We're just one week in, and there's been a few surprises already. For the most part, the chart above looks about like you would expect, except that nobody thought Missouri would be up there at the top or that Colorado and Oklahoma wouldn't be down there at the bottom.
For further analysis, follow the yellow-brick jump.
| Seed* | Record* | Tourney* | RPI | Pomeroy | Sagarin | Streak | Best Win** | Worst Loss** | Coach | |
| Texas | 1 | 16-0 | NCAA | 13 | 3 | 1 | W-16 | Pittsburgh | none | Rick Barnes |
| Kansas | 2 | 14-2 | NCAA | 3 | 2 | 2 | W-1 | Temple | Tennessee | Bill Self |
| Kansas State | 3 | 13-3 | NCAA | 4 | 9 | 7 | W-1 | Xavier | Ole Miss | Frank Martin |
| Missouri | 4 | 11-5 | NCAA | 37 | 10 | 18 | W-9 | Kansas State | Oral Roberts | Mike Anderson |
| Baylor | 5 | 9-7 | NCAA | 41 | 32 | 27 | L-1 | Xavier | Colorado | Scott Drew |
| Texas A&M | 6 | 7-9 | NIT | 35 | 43 | 44 | L-1 | Clemson | Washington | Mark Turgeon |
| Oklahoma State | 7 | 6-10 | NIT | 34 | 54 | 52 | L-1 | Texas Tech | Oklahoma | Travis Ford |
| Colorado | 8 | 5-11 | None | 140 | 96 | 112 | W-1 | Baylor | Oregon State | Jeff Bzdelik |
| Texas Tech | 9 | 4-12 | None | 50 | 89 | 76 | L-2 | Washington | Wichita State | Pat Knight |
| Iowa State | 10 | 4-12 | None | 131 | 76 | 75 | L-1 | Bradley | Northwestern | Greg McDermott |
| Nebraska | 11 | 4-12 | None | 108 | 77 | 81 | L-2 | USC | Creighton | Doc Sadler |
| Oklahoma | 12 | 3-13 | None | 109 | 105 | 101 | W-1 | Oklahoma State | San Diego | Jeff Capel |
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
As I predicted, road teams continued to suffer early in the week, defying the collective predictions of my silly little model. From here on out, whenever BIG 12 OUTLOOK predicts more than half of the road teams will win in a given set of games, I'm just going to chalk up a couple of whiffs on my record beforehand.
But on Wednesday, Big 12 road teams Kansas, Missouri and Texas broke through in a big way, winning all three games to cement themselves as the league leaders.
K-State has a chance to join them today by winning at Colorado in what almost becomes a must-win game if we want to stay within a game of Missouri and head into Big Monday on the right note (and with a winning conference record).
That's even more crucial, because Missouri has a better-than-average chance to collect its second road win in conference play today before our game even tips off. We need to keep up with the Tigers if they beat a paltry Oklahoma team in Norman.
Meanwhile, Colorado and Nebraska basically switched places. Colorado's win over Baylor propelled the Buffaloes into uncharted projection territory. Escaping the bottom four would be amazing for the Buffs, and 6-10 actually looks attainable if they can keep beating some people at home. The inverse of that is Nebraska, whose schedule in the North just looks totally brutal right now.
Right now, it looks like the bottom of the league simply will beat up on each other all season, splitting the home-and-home series in almost all instances. I think there's only one projected road win by a team other than Baylor, KU, K-State, Mizzou or Texas — A&M at Tech. That's just crazy.
The net effect is that right now, it only looks like five tourney teams for the Big 12, based on recent history. A&M and OSU will need to pick off a few upsets, because right now, they each look like 12-loss teams, and I'm not sure that will be enough to keep their bubbles from popping. In the past, it certainly wouldn't be, but the strength of this league could be sufficient to push them over the edge this year. We shall see.
By the way, how brutal is this conference if 7-9 can get you a No. 6 seed?
GAMER: Now has K-State beating Baylor and Texas Tech; Colorado beating Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas Tech at home; and Missouri beating Oklahoma State.
Pomeroy: Now has K-State beating Baylor and Texas; Colorado beating Nebraska at home; and Iowa State beating Oklahoma and Texas A&M.
Sagarin: Now has K-State beating Baylor on the road and Kansas* at home; Colorado beating Iowa State, Nebraska and Texas Tech at home; and Oklahoma beating Texas Tech at home.
*This result is marked with an asterisk above and below because — once home-court advantage was factored into the equation — KU and K-State were tied by Sagarin rating. So I flipped a coin (heads = KU, tails = KSU) and it came up tails.
Self-Evaluation
Well, I knew there was no way in hell five road teams were going to win. The question was: Who would fall?
I thought Oklahoma might win, but was pretty shocked that Colorado did. I was even more shocked by Missouri winning, given their road history in recent years. Looks like the Tigers are legit this season.
So, chalk up a 4-2 record and hope the computers get a little smarter about predicting (or rather, not predicting) so many road wins, I say.
For today, I've got us and Missouri netting road wins, and the home teams holding serve in the other four games.
Sounds perfectly reasonable, but we shall see...
Cumulative pick record: 8-3 (.727)
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
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