BIG 12 OUTLOOK: 01.15.11

The surprise of this young Big 12 season continues to be Colorado, which validated its upset win over Missouri with a shocking victory in Manhattan. K-State's flaws aside, the Buffaloes are proving to be a pretty salty team.

They're neck-and-neck with Baylor and Texas A&M, both of which will face significant tests this weekend. Just behind them are traditional conference powers Kansas and Texas, each of which picked up their first Big 12 win.

Then it gets a little more muddied: Everyone else already has lost one or two conference games and is trailing the pack at the top.

Follow the jump for further analysis.

Note: As any of these numbers change, I will bold and color-code them to indicate direction of change.
Team names that are colored indicate a change in seed.
(green = upward, red = downward)

*Predicted
**According to RealTimeRPI

Discussion

An unexpected loss by Kansas State and an unexpectedly lopsided loss by Oklahoma State sent those two teams plummeting near the bottom of the projected standings.

The big gainers were Colorado and Missouri, who picked up two projected wins and one projected win, respectively.

Also moving up due to the fall of teams ahead of them were Baylor and Nebraska. Now we have a congested mass of teams projected to finish at 8-8 or within a few games of .500. Good luck sorting that out, Big 12 Tournament algorithm.

For the time being, I'm upgrading Baylor and Colorado to bubble status, although both still have work to do thanks to poor non-conference resumes. Meanwhile, I'll downgrade K-State and O-State until they pick up a few more Big 12 victories — either real or projected.

GAMER: Now has Colorado winning at Oklahoma.

Pomeroy: Now has Baylor, Missouri and Texas A&M winning at Oklahoma State; Nebraska losing at Colorado; Texas winning at Baylor; and Texas Tech losing at Oklahoma State.

Sagarin: Now has Kansas State losing at Colorado; Missouri winning at Oklahoma State; and Texas A&M losing at Baylor and Nebraska, but winning at Oklahoma State.

Self-Evaluation

Another near-perfect outing destroyed once again by those feisty Buffaloes. The computer models seem to have a handle on everything except the surprise that is Colorado basketball.

Other that, all is according to plan. And with such upset-resistant match-ups as Nebraska at Kansas, Oklahoma at Texas and Texas Tech at Kansas State, look for that pattern to continue Saturday. BIG 12 OUTLOOK likes all the home teams this weekend.

Cumulative pick record: 9-2 (.818)

Key

Results are plugged into this wonderful tool to generate the predicted records and seed order. Winners are predicted by a best-of-three system comprising three statistical prediction models:

• G — RealTimeRPI GAMER (an advanced statistical prediction model, claiming 76.8-percent accuracy)
• P — Ken Pomeroy's rankings (he predicts a probability outcome for each game remaining)
• S — Sagarin composite rankings (home court advantage is taken into account)
  
  

Predicted Outcomes