BIG 12 OUTLOOK: 03.05.11

Entering the final weekend of play in the Big 12 as we know it, many things still are up for grabs.

The most obvious is whether Kansas while have to share its seventh consecutive conference championship with Texas, the team that beat the Jayhawks on the own floor. Stay tuned to what happens today in Columbia and Waco.

Also crucial are home games for Kansas State and Texas A&M, which each face cellar-dwellers at home in possible trap games on Senior Day. Whichever team can avoid blinking first will be the No. 3 seed in Kansas City.

Then there's a jumble to sort out in the middle. Missouri will seek to stay above .500, although it will be a tough task.

And Baylor, Colorado and Nebraska all are fighting just to stay on the bubble.

For each team, winning today and getting to 8-8 is crucial if it is to have any chance of hearing its name called next week. Of course, for the departing Buffs and Huskers, such a result is mutually exclusive.

One-game striation has taken place among the bottom four teams in the conference, but don't be fooled by the three-game difference between ninth place and 12th.

On a neutral court, I think Iowa State absolutely is capable of beating Oklahoma State — or, for that matter, whoever ends up as the fifth seed.

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

Everything's green these days for the Wildcats, who continue to be the hottest team in the league. With a win today, they would be one waved-off Rodney McGruder 3-pointer away from tying last season's Big 12 record.

But close on their heels are the Kansas Jayhawks, who seek an undisputed and unshared championship this morning at Missouri.

Meanwhile, Texas and Texas A&M saw their profiles slip a bit with respective two-game losing streaks. Both need to win against in-state rivals today to avoid losing seed power in the NCAA Tournament.

Missouri still looks OK for a Big Dance bid, thanks to its non-conference performance, but it would behoove the Tigers not to lose to the No. 11  or No. 12 seed next Wednesday.

Of all the other teams, Colorado appears to be in the best shape for an at-large bid. Yes, the Iowa State loss was an ugly blemish to add to a pre-existing defeat at Oklahoma, but few bubble teams command the kind of signature wins the Buffaloes can boast. But it remains to be seen whether that can overcome a weak non-conference slate.

Baylor, even with a win over Texas, continues to be dragged down by the Iowa State-Oklahoma-Texas Tech trifecta of losses on its resume, and the only signature wins are over a flagging and not-so-impressive Texas A&M team.

The Bears, along with Nebraska and Oklahoma State, look solid for an NIT bid, however, as does Colorado if its bubble bursts. That would give the conference a whopping nine teams in the two significant postseason tourneys.

Iowa State still is a long shot for a bid in either the CBI or the CIT, but I wouldn't bet any money on it. Texas Tech could have been in the same position if it just had won some non-conference games against crap teams.

Oklahoma continues to be an out-of-control, five-alarm dumpster fire. It would not surprise me at all to see Joe Castiglione chase Jeff Capel up the tunnel and fire him Tim Weiser-style after a loss next week to either Colorado or Missouri. A man only can take so many shots of Billy Gillispie grinning on ESPN before he snaps.

GAMER: Now has Kansas winning at Missouri.

Pomeroy: Now has Oklahoma State winning at Oklahoma.

Sagarin: No changes.

Self-Evaluation

As I predicted Monday, OUTLOOK landed another 5-1 week, with the "1" once again being a perfect-storm upset for the Cats. I can do this all year, baby.

That leaves the model having picked 70 of 90 games correctly thus far, which lags behind last year's performance a bit. But it's been a crazier year, so I'm not too worked up about it.

OULOOK's been consistent in picking Kansas and Texas as road winners today, while vacillating back and forth between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in Bedlam. Currently, we're in OSU mode. Otherwise, bet home teams.

If all this holds true, here's what we're looking at next week. It's a bit of a catch-22, really. If Missouri beats Kansas, KU would have to share the title with Texas and K-State wouldn't have to play the Jayhawks until the championship.

But I'd rather play Colorado a third time and get some much-needed revenge than play Mizzou a third time on, at best, a 50-50 court. And we're going to have to face either KU or Texas again in the semis, barring an upset, so we might as well grit our teeth and deal with it.

I suppose if we do end up with the projected bracket, we could root for Colorado over Iowa State, Oklahoma State over Nebraska and Kansas, and Texas A&M over all challengers on the south side of the bracket. That would give K-State a chance to avenge four unchallenged losses en route to a championship for Pullen and Co. Dream on...

Cumulative pick record: 70-20 (.778)

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