Bubble Watch - Big 12

Lockbox:

Kansas (17-5) (6-3) NET 17 SoS 1

Vital signs:  4-5 R/N, non-con SoS 1, 8-4 vs. Quad 1, 5-1 vs. Quad 2, avg win 65

Signature wins:  N-Tennessee, N-Michigan St, N-Marquette, and there’s more

Bad losses:  @WVU

A resume with a ton of extremes.  Once again, Kansas has the #1 non-con SoS in the country.  That always plays well with the committee.  3 high end neutral site wins, which makes road losses to Kentucky and Iowa St disappear basically.  The Texas and ASU road losses, maybe not though.  Here’s the amazing thing about this almost flawless resume – only one true road win (Baylor).  Does the committee punish that, or do they consider the neutral site wins a trump card?  13 Quad 1+2 wins, and an average win of 65 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) are #1 overall seed worthy.  The true road win thing is the only flaw, but it’s a big one.  I can justify any rank between 1 and 8 for this team right now.

Texas Tech (17-5) (5-4) NET 16 SoS 40

Vital signs:  5-4 R/N, non-con SoS 171, 3-5 vs. Quad 1, 6-0 vs. Quad 2, avg win 156

Signature wins:  K-State, @Texas?  N-Nebraska?

Bad losses:  none, if @Baylor doesn’t count

They’ve lost their 5 toughest games and won every other game.  Not much else to say about the resume.  With the Big 12 providing quality win chances throughout, they’ll be fine if they keep this up, but seeding them will be another matter.

Bubble:

Iowa St (17-5) (6-3) NET 13 SoS 45

Vital signs:  6-4 R/N, non-con SoS 121, 3-4 vs. Quad 1, 3-1 vs. Quad 2, avg win 142

Signature wins:  @TTU, Kansas, @Ole Miss?

Bad losses:  N-Arizona, I suppose

No metric stands out as high-quality, but no metric is a red flag either.  Lost most, but not all, of their signature win chances (road losses to Kansas, Iowa, and Baylor masked by the two roadies they did get).  They’re fine if they keep their wheels on the road.

TCU (15-6) (3-5) NET 36 SoS 70

Vital signs:  5-5 R/N, non-con SoS 70, 1-5 vs. Quad 1, 4-1 vs. Quad 2, avg win 137

Signature wins:  Baylor, Florida, Texas

Bad losses:  Lipscomb at home is the worst

Your red flag here is 1 true road win, against SMU.  They’ve lost 5 road games in conference play, all tough ones.  Kansas, TTU, Baylor, KState, OU.  The problem?  No more chances at truly signature wins unless they come at home, which limits their resume upside.  They do need more quality wins by March, for sure, though.

Kansas St (16-5) (6-2) NET 30 SoS 39

Vital signs:  6-4 R/N, non-con SoS 109, 3-2 vs. Quad 1, 4-3 vs. Quad 2, avg win 124

Signature wins:  @Iowa St, TTU, @Oklahoma

Bad losses:  @A&M, @Tulsa aren’t great

This is your standard “probably in, just don’t lose a bunch in a row” resume.  There’s enough road results, just enough SoS, just enough quality wins to make me feel good about this one.

Baylor (15-6) (6-2) NET 29 SoS 74

Vital signs:  5-3 R/N, non-con SoS 223, 4-3 vs. Quad 1, 5-1 vs. Quad 2, avg win 131

Signature wins:  Iowa St, TTU, @Oklahoma

Bad losses:  Texas Southern and Stephen F Austin at home (2 quad 4 losses!)

Those are some butt ugly losses at the end there (neither team is at their peak, so it’s much worse than you think).  The good news is that the Big 12 is so strong, it won’t matter if you post results in conference play.  Which they have so far.  Big warning sirens though for this fact:  Kansas, K-State, ISU, TTU road games are still looming.  That’s 4 probable losses.  The non-con SoS will not provide sufficient cover for them if they lose a bunch of these tough games coming up.

Oklahoma (15-7) (3-6) NET 37 SoS 12

Vital signs:  7-5 R/N, non-con SoS 10, 3-6 vs. Quad 1, 5-1 vs. Quad 2, avg win 88

Signature wins:  N-Florida, TCU?  Wofford?

Bad losses:  @WVU

Here’s a case where you have to dive in on the numbers.  7 road/neutral wins, avg win below 100, sterling SoS usually means automatic safety.  However, the avg win is buttressed by the fact that OU hasn’t played a single opponent in the 200s or 300s in NET this year.  They do get credit for that scheduling, but they don’t have the signature wins that usually come with a computer profile like this.

Texas (12-10) (4-5) NET 41 SoS 3

Vital signs:  3-6 R/N, non-con SoS 11, 4-5 vs. Quad 1, 3-3 vs. Quad 2, avg win 102

Signature wins:  N-UNC, Purdue, Kansas

Bad losses:  Radford, Providence at home?

So they have the signature wins…and 10 losses.  A few questionable ones (add @Georgia and @Okla St to that list above).  In the end, the committee will reward signature wins above all else, so they just need to avoid piling up more losses.  The good news is I think they have enough quality wins where it’s more about taking care of the Quad 2 games than it is about getting another Quad 1 win.  We’ve seen teams get in with 14 losses, so it’s doable.