After checking the logarithms, poring over the actuarial tables, crunching the rhomboids and dumping everything into the sieve of Eratosthenes, I have come to this monumental mathematical conclusion:
Oklahoma has the best chance of winning or sharing the Big 12 Conference men’s basketball championship.
Actually, saying the Sooners have the best shot doesn’t really require deep-think. It’s as simple as this: Oklahoma has only two road games remaining. The other three contenders — Kansas University, Texas and Oklahoma State — all have three road trips left.
Here’s a capsule look at each of the contender’s stretch runs:
Kansas: The Jayhawks are alone at the top with just one league defeat, but that’s deceptive because their three toughest road trips remain — to Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Missouri. Home games still on KU’s schedule are enigmatic Colorado, improving Texas A&M and in-your-face Oklahoma State.
Oklahoma: Only road journeys remaining are to Texas A&M and Missouri. Meanwhile, the Sooners have the other three contenders at home plus sad sack Nebraska. If the Sooners hold service at home and win at least one of the road games, they’ll wind up 13-3 and that record may be good enough to claim at least a share of the title.
Oklahoma State: With trips remaining to Oklahoma, Kansas and tough-in-the-mountains Colorado, the Cowboys may have a difficult time overcoming that astonishing home loss to Baylor last weekend. Pokes’ remaining home slate contains Texas, Texas Tech and Texas A&M.
Texas — Longhorns have three road trips left and all are potential minefields — Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech. Following Monday night’s clash with Tech, the Longhorns’ remaining home games are against Baylor and Kansas State. The Bears and Wildcats might as well mail in those scores.
None of the potential league champs have a primrose path, but if I had to rank the four schedules in degree of difficulty, I’d say Texas has the most difficult remaining slate, followed by Kansas, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma.
Kansas, however, could eventually benefit from the geography factor. Since the Jayhawks are in the conference’s north division, they face the other contenders just once while the three south schools have to tangle with each other twice.
Missouri is the X factor. The Tigers are probably hoping against hope they can avoid the dreaded No. 5 seed in the conference tourney. If you’re the fifth seed, you have to play on the first day while seeds 1 through 4 earn a bye. Regardless, Mizzou could spoil the title hopes of Kansas, Oklahoma or both.
It’s not far-fetched to say the championship could come down to the last game of the regular season on Sunday, March 9, when the Jayhawks travel to Columbia, Mo., and perform in the inhospitable Hearnes Center for the next-to-last time. In two years, Kansas will play the Tigers in a new arena, also sure to be inhospitable, now under construction.
With three of the Big 12 title hopefuls — Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas — ranked in the top six in the polls and Oklahoma State hanging in the second 10, college basketball buffs are wondering, even with the continuation of the pod system, how the NCAA can possibly send all four schools to Oklahoma City — the closest first-round site for all of them.
As much as the NCAA is committed to providing propinquity, I can’t imagine all four schools playing in Okie City. One or two may have to be sent to Indianapolis and, of those four, guess which one is the closest to Indianapolis. Yep, the one right here in River City.
I imagine the Big 12 champion — not the tourney champ — will be assured of going to Oklahoma City with one or two of the runners-up also designated for Oklahoma’s capital city as part of a pod from another region.
Still, as we have seen so many times in the past, it really doesn’t matter where a team is assigned in the NCAA Tournament because all the venues have two baskets, a wooden floor, not enough seats for the demand and those paint-drying CBS timeouts.
