MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Welcome back to the WVU Coliseum, where No. 10 West Virginia is about to begin a stretch of four consecutive home games to end the regular season. It begins today against a Kansas State team that has won two in a row coming in and suddenly doesn’t look like a team that’s ninth in the Big 12.
It is the Big 12 standings — and more to the point the system used by the conference in determining a champ when teams haven’t played the same amount of games — that we will focus on today.
This is the link to the Big 12 tiebreaker policies. You’ll have to scroll down for the most part until you get to “Unbalanced Tiebreaker,” because only two league schools — Kansas and Oklahoma State — are going to play all 18 Big 12 games, while the majority of schools will play 17. TCU will play 16 and Baylor is down for 14.
That’s about as unbalanced as you can get. What does it all mean? Well, there are two interesting parts, one in determining a regular-season champ and another in determining the seeding for the Big 12 Tournament.
The first thing that jumps out — if we truly had a season that was even more wild and unpredictable than it already was — is it’s possible for a team to be crowned regular-season champ but not necessarily earn the No. 1 seed in the conference tourney.
How? Well, lets pretend Baylor only played 10 league games and went 10-0, while the other nine Big 12 schools played 17 or 18 games. In that situation, losses would be added to Baylor’s overall conference record — because it was not within four games of the league average — until it met the average of games played, so we’re guessing Baylor’s record would be 10-7, or something like that. In that case, a team like West Virginia or Kansas or Oklahoma would actually be crowned regular-season champ.
Baylor would still be the No. 1 seed in the Big 12 tournament, though, because the league uses actual winning percentage to determine the seeds, or in this case Baylor’s 1.000% (10-0) would be higher than anyone else in the conference.
All of that is kind of a moot point, unless the Bears were to go on another COVID-19 pause and not be able to stay within four games of the average of what everyone else in the Big 12 played.
What does come into play is the actual percentages, because — again we’re pretending here — what does it look like if Baylor were to lose two or three over its final four games? Say Baylor finishes 12-2. The Bears travel to Kansas today and then to WVU on Tuesday, so its at least feasible. Then, let’s say WVU goes 4-0 in its final four home games and finishes 13-4.
In that scenario, WVU would have more conference wins, beat Baylor in the only head-to-head match-up, but still has a lower overall winning percentage — .857 to .765.
Would the Mountaineers have a legitimate gripe that maybe actual winning percentage isn’t the best way to determine the No. 1 seed?
Maybe, but the Big 12 won’t see it that way and neither will WVU head coach Bob Huggins.
“It’s going to come down to the percentages, and if they have the highest percentage then …,” Huggins began before going into some more detail. “I would feel different about it if you felt like (Baylor) could pick and choose who they played and not play and obviously that didn’t happen. So, if they have the highest percentage, then they should be the league champion.”
The flip side to the scenario is teams who played less games may get rewarded for that. If Team A is 3-1 and Team B is 6-3, well, Team B has twice as many wins, but comes out on the short end, because it also played more games.
Let’s throw out another wild question: What if a team had gone 5-0 in Big 12 play and then got hit with a truly serious bout of COVID-19 and had other players transfer and other crazy things, and that was all the league games it played? Do you really want that team as your No. 1 seed in the conference tournament?
As far as playing more games and playing the percentages, Huggins is not about to be the guy who starts to play politics. Why?
“Well, if we had made a couple of free throws down the stretch against Texas or if we made a couple of really easy shots against Oklahoma, we wouldn’t have had to worry about any of that,” Huggins said. “Those are two games we had right there to win and we didn’t. We didn’t finish them.”
As for today’s game against Kansas State, here’s what you need to know:
TV: ESPN2 (Comcast 36, 851 HD; DirecTV 209; DISH 143) for the 4 p.m. tip-off. BETTING LINE: West Virginia is a 15-point favorite.
WHAT DOES BOB HUGGINS HAVE TO SAY?
The West Virginia head coach confirmed that point guard Deuce McBride is a little banged up, but is OK to play, and then went into a story of how he was a better high school quarterback than McBride was.
“I just didn’t play at Moeller,” Huggins said.
In terms of facing Kansas State, Huggins said he really liked Wildcats’ freshman Nijel Pack, who did not play when these two schools first met on Jan. 23. Pack leads K-State in scoring, assists and steals.
“He can make shots. He is a shot maker,” Huggins said. “He can shoot it off the bounce. He can shoot it off the catch. He’s good from mid-range. He’s good at driving it at the basket and stopping before he gets swallowed up by size and gets the ball up over the top of people. He’s a really good looking freshman. I really like the kid.”
PROJECTED STARTING LINEUPS
WEST VIRGINIA (16-6, 9-4 Big 12)
F–Derek Culver, 6-10, jr., 15.1 ppg, 10.3 rpg
F–Jalen Bridges, 6-7, fr., 4.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg
F–Emmitt Matthews Jr., 6-7, jr., 7.6 ppg, 3.9 rpg
G–Deuce McBride, 6-2, soph., 16.1 ppg, 4.7 apg
G–Sean McNeil, 6-3, jr., 11.5 ppg, 1.8 rpg
KANSAS STATE (7-18, 3-13 Big 12)
F–Davion Bradford, 7-0, fr., 7.3 ppg, 4.3 rpg
G–Selton Miguel, 6-4, fr., 7.2 ppg, 2.8 rpg
G–Dajuan Gordon, 6-4, soph., 9.3 ppg, 5.6 rpg
G–Nijel Pack, 6-0, fr., 12.1 ppg, 3.9 apg
G–Mike McGuirl, 6-2, sr, 11.8 ppg, 3.8 rpg
PREDICTION TIME
Kansas State comes in on a two-game winning streak and needed just 62 points to win both games. The Wildcats held a high-scoring Oklahoma to 57 points, so you have to wonder if they can do the same on the road against WVU?
Las Vegas really likes WVU here, as the 15-point spread suggests, but, man, that’s a lot of points. West Virginia has had all of three games this season — one of them was against K-Sate — in which it has won by more than 15. McBride is a little banged up. Will Taz Sherman or Sean McNeil pick up the slack? Can Derek Culver get off to another hot start, because WVU likes to establish him early? Will WVU make free throws?
A lot has to go right to win by 15 or more, so I’m going with K-State hanging around. WVU wins, but does not cover, 75-62.
Justin’s season picks against the spread: 8-11-1.
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