Projecting the Big 12 Standings with KenPom Predictions

Every Big 12 team has played 13 games conference play and every team has five games remaining before the conference tournament. Using KenPom's predictive analytics, we projected what the Big 12 standings will look like at the end of the year and how that would impact the tournament bracket.

Projected Big 12 Standings

Unsurprisingly, Houston is projected to finish as the top seed. The Cougars are the top team nationally in the KenPom rankings. BYU is projected to finish seventh. Although a win over TCU could give BYU the tiebreaker over the Horned Frogs and elevate BYU to the six-seed.

Kansas is expected to take a slide down to fifth since they close with two tough games at Baylor and at Houston.

Team	Actual Conference Record	Projected Conference Record
Houston	10-3	13.9-4.1
Iowa State	9-4	12.8-5.2
Texas Tech	8-5	11.2-6.8
Baylor	8-5	10.7-7.3
Kansas	8-5	10.6-7.4
TCU	7-6	10.0-8.0
BYU	7-6	9.9-8.1
Texas	6-7	8.4-9.6
Oklahoma	6-7	8.1-9.9
Cincinnati	5-8	7.4-10.6
Oklahoma State	4-9	7.2-10.8
Kansas State	5-8	7.0-11.0
UCF	4-9	5.6-12.4
West Virginia	4-9	4.9-13.1

Projected Conference Tournament Bracket

Avoiding a bottom-four finish is critical for the conference tournament. The bottom four teams are the only four teams that don't get first-round byes in the tournament. Given the logjam in the standings, over half of the teams in the conference are at risk of dripping into the bottom four. Every game matters from here on out.

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