Big 12 Basketball Tournament: Kansas State, Texas Tech favored to win
By Chris Kern
Bracketology: Bubble Watch
The Big 12 has six teams that are comfortably in the field. Then they have two teams on the bubble, and then two more teams outside of the field. Texas and TCU both have work to do to get into the field. They both are in a good spot though as they are in a good enough spot to where they don’t need to win the Big 12 Tournament.
Texas
They have to beat Kansas on Thursday night. They need to win another game after that to be confident but if they don’t beat Kansas then they will not be playing in the NCAA Tournament. It doesn’t matter how good their wins are. If you are 16-16, you aren’t worthy of hearing your name called on Selection Sunday. If they beat Kansas though, they put their name back in the running.
A record of 17-16 isn’t that great either and there’s a good chance that wouldn’t be enough to get in. If they can beat Kansas on Thursday and then Texas Tech on Friday, then I don’t think they would need to win the conference tournament. If Texas Tech were to get upset and they were to play Oklahoma in that game then they may feel like they need to win the conference tournament.
Texas has a lot of quality wins but they have suffered a lot of losses. The path to an at-large is very possible still but to feel 100% safe they likely want to win the conference tournament. We can think about the scenarios all we want but the Longhorns have to worry about getting focused. If they would’ve defended their home floor on Saturday they likely wouldn’t be in this situation.
TCU
The team that beat Texas on Saturday was TCU and it was a huge win for them. If they would’ve lost that game, it would’ve put them in a spot to where they needed to win the conference tournament. Now they just need to take care of business against Oklahoma State. The Cowboys have been playing very well, though, so it’s going to be tough.
That win wouldn’t make them safe by any means, though. If they want to be in the NCAA Tournament, then they need to earn it and to do that they need to beat the top-seeded Kansas State Wildcats. If they were to do that, then I think they should feel good about their chances to at least be headed to Dayton for the First Four.
For how the Horned Frogs have played recently, they cannot look ahead of Oklahoma State, because if they do, they will lose. TCU is capable of getting the wins required to get into the NCAA Tournament. This is a veteran group that wants to go out the right way to look for them to come in focused and ready to go in Kansas City.