I have to say, I'm not surprised at this. Our spiral was (is?) so severe, and the media's coverage of Trae went from laudatory and even at times ecstatic to lambasting him relentlessly and blaming him for all the team's troubles. (From where I sit, he was more deserving of the credit for our early success than of the blame for our failures, but I didn't get a vote.)
If we had just leveled off rather than all but cratering (disregard the "all but" if you wish) -- if we'd finished, say, 10-8 in the conference and had won a game or two in the Big 12 tourney, I think Trae would still be in the mix. So, basically, if we'd won a game we absolutely should have won in Stillwater and had pulled off the comeback win vs. WVU (a couple of late WV fouls that didn't get whistled might have done the trick), I think he'd have been a finalist.
