BIG 12 OUTLOOK: 02.07.11

Thanks to Baylor's surprising win at Texas A&M, six teams now stand clustered in the middle of the Big 12 rankings at four wins apiece.

For the time being, I'm going to refer to Colorado, K-State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M as the "Six-Pack."

Missouri is likely to lose to Kansas tonight, and Oklahoma to Texas later this week, so only the Colorado-Texas A&M winner should defect from our august company.

Baylor beating A&M actually was OK for K-State, although it still made me mad because I strongly dislike the Bears.

It was favorable because we beat Baylor and A&M beat us, so we'd certainly prefer to end up in a tie-breaking situation for a bye with Baylor at the end of the year, instead of the Aggies.

Plus, Baylor still has to play Texas twice, while aTm already got those losses out of the way. The more losses Turgeon suffers now, the merrier.

All of this assumes, of course, that the Cats can continue picking off wins nobody thinks they will get. Iowa State was a nice start, but this weekend's game in Boulder looms large as one of the most important games this year.

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, K-State and Missouri were the big upward movers Saturday. The latter gained a projected win due to Nebraska's continued free-fall, while the other two each won road games BIG 12 OUTLOOK did not predict correctly.

Conversely, Colorado fell due to its disadvantageous tie with a newly resurgent Baylor team, while Nebraska and Oklahoma State fell due to diminishing computer numbers. Despite a win, Okie Lite apparently was so unimpressive that Pomeroy now predicts them, for the first time all season, to lose at Oklahoma.

Oklahoma thus gained an extra win, while Iowa State picked up an unexpected loss, but both were unaffected in the order of standings.

Baylor's win was good enough for me to move the Bears back to bubble status, even though they still have a lot of work to do. Texas A&M would have become a signature win for them, but three consecutive losses have sent the Aggies screaming past K-State in the RPI. Who would have seen that coming a week ago?

In the ultimate insult, OSU lost ground in all three computer systems despite a win over its rival. I guess that goes to show that who you play is just as important as what you do. The same goes for Texas, which lost ground despite its eighth consecutive win, and Texas Tech, which was boosted simply by playing Texas and losing.

GAMER: No changes.

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

Sagarin: Now has Missouri winning at Nebraska.

Self-Evaluation

4-2 is becoming pretty standard for OUTLOOK of late. As usual, there was a pair of "upset" losses on the road it didn't see coming, even though I thought there was a pretty good chance of the Cats winning. Still, but for Jacob Pullen's poise down the stretch, they nearly made this system look infallible.

As for Baylor, no one could have seen that coming, even though it was blatantly obvious in hindsight with the way the Aggies have been playing ever since Texas stole their mojo.

This week sees Iowa State, K-State, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech on a bye, so I'm hoping to go at least 3-1.

Baylor and Kansas should take care of business at home, but that Colorado-Texas A&M game is a bit of a toss-up only because both teams have dropped so many games lately. It will be interesting to see which one can recover more quickly and put together some positive energy en route to a key victory for seeding purposes.

And if you're looking for an unconventional upset special, how about Oklahoma over Texas? The Longhorns likely will drop a head-scratcher on the road somewhere, and the way they played in the second half against Texas Tech sounded like alarm bells to me.

Plus, OU always plays its mega-rival tough in most sports, even if it is at a talent disadvantage. But will that be enough against the hottest team in the league, in what certainly is not one of the Big 12's more intimidating arenas?

Probably not, but it bears watching nonetheless.

Cumulative pick record: 38-13 (.745)

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