BIG 12 OUTLOOK: 01.17.11

OK, Colorado no longer is a cute little story.

The Buffaloes are serious players in the Big 12 title discussion, perhaps displacing K-State and Missouri for now due to their signature wins over both teams.

Hell, they might even crack the rankings today. Wouldn't that be something?

But a tough road test now awaits the Buffs, who now must adapt to being the hunted and not the hunter. A similar challenge awaits undefeated Texas A&M when it hits the road for a big showdown in Austin.

Meanwhile, Baylor seeks to lick its wounds and right the ship against Kansas, while Oklahoma and Texas Tech will vie to see who truly is the worst team in the Big 12.

Finally, the two nastiest contests will be played in Columbia and Stillwater.

Two pairs of 1-2 teams will face off in what essentially are elimination games, with the losers falling three games behind the league leaders and effectively out of the championship race for the foreseeable future.

Those will be some physical games to watch!

More after the jump...

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

Very little has changed from Saturday's predictions (presented in an entry which, by the way, has been updated fully since it was posted), with the only seed change being a swap due solely to the Iowa State-Oklahoma State flip I will discuss in more depth a little further down the page.

Due the outcome in Ames, I'm downgrading Baylor back to NIT status (and I plan to keep the Bears there until they net at least one quality win) and upgrading Iowa State to bubble status. Seems reasonable, given what happened.

As you will see below, Oklahoma State's computer popularity is sliding like a rock, but it isn't really reflected in this projected seed order because there just isn't any further for them to fall. As long as they're projected in a tie with us, they have the tiebreaker, and there's no way they can finish as God-awful as Oklahoma and Texas Tech will.

GAMER: Now has Texas losing at Colorado, but winning at Baylor and Nebraska.

Pomeroy: Now has Baylor losing at Oklahoma State, and Iowa State winning at Colorado and Oklahoma State.

Sagarin: Now has Iowa State winning at Oklahoma State.

Self-Evaluation

Finally nailed that most rare of achievements: The perfect day. It only happened a few times last year and I'm always pleased when it does. That puts me just a hair shy of 90-percent accuracy after only three rounds of games.

What's really rare is when all the home teams win, though. I know several of the games were gimmes, but Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma State sure did their best to make it interesting, didn't they?

For the most part, OUTLOOK likes the home teams again this week, with two major exceptions. Obviously, the model favors Kansas in every game it plays, even though I think Baylor has a better chance against the Jayhawks than some might expect after the disaster in Ames.

But the more curious flip came today when two of the three models changed their prediction to Iowa State winning in Stillwater. Clearly, that win over Baylor helped sway them, but I still think OSU is damn hard to beat at home and I fully expect that prediction to blemish my record. We shall see.

The crazy thing is that the other four road teams all are capable of winning. It would not shock me to see Texas A&M win in Austin, Colorado easily could be considered the favorite in Lincoln given what the Buffs have done recently and Texas Tech at Oklahoma is a virtual coin flip.

That leaves the Cats in Columbia, a place they haven't won since Bob Huggins was roaming the sidelines in purple.

Although you have to go with Missouri until K-State displays consistency, it certainly wouldn't shock me if Mizzou lost less than 48 hours after a tough, overtime road loss, even as K-State coasted to an easy home win.

Cumulative pick record: 15-2 (.882)

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