Where Will Cowgirls Finish in Big 12 Standings?

Oklahoma State has been a top team in the conference throughout the season.

Oklahoma State Cowgirls guard Micah Gray (3) goes past Arizona State Sun Devils guard Jazion Jackson (7) during a women's college basketball game between the Oklahoma State Cowgirls (OSU) and the Arizona State Sun Devils at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. | BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Cowgirls have been among the Big 12’s best this season, and a top-four finish is looking as likely as ever. 

No. 24 Oklahoma State earned a significant road win against Utah on Tuesday to move to 11-4 in conference play and three-way tie for fourth place. Of the other five teams with an 11-4 or better mark in conference play, OSU is 5-1, with a win over each team. 

Over the final weeks of the season, OSU might have a chance to climb the rankings and NCAA Tournament seeding, with the top goals being to win the Big 12 Tournament and to earn a top-four seed in the NCAA Tournament, which would give the Cowgirls home-court advantage in the first two rounds. 

Of course, OSU’s best chance to make those goals a reality will be to have a strong finish to the regular season. If OSU could finish in the top four of the conference standings, it would earn byes for the first and second rounds of the Big 12 Tournament and advance straight into the quarterfinals. 

After the first 15 games of the conference slate were filled with ranked opponents and Big 12 contenders, OSU can enter its last three games with some clarity. The Cowgirls will host Colorado and Cincinnati before traveling to Kansas to try and avenge its first conference loss. 

While OSU already lost to Kansas once, it has grown over the past several weeks and will enter the final three games as a clear favorite. 

Assuming the Cowgirls can take care of business and finish 14-4, they will almost certainly finish in the top four. The only thing that would complicate OSU’s top-four possibilities would be if Kansas State and West Virginia win out to force a two-team tiebreak with the Mountaineers. 

Considering their schedule, a loss could easily be in the cards. Meanwhile, OSU owns the tiebreak outright in any multi-team or singular scenario that doesn’t involve West Virginia. 

With a 16-team conference, tiebreakers can obviously get complicated in the final weeks, but OSU’s path forward is still as simple as winning out.

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