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Big 12 Tournament Preview: Seedings, Clinching Scenarios with 2 Games to Go

We take a look at the current seedings and the clinching scenarios available to the Big 12 teams heading into the final week.

By Andy Mitts
NCAA Basketball: Big 12 Championship-Iowa State vs West Virginia Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

The weekend games went about the way that you would expect them to have gone (which isn’t saying much given how crazy the year has been), and it’s time to check in again on our current seeds and potential clinching scenarios.

As a reminder, the tiebreaker rules for the Big 12 tournament can get a bit complicated, starting out simply enough with head-to-head. After that, it looks at records against each rank, with all tied teams considered in one block before any tiebreakers are applied to that block. There is an exception if there are only two teams tied in that block and one of them swept the other. After that, it gets really wild, looking at the road records of the tied teams. We only get to that point in the clinching scenarios, where if everything fell just right, Kansas would need their superior road record to take the top seed (although it’s not technically a clinching scenario yet).

So as it stands right now, the Big 12 Tournament seeding is this:

  1. Kansas (12-4).
  2. Texas Tech (10-6). Wins tiebreaker over West Virginia due to head-to-head record (1-0).
  3. West Virginia (10-6).
  4. Kansas State (9-7).
  5. TCU (8-8).
  6. Baylor (7-9). Wins tiebreaker over Texas and Oklahoma due to round-robin record (2-1).
  7. Texas (7-9). Wins tiebreaker over Oklahoma due to head-to-head record (2-0).
  8. Oklahoma (7-9).
  9. Oklahoma State (6-10).
  10. Iowa State(4-12)

The scenarios has started to crystallize:

Kansas can clinch the 1 seed with either a win against Texas OR a Texas Tech loss against West Virginia.

Texas Tech can clinch the 2 seed with a win against West Virginia.

West Virginia can clinch a 3 seed or higher with a win against Texas Tech.

Kansas State can clinch at least the 4 seed with a win against TCU.

TCU can clinch a bye in the first round of the Big 12 tournament (6 seed or higher) with a win against Kansas State AND a Baylor win over Oklahoma. They can still get as high as the 3 seed.

Baylor can clinch a bye in the first round of the Big 12 tournament with a win against Oklahoma AND a TCU win over Kansas State. They can still get as high as the 5 seed.

No other team can clinch a bye in the first round of the Big 12 tournament.

Iowa State is locked into the 10th seed.

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