2 1/2 horse conference race

With the latest round of games in the books, by all accounts the race is going to come down to KU and Baylor. WVU has a very outside chance but with only 9 games left in the season, picking up 3 games on Baylor or 2 on KU is getting more unlikely. Tech still has an extremely outside chance and would not only have to win out, but KU and Baylor would pretty much have to play .500 ball going forward.

OSU is down 8 games with 9 to go, so it's entirely possible that they'll be mathematically eliminated on Saturday when they travel to Baylor.

A real eye-opener is how tough the road is for most teams this year. Baylor and KU are both undefeated on the road, but only Texas has 2 road wins (2-5) and nobody else has more than 1.

If you assume that you need at least 13 wins to get a share of the championship (unlikely this year) OSU, ISU and KSU are already out of it, and OU, TCU and Texas are on the bubble. If you assume that 14 will get you a piece, all 6 of those teams are already out and TTech is on the bubble (1-3 on the road and playing at Texas on Saturday).

The takeaway from all this is that it seems that this year, the dropoff in the conference is much steeper. According to Sagarin (and likely reflected similarly in your favorite model), KU (#1) and Baylor (#4) are both top 5. Nobody else is in the top 10, with WVU at #14. Tech is outside the top 20 at #24. then the bottom falls out: with everyone else outside the top 50.

This also makes it much more likely that it's going to come down to KU @Baylor on Feb 22nd to see if we can get back to being the de-facto Big 12 winners.

All good, but I wouldn't sleep on KU at WVU next Wed. That could throw a monkey wrench into the race for KU.

Right now Baylor is clearly in the drivers seat thanks to beating Kansas inLawrence. They have an 80% probability of winning the Big 12. Kansas has a 39% probability. West Virginia is under5% thanks in large part to their loss to Kansas St in Manhattan. It is to the point that if Kansas loses to Baylor in Waco, this race is all but over. if you look at the composite of all computer models, Kansas is ranked No. 1, Baylor is No. 2 and West Virginia is No. 8. I keep waiting for Baylor to have one of “those games” but they have stayed steady. Gotta give them credit. If KU can stay within 1 game into the final game it will be very interesting. Kansas plays Texas Tech in Lubbock and Baylor travels to Morgantown. It would take several miracles for West Virginia to emerge as champion. But crazy things tend to happen in the Big 12.

Not sleeping on anybody, JRhawk. We have zero margin of error as long as Baylor isn't doing anything to help us. At the same time, they also have no margin of error if we keep winning.

While we can't sleep on any of these games, I do think that these are the key ones:

For KU: 2/12 @WVU, 2/22 @Baylor, 3/7 @Tech, and I'd even throw in 2/29 @KSU which will be absolutely insane this year and very distracting.

For Baylor: 2/15 vs. WVU, 2/22 vs. KU, 3/2 vs. Tech, and 3/7 @WVU.

The big glaring thing here is that KU has already beaten WVU in Lawrence and Baylor still needs toplay them twice. We beat Tech in Lawrence, but still need to win there. Baylor has beaten them at Tech but gets game #2 at home.

I'd say that our best bet is that we get some love from WVU (twice would be nice) and we need to win in Waco. KU has the slightly easier path, but we're starting the 2nd half of the conference slate down 1.

I think the game at WVU next Wednesday is key. Survive there and we have a chance. I'm going to be in Australia during the WVU game and ESPN+ will not let me watch without a VPN. If anyone has advice on how I do that, please let me know. 6pm Wednesday CT will be 11am Thursday in Melbourne.

Because every game is critical, don't forget about TCU Saturday.