The Oklahoma State Cowgirls went to Salt Lake City to take on the Utah Utes in a pivotal Big 12 Conference race to influence seeding in the women’s tournament.
The Cowgirls — who were looking up at the Utes in the Big 12 race — rallied to win, 68-64. Meanwhile, in Lawrence, Kansas outlasted UCF, 63-58.
Did Oklahoma State’s victory change the pecking order when it comes to the Big 12 Tournament? No. 17 West Virginia’s win over No. 12 Kansas State on Monday sure did. Did lightning strike twice?
As a reminder, we used the Big 12 rules on the web site for tiebreakers.
So, if the Big 12 women’s tournament started today, here is how the tournament would be seeded.
Seeds Nos. 1-4: Double Byes
No. 1 TCU (12-2)
No. 2 Baylor (12-2)
No. 3 Kansas State (12-3)
No. 4 Oklahoma State (11-4)
Welcome to a double bye, OSU. Here’s why. So, Oklahoma State, Utah and West Virginia all have the same record. So, we use the tiebreaker rules for more than two teams. Per the Big 12:
“Results from the collective head-to-head competition during the regular season among the tied teams in a mini round-robin format, ranking the tied teams by winning percentage from highest to lowest will be used to determine the seeds.”
Right now, OSU is 2-1 (.667), followed by West Virginia at 1-1 (.500) and Utah at 0-1 (.000). So, the Cowgirls get the No. 4 seed for now. That’s why winning that game was so big for Oklahoma State.
So, why is Utah just 0-1? It hasn’t played WVU yet. That happens next week. OSU and WVU played twice and split.
Teams with double byes don’t play until the quarterfinals.
Seeds Nos. 5-8: Single Byes
No. 5 West Virginia (11-4)
No. 6 Utah (11-4)
No. 7 Iowa State (9-5)
No. 8 Colorado (8-6)
So now what? Remember — WVU and Utah haven’t played yet and once we’ve broken the three-way tie we must revert to the two-team tiebreaker rules. Head-to-head is first, and that’s not applicable. Next is this old chestnut — each team’s winning percentage versus the team occupying the highest position in the final regular season standings.
We start with TCU, since the Horned Frogs are No. 1. Utah lost to the Horned Frogs and WVU plays them this weekend. But guess what? That doesn’t give the Mountaineers the seed. Why?
As the Big 12 tiebreaker rules state, “2-0 is not better than 1-0 or 0-0, 0-0 and 0-1 is not better than 0-2.”
Yeah, OK. Sure.
What I think that means is because WVU hasn’t played TCU we can’t use that to break the tie, nor does it hand WVU the No. 5 seed temporarily.
So, we continue. Both teams lost to No. 2 Baylor. But, WVU beat Kansas State and Utah lost to Kansas State. So, for now, WVU gets No. 5.
The good news is all of this gets cleared up when WVU and Utah play each other next week.
Teams that receive single byes don’t play until the second round.
First Round (Seeds 9-16)
No. 9 Arizona (6-8)
No. 10 Cincinnati (6-8)
No. 11 Kansas (5-10)
No. 12 BYU (4-10)
No. 13 Texas Tech (3-11)
No. 14 Arizona State (2-12)
No. 15 UCF (2-13)
No. 16 Houston (1-13)
Some small changes:
Kansas moved up to No. 11 after beating UCF and breaking its tie (for now) with BYU. Remember — the Jayhawks and Cougars play later this month and that will give us the true head-to-head in case of a tie.
UCF drops to No. 15, for now, because its winning percentage is worse than Arizona State’s.
The remaining 10 teams in the league are in action on Wednesday, so we’ll get a true sense of the seeding with three games left. I’d watch the BYU-Arizona and Baylor-Colorado games. Both could influence the last single bye in the tournament.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
