Big 12 Women’s Tournament Seeding Scenarios For March 2
The Big 12 women’s basketball tournament is a little more than a week away. With five games remaining, here’s how seeding and scenarios shape up.
No. 1-2 Seeds: Oklahoma and Texas
With Oklahoma beating Kansas State in overtime on Wednesday, the Sooners and the Longhorns remain in a first-place tie. So the tiebreakers get easy from here:
If Texas and Oklahoma both win on Saturday, or if Texas wins and Oklahoma loses, the Longhorns will be the No. 1 seed and Oklahoma will be the No. 2 seed.
If Texas loses and Oklahoma wins, then Oklahoma will be the No. 1 seed and Texas will be the No. 2 seed.
Neither can fall out of the first two seeds.
Now the fun starts.
No. 3-5 Seeds: Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Baylor
Oklahoma State and Iowa State both lost on Wednesday. That moves Baylor into a third-place tie with the pair. Since none of these teams play each other on Saturday, there is a distinct possibility that they could remain tied after Saturday’s games. So … how do we break that?
Well, first, you need the round-robin results for these three teams. So, if all three are still tied after Saturday, it works like this:
Oklahoma State, 3-1 (2-0 vs. Baylor and 1-1 vs. Iowa State)
Iowa State, 2-2 (1-1 vs. Baylor and 1-1 vs. Oklahoma State)
Baylor, 1-3 (0-2 vs. Oklahoma State, 1-1 vs. Iowa State)
In that case, OSU is No. 3, ISU is No. 4 and BU is No. 5. Pretty clean, pretty simple.
But what if it is just two teams that are tied. Let’s run it back:
Oklahoma State and Baylor — OSU No. 3 and BU No. 4. OSU owns the sweep.
Oklahoma State and Iowa State — Since the pair split, it comes down to this per the Big 12: “Each team’s record versus the team occupying the highest position in the final regular season standings, and then continuing down through the standings until one team gains an advantage.”
If it’s Texas, they remained tied. If it’s Oklahoma, they’re still tied (because in that case OSU will have beaten Oklahoma on Saturday). Then you go to the teams below the pair.
If Baylor isn’t tied with the pair, it means the Bears lost to West Virginia on Saturday. In that case, BU and WVU would be tied for fifth. In that situation, per the Big 12: “When arriving at another group of tied teams while comparing records, use each team’s record against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tiebreaking procedures)”
In that case, OSU is No. 3 and ISU is No. 4 because OSU will be 3-1 vs. BU and WVU and ISU will be 2-2 against BU and WVU.
Oh, and Iowa State and Baylor? Same thing. They split so you start with Texas (each split) and then go to Oklahoma (each split) and then you go to … Oklahoma State. Why?
If ISU and BU both win, and OSU loses, then OSU falls a game behind the pair, but a game AHEAD of West Virginia and in fifth place. In that case, ISU is No. 3, BU is No. 4 and OSU is No. 5.
Naturally, if one of them wins (say Oklahoma State) and the other two lose, then OSU would be the No. 3 seed and the head-to-head tiebreakers would apply to the other two.
Oh, and by the way, there’s a chance of a four-way tie? Here’s how that stands for right now, just for the comedy of it:
Oklahoma State, 4-2 (2-0 vs. Baylor, 1-1 vs. Iowa State, 1-1 vs. West Virginia)
Iowa State, 3-3 (1-1 vs. Baylor, Oklahoma State and West Virginia)
West Virginia, 3-2 (1-1 vs. Oklahoma State and Iowa State, 1-0 vs. Baylor)
Baylor, 1-4 (0-2 vs. Oklahoma State, 1-1 vs. Iowa State, 0-1 vs. West Virginia)
But this is only necessary if WVU beats Baylor and OSU and ISU lose. I promise — if it happens, I’ll show how the tie was broken. But right now my head hurts.
No. 6-7: West Virginia, Kansas
So let’s start with Baylor and West Virginia. We need to see if BU can fall into the No. 6 seed if it loses to WVU on Saturday, assuming both OSU and ISU win. In that case the pair would be tied for fifth place and they would have a split of the season series. In this case, Baylor cannot fall to No. 6. BU has a win each over Texas and Oklahoma while WVU was swept by both teams.
So, No. 5 is the furthest Baylor can drop.
If West Virginia loses and Kansas wins, then the two would be tied for sixth place and we would go to tiebreakers for the No. 6 seed. Naturally, the two teams split their season series.
So, back to the top of the standings. If it’s Texas, each was swept. If it’s Oklahoma, each was swept.
Then it would boil down to who is third, fourth and perhaps fifth in the standings, along with the KU and WVU records against those two teams. Plus, if three of those teams are tied (which is possible), you must use the three-team tiebreaker system I wrote about above. In that case, here’s your primer.
Oklahoma State: Kansas is 2-0, West Virginia is 1-1
Iowa State: Kansas is 1-1, West Virginia is 1-1
Baylor: Kansas is 0-2, West Virginia is 0-2 (we’re assuming a WVU loss to Baylor on Saturday).
This scenario favors Kansas being the No. 6 seed and West Virginia being the No. 7 seed.
Nos. 8-9 Seeds: Texas Tech and Kansas State
The Lady Raiders have a one-game lead on Kansas State with one game to play. But since neither can catch Kansas and neither can fall to No. 10, these two teams are playing for which jerseys they wear in Kansas City. The Lady Raiders and the Wildcats will play each other next Thursday night.
No. 10 Seed: TCU
The Horned Frogs are locked into playing the No. 7 seed in Kansas City (either Kansas or West Virginia). Raegen Pebley’s career at TCU will end after TCU’s last game of the season. If the Horned Frogs lose, the coaching search begins.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard
