Now that we have passed the point of no return in the Big 12 Conference men’s basketball race, let me congratulate the league coaches and area media for being so prescient.

I’m talking about the predictions they made early last fall about which players would earn coveted All-Big 12 honors during the 2002-03 season.

Right now, with every team having played eight of their 16 conference games, the leading candidates for first-team All-Big 12 are Andre Emmett of Texas Tech, Hollis Price of Oklahoma, T.J. Ford of Texas and Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich of Kansas University.

Yep, those are the same five players who made the preseason coaches and media teams.

What I find most curious is that four of those five rank 1-2-3-4 in league scoring stats. Emmett leads at 21.7, followed by Price at 19.1, Collison at 18.8 and Hinrich at 18.0.

In fifth place is Iowa State’s Jake Sullivan at 17.7, but Sullivan has as much chance of making the first team as Pippi Longstocking does. Sullivan will have to settle for the second team because Texas quicksilver sophomore T.J. Ford is just too talented.

It’s anybody’s guess who’ll join Sullivan, ISU’s only real offensive threat, on the second team. Colorado’s surprising Michel Morandais has to be there if he continues to average 17.3 points a game, and so do Missouri’s Arthur Johnson and Rickey Paulding. Right now, I would add Oklahoma State’s Victor Williams, the Kansas City Wyandotte grad who might be even quicker than Ford, to the second mythical all-league unit.

I must interject here that KU’s Aaron Miles might be a better pure point guard than either Ford or Williams. For example, Miles and Ford rank 1-2 in the league in assists while Williams and Miles rank 1-2 in steals. Miles, however, doesn’t measure up to the other two as a scorer.

Oklahoma’s Price was everybody’s choice as player of the year on those preseason ballots and, after a so-so preseason, the ebullient Sooner backcourt buzzsaw has jumped back into contention. If Oklahoma wins the league title, he’s a lock. If Texas wins, it’ll be Ford. If Kansas wins, it’ll be … oops, there might have to be co-winners. I don’t see how you can pick between Hinrich and Collison. The two Jayhawks should be, like a horse race, regarded as a single entry.

In the voting for freshman of the year, the soothsayers again hit the nail on the head. However, in the newcomer of the year ballot, they hammered their thumbs.

Texas A&M’s Antoine Wright, a 6-foot-7 freshman from San Bernardino, Calif., via a prep academy in the other Lawrence — the one in Massachusetts — leads all freshman scorers in the Big 12 with a 16.7 average. Wright looks like a unanimous choice for frosh honors at this stage.

At the same time, Nebraska’s Nate Johnson, the preseason choice for top newcomer, might not receive a single vote. Johnson does lead the woeful Cornhuskers in scoring, but he’s averaging just 13.3 points a game and, worse, is shooting 40 percent from the field, including a dismal 22.2 percent from three-point range. Last season, Johnson averaged 26.5 points a game at Penn Valley CC in Kansas City, Mo., and was named NJCAA Div. II player of the year.

So who has been the best newcomer, the best new face in the league who isn’t a freshman? It’s a two-horse race, in my opinion. The eventual designee will be either Ricky Clemons, the controversial Missouri point guard, or Tony Allen, a 6-4 Oklahoma State guard from Chicago who played at a couple of junior colleges, including Butler County in Kansas, before enrolling at OSU.

Clemons leads all newcomers in scoring at 16.7 points a game. Allen is second at 15.6. Iowa State’s Jackson Vroman, a skilled rebounder with limited offensive skills, is a longshot.

All in all, though, the first half of the league season means about as much as the first half of a game. It’s how you finish that counts.