Monday night, at around the same time that the Kansas men’s basketball team was battling back from the dead against last-place Oklahoma, West Virginia and Baylor were battling in a Big 12 basketball game in Waco, Texas.
Three weeks ago, that game looked like it might mean a whole heck of a lot in the race for the Big 12 title. But Kansas, as it always seems to do, slapped a Heisman-trophy-style stiff arm on the rest of the competition, ran away with a 13th consecutive Big 12 regular season title and rendered that game nearly meaningless.
Meaningless to the very top of the league standings, that is.
By pulling out the victory, the Bears kept alive their hopes of securing the No. 2 seed in next week’s Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, Mo. (I know; I can’t believe it’s here either!)
Iowa State, at 12-5 in Big 12 play, currently holds that distinction, with Baylor and West Virginia tied at 11-6 right behind them.
The Cyclones play at West Virginia this weekend in the regular season finale for both teams while Baylor closes Big 12 play at last-place Texas.
So now I’m guessing we’ve reached the point where most of you are wondering why the heck you’re reading this and what the heck it has to do with Kansas.
The answer? Nothing immediately. But if you’re into looking ahead at all, the musical chairs played by these three teams could have a big time impact on the Jayhawks a week from now.
As the No. 1 seed in the Big 12 tourney, Kansas, as you all know, will play the winner of Wednesday’s 8-9 game at 1:30 p.m. next Thursday in the Big 12 quarterfinals at Sprint Center.
A win there puts KU into the semifinals, where they could — or could not — face the No. 4 seed and that’s why this is all at least mildly interesting to Kansas fans.
Right now, Iowa State would be the 2, Baylor the 3 and West Virginia the 4. At least in my mind, that seems like it would be the absolute worst order for the Jayhawks, given that the Mountaineers beat KU by double digits in Morgantown and controlled Kansas for 37 minutes of the 45-minute overtime thriller in Lawrence a couple of weeks ago.
The thinking there goes like this: If you’re going to have to play the Mountaineers again, you’d probably prefer for it to be in the Big 12 title game.
There is an easy way to fix that. Have WVU beat Iowa State this weekend. Let’s say that happens — on West Virginia’s Senior Day, no less — and let’s say Baylor beats Texas, which also seems logical and likely.
That would leave all three teams with 12-6 records and in a three-way tie behind Kansas.
According to the Big 12’s web site, [ties involving more than two teams are broken for seeding purposes by taking the teams that are tied and looking back at their head-to-head games as a mini-round-robin tournament.][1] The team with the best winning percentage in that exercise wins the seed up for grabs.
In this case, should those three teams finished tied, West Virginia would get the 2 seed (3-1 in mini-round-robin exercise), Baylor would get the 3 (2-2) and Iowa State would be the 4 (1-3).
Again, this is just my opinion, but that outcome would be the best possible set up for Kansas. Even though the Cyclones were one of just three teams to beat KU all season — at home, no less — ISU’s lack of size poses a much better match-up and playing the Cyclones in the semis would prevent Kansas from an absolutely nasty two-games-in-two-days scenario of facing Baylor or West Virginia on Friday and the other in Saturday’s title game.
The folks at Oklahoma State, which, as the 5 seed, has an interest in all of this for its first-round match-up, put out this handy graphic which shows all of the different scenarios from the various possible outcomes of this weekend’s games.
Even though there’s no drama at the top of the conference standings, there’s still plenty to monitor on the final day of regular season play in the Big 12.
[1]: http://www.big12sports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=10410&ATCLID=1520897