(I posted this as a separate thread before jmlynch1 pointed out to me that this thread exists. Whoops. Glad I spent all that time diagramming this out.
)
So, being the nerd that I am, I sat down tonight and drew out a little diagram of the Big XII schedule, filled in the conference results so far, and predicted the remainder of the conference season, using two basic guidelines: 1) all things being equal, the home team in Big XII play will win, and 2) the top 5 teams in the south are as good or better than everyone but ku in the north. Where those guidelines didn't help, I made the call myself based on my impressions of the teams thus far and what seemed to be the most likely result.
In a nutshell, the results were that our supposed advantage in having more games against the NorTards and allowing the South to beat each other up is largely a myth. Unfortunately, the immense level of suckitude in the North, combined with the retention of Baylor as the SouTard, mean that in order for us to finish higher than 6th, we're going to have to outperform expectations, perhaps significantly (ie, by as many as 2 games).
My schedule grid resulted in the following final conference standings:
1) ku, 14-2.
2t) aTm, 11-5. *
2t) UT, 11-5.
4t) OSU, 10-6. **
4t) TT, 10-6.
6) KSU, 9-7.
7) OU, 8-8.
8 ) MU, 7-9.
9t) NU, 5-11. ***
9t) ISU, 5-11.
11) BU, 4-12.
12) CU, 2-14.
* For the purposes of the Big XII tourney, aTm wins the 2nd spot based on the coin-flip tiebreaker.
** For the purposes of the Big XII tourney, OSU wins the 4th spot based on the division record tiebreaker.
*** For the purposes of the Big XII tourney, NU wins the 9th spot based on the division record tiebreaker.
Thus, the conference tourney would shape up as follows:
5) TT vs. 12) Colorado
6) KSU vs. 11) BU
7) OU vs. 10) ISU
8 ) MU vs. 9) NU
1) ku vs. 8 ) MU
2) aTm vs. 10) ISU
3) UT vs. 6) KSU
4) OSU vs. 5) TT
1) ku vs. 5) TT
2) aTm vs. 3) UT
1) ku vs. 2) aTm
Under this scenario, KSU would finish at 21-12, and I would think be the first Big XII team out of the tourney, as my schedule grid doesn't include any remaining wins over a "marquee" team. We'd probably wind up with a couple of NIT home games. Maybe WSU could come to town...providing we pack Bramlage for the rest of our conference season. Otherwise, we'd probably get to go to WSU.
Now, the best shot we would have at making the tourney based on my schedule grid would be by beating Texas or OSU. Beating Texas would drop them and raise us into a four-way tie for 3rd place, giving us the 5th seed in the tourney, it would also give us a nice win for the resume, it would raise our record to 22-11, and it might even give us a shot at getting to 23-10 because of a better shot at winning the second game of the tourney vs. Tech. Beating OSU would drop them to 6th place and raise us into a tie with Tech for 4th place, but still a 5th seed in the tourney since we lost to them. As with beating Texas, this would give us another shot at Tech in the second round of the tourney, with the possibility of finishing 23-10 with a nice win for the resume. Beating ku wouldn't help us as much in the conference race, although it would give us the best win for our resume.
