usual after Texas Tech basketball’s thud against Iowa State.
Advertisement
Much like earlier this week, my penchant for writing ahead bit me in the behind. After Texas Tech’s game, one of the stories I wrote was a column about, you guessed it, the court, that monstrosity known as the ASB GlassFloor LED court the Big 12 has put its basketball players on for the past two weeks.
Honestly, it was probably one of my better columns. Had some good quips in there that’ll probably never see the light of day. The gist of it, though, was this: Yormark came to the Big 12 with an innovative aspiration for what the league can be. That comes with gambles and outside-the-box ideas to draw attention to a league fighting for space at the top of the food chain.
Of course, this leads to failures, and this court was perhaps the biggest. It was an issue far earlier than Christian Anderson slipping and sliding all over the floor Thursday morning, coming out of the game injured and not returning — the game was well over by then, so no need to risk further injury to he or LeJuan Watts with the NCAA Tournament to think about.
Yormark was defensive of the reception the court got for the women’s tournament last week. Every single player and coach has been asked about the court at the postgame press conferences. In almost every instance, players said it was. … fine. Slippery, weird, but acceptable.
Advertisement
“It’s obviously a different surface that we’re used to playing on,” Texas Tech head coach Grant McCasland said, “and there’s some challenging moments today, is what I would say. I think with size around the basket it’s not, but the quickness and the guard play and stop and start change in direction, it just has a different response than what we’re used to and I thought we had a hard time handling changing directions of the course of the game.”
No player, and no coach, is going to outright blast the floor in a press conference setting. That’s why I took to the locker rooms, talked to people around the tournament from other schools, fans, fellow media in attendance, to get the actual reaction of the court.
The consensus was, “This ain’t it.”
It wasn’t just that the court was an eyesore for those watching at home. It became a legitimate safety hazard. Anderson was just the most notable casualty of its unique gripping, causing his legs to go, as he put it, in “unnatural” ways when trying to maneuver around the floor.
Advertisement
In both passing and direct conversations, the court was the talking point. Not the basketball. And that is where it became the conference’s biggest issue.
Yormark likes to say the Big 12 is the second-best basketball league in the world behind only the NBA. Yet the last three days, the basketball wasn’t the biggest discussion point, or at least the only real discussion point. It quickly became about the court, and that was a PR nightmare for both the conference and Yormark himself.
During the night session of Thursday’s quarterfinals, the Big 12’s official X (formerly Twitter) account posted graphics and press conference video of Houston players Emanuel Sharp and Kingston Flemings saying they liked the court, that everybody had to play on it so it’s not an advantage one way or another.
Shortly thereafter, the Big 12 sent out a press release stating it would be replacing the LED court with a traditional hardwood floor for the final two days of the tournament.
Mar 12, 2026; Kansas City, MO, USA; (Editors note: in camera effect) General View of shoes on the court during the first half of the game between the Iowa State Cyclones and the Texas Tech Red Raiders at T-Mobile Center. Mandatory Credit: William Purnell-Imagn Images
“After consultation with the coaches of our four Semifinal teams,” Yormark’s statement reads, “I have decided that in order to provide our student-athletes with the greatest level of comfort on a huge stage this weekend, we will transition to a hardwood court for the remainder of the Tournament.”
Advertisement
What changed in the 90 minutes between those social media posts saying, “The floor is fine” and Yormark’s statement? Perhaps the commissioner had the head honchos Kelvin Sampson of Houston and Bill Self of Kansas get in his ear a bit. Maybe he heard enough from school athletic directors and administrators to know this wasn’t a good look for the Big 12, its teams or its players.
Yormark said Tuesday that he listens to feedback, and whatever it was that finally swayed him to not only act but act swiftly and in unprecedented fashion, the right call was finally made in the nick of time.
Trust me when I say this was not the original tone of the first column I wrote about this subject. But much like Yormark, I, too, must respond and adjust accordingly.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Big 12 Tournament court is the talking point thanks to Brett Yormark
