That's one heck of a clustered mess behind the Jayhawks. Sure will be fun to watch it sort itself out in the next week and a half.
The battle for fourth place promises to be especially interesting, since Texas has to face both Baylor and Texas A&M on the road in upcoming games.
Theoretical question: Now that Colorado and Iowa State both are within a game of Oklahoma and Texas Tech, do they graduate out of the "Northtard" category? Or, since all of those teams are three games back of the NCAA teams, do OU and TTU become "Southtards"?
It's burning questions such as these that keep me up at night.
| Seed* | Record* | Tourney* | RPI | Pomeroy | Sagarin | Streak | Best Win** | Worst Loss** | Coach | |
| Kansas | 1 | 16-0 | NCAA | 1 | 2 | 1 | W-13 | Kansas State | Tennessee | Bill Self |
| Kansas State | 2 | 12-4 | NCAA | 6 | 10 | 6 | W-6 | Baylor | Ole Miss | Frank Martin |
| Baylor | 3 | 11-5 | NCAA | 12 | 17 | 14 | W-1 | Xavier | Colorado | Scott Drew |
| Texas A&M | 4 | 11-5 | NCAA | 18 | 31 | 26 | L-1 | Baylor | Washington | Mark Turgeon |
| Missouri | 5 | 10-6 | NCAA | 39 | 12 | 15 | W-3 | Kansas State | Oral Roberts | Mike Anderson |
| Texas | 6 | 9-7 | NCAA | 22 | 11 | 10 | W-2 | Pittsburgh | Oklahoma | Rick Barnes |
| Oklahoma State | 7 | 8-8 | NCAA | 33 | 49 | 39 | L-1 | Kansas State | Oklahoma | Travis Ford |
| Texas Tech | 8 | 5-11 | NIT | 51 | 84 | 65 | L-4 | Oklahoma State | Wichita State | Pat Knight |
| Colorado | 9 | 4-12 | None | 141 | 93 | 102 | L-2 | Baylor | Oregon State | Jeff Bzdelik |
| Oklahoma | 10 | 4-12 | None | 104 | 96 | 94 | L-5 | Texas | San Diego | Jeff Capel |
| Iowa State | 11 | 3-13 | None | 117 | 82 | 81 | W-1 | Saint Louis | Oklahoma | Greg McDermott |
| Nebraska | 12 | 3-13 | None | 144 | 91 | 99 | L-7 | Tulsa | Colorado | Doc Sadler |
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
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?
Which is why there basically were no changes this week. Assuming everything holds as predicted tomorrow, we're probably looking at the following bracket:
No. 8 Texas Tech vs. No. 8 Colorado — A rematch of the final game of the regular season.
No. 5 Missouri vs. No. 12 Nebraska
No. 7 Oklahoma State vs. No. 10 Oklahoma — Bedlam, Part 3.
No. 6 Texas vs. No. 11 Iowa State
No. 1 Kansas vs. 8/9 winner
No. 4 Texas A&M vs. 5/12 winner — Potential revenge for Missouri.
No. 2 Kansas State vs. 7/10 winner — Potential revenge for us.
No. 3 Baylor vs. 6/11 winner
GAMER: No change.
Pomeroy: No change.
Sagarin: No change.
Self-Evaluation
Woohoo! My first 6-0 week — and only my second perfect week — this year.
That's the goal, baby. It's been harder this season, but I'm hopeful that we've finally locked in on who the better teams are, and now that they're the only ones with something for which to play, they should continue whooping the others.
As a result, my pick percentage now is an eye-popping 80 percent. If you can nail four out of every five games in this league, you're doing something right.
Today, there appear to be three sets of games.
I predict a bad day in the Land Thief State, because Baylor and Kansas seem to be prohibitive favorites on the road.
K-State looks pretty safe at home, and yes, I'm going out on a limb and predicting that Nebraska will snap its seven-game losing streak. Who better to beat than Texas Tech, which has lost four in a row and doesn't have a single RPI Top 100 road win on its resume? Hell, the Red Raiders only have won two road games all season.
In between those two extremes, there's Colorado and Texas A&M. Both appear to be favorites at home, but either Iowa State or Texas winning on the road to complete the sweep wouldn't surprise anyone, either. If I get tripped up today, I'll bet you anything one of those two games, or both, is responsible.
Cumulative pick record: 63-15 (.808)
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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