The Big 12 Tournament

There’s a 99.999% chance OSU’s season will end with an NIT loss, NIT win, or Big 12 tournament loss. That’s just how it is. But under the notion that nobody is mathematically eliminated at this point in the college basketball season (take note, college football!), here’s what we, as OSU fans, should be rooting for the rest of the way.

Again, all of this is under two premises:

1. We want OSU to make the Big Dance
2. The only way for OSU to do this is to win the Big 12 tournament

If you’re OSU, the teams you want to avoid in the Big 12 tournament are Kansas, Missouri, Kansas State (because the tourney is in Kansas City), and probably Baylor (even though it’s next to impossible to beat anybody 3x in a season if you’re not an elite team).

If the Big 12 tourney started today this is how it would look…

This is not good for OSU, about as bad as it could shake out given the circumstances really.

So here’s what we’re rooting for…

We need to overtake either of the 7-7 teams (Kansas State and Texas), but not necessarily both.

Right now here are your top seven teams with conference records in parentheses.

1. Mizzou (12-2)
2. Kansas (12-2)
3. Baylor (9-5)
4. Iowa State (9-5)
5. Texas (7-7)
6. Kansas State (7-7)
7. Oklahoma State (6-8)

The seedings will be broken into four tiers:

KU and Mizzou will be some combination of #1 and #2.
Baylor and ISU will be some combination of #3 and #4.
OSU, Texas, and K-State will be some combination of #5 #6 and #7.
A&M, OU, and Tech will be some combination of #8 #9 and #10.

Let’s take a look at the remaining schedules of those #5 #6 and #7 teams…

K-State has:
at Mizzou (loss)
Iowa State at home (probably win)
at A&M (should be win)
OSU at home (should be win)

Texas has:
Baylor at home (toss up)
at OU (toss up)
at Tech (win)
and at Kansas (loss)

OSU has:
at OU (toss up)
A&M at home (should be win)
Kansas at home (should be loss)
at K-State (should be loss)

The final records *should be* KSU (10-8), Texas (9-9), and OSU (8-10) but who knows what’s going to transpire in the next two weeks.

Here’s the key, if OSU is tied with either of those teams at say 9-9 or 8-10 you go straight to head-to-head for the tiebreaker to determine seeding in the tournament.

If you’ve split (which OSU has with Texas) then you go to each team’s record against the best team in the conference and work your way down. OSU is going to be the only one of those three to beat either Kansas or Mizzou so they hold the tiebreaker over Texas for sure and KSU as well if they can somehow win in Bramlage.

Why does all of this matter?

Well it probably doesn’t, but if OSU can tie Texas or KSU at 9-9 then they can get the 6-seed and a first round bye in Kansas City, or even the 5-seed and a first round bye.

Note: how big is that final Saturday with OSU in Manhattan? An OSU win would swing the records above to all be 9-9.

If you move ahead of Texas to the 6-seed, then you have to hope Iowa State and Baylor are tied at 11-6 going into their final week match up in Hilton (if you’re the 6-seed you want ISU to have the 3-seed, not Baylor). Because Scott Drew ain’t going to Hilton with Big 12 seeding on the line and getting a dub.

If you pass Texas AND K-state and move to the 5-seed then you’re rooting for Baylor to be #3 and ISU to be #4…confused yet?

Let’s say OSU passes Texas but not K-State and Iowa State passes Baylor…then you’d be looking at something like this…

I mean if you’re looking at Mizzou in the semis of the Big 12 tournament and some combination of Baylor, Kansas, and Kansas State in the finals…crazier things have happened, right?

RIGHT?