BIG 12 OUTLOOK: 02.21.11

Who will be the fifth team from the Big 12 to achieve "lock" status for the NCAA Tournament?

The smart money is on the Cats, but someone's going to have to rise out of that 6-6 deadlock before anyone can say definitively.

The five teams below that are done, though, having each attained double-digit losses before March. But Colorado and Oklahoma State still have a decent shot at the NIT if they can snag a few more wins.

The top four seeds in the Big 12 Tournament appear to be set, if you only look at the standings. But the battle for No. 4 might not be as settled as you think, as you will see 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

Baylor's loss was the projected gain of three North teams angling for 8-8 records, barring any surprises. It also let Texas Tech leapfrog Oklahoma for the first time in weeks and gave Oklahoma State another projected win.

Clearly, Nebraska was the big mover of the week, for obvious reasons. The Huskers won their third straight, moved up two spots in the seed order, saw an across-the-board boost to their computer numbers, interjected themselves into the Big 12 bubble discussion and set up an absolutely huge showdown Wednesday in Lincoln.

Meanwhile, Baylor fell right back onto the bubble not one day after I elevated it to NCAA status, and frankly, it's the wrong side of the bubble. The loss to Texas Tech completed a rare trifecta, along with losses at Iowa State and Oklahoma, and given that it came at home, it has to be considered the worst of the bunch. Baylor looks NIT-bound.

GAMER: No changes.

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

Sagarin: Now has Baylor losing at Oklahoma State.

Self-Evaluation

I did warn of the upset potential Saturday in Lincoln, but nobody saw Texas Tech's win at Baylor coming.

Considering all that, 4-2 is a pretty good performance. And I'd be pretty happy with that outcome again this week.

Despite all three predictive systems' confidence in Colorado, my eyes tell me Texas Tech is a hot team (even though the Red Raiders lost to Texas and Missouri, they played markedly better in the second halves of those games) and Colorado is a sliding team. I easily can see Tech winning that one.

And as far as I am concerned, the K-State/Nebraska game is a total toss-up. It will be a difficult game for the Cats to win, to be sure, but not an impossible one now that they are playing their best ball of the season.

KU, Missouri and the two Texas schools should roll at home.

Cumulative pick record: 55-17 (.764)

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

Predicted Outcomes