The outcome of Saturday’s Big 12 regular-season finales will determine the Oklahoma basketball seeding for next week’s Big 12 Tournament.
Currently, the Sooners would slot into the No. 3 spot behind No. 1 Kansas and West Virginia, the two seed. But that could all change after Saturday’s games.
The only seeds that are locked in heading to the final weekend of the regular season are top-seed and No. 1-ranked Kansas and the four teams that will play in the opening-round games on Wednesday, the first day of the conference championship tournament.
No. 10 seed TCU, the Sooners opponent on Saturday, will play No. 7 Texas Tech in the opening game of the tournament, and No. 9 Oklahoma State will go up against No. 8 Kansas State. The winner of the TCU-Texas Tech game draws Big 12 champion Kansas the next day, while the winner between Oklahoma State and K-State will match up with the team that winds up as the No. 2 seed in the quarterfinal round on Thursday.
There is a clear path for Oklahoma to claim the conference tournament’s No. 2 seed: The Sooners must beat the Big 12’s last-place team, TCU, on Saturday. That win, combined with a Baylor victory at home over West Virginia, would award second place in the final conference standings to Oklahoma.
An OU win and a West Virginia loss would result in a two-way tie for second place, both finishing with 12-6 conference records. The tiebreaker for the No. 2 seed in the conference tournament, however, would go to Oklahoma by virtue of its season sweep over the Mountaineers.
That scenario is very much within the Sooners’ reach, but they will need some help from 19th-ranked Baylor in its home finale with No. 10 West Virginia.
Depending on the outcome of the conference games on Saturday, the possibility exists for Oklahoma to wind up with the second, third or fourth seed in next week’s conference championship.
There is a big difference, however, between the path to the conference tournament championship for a two seed and the journey that a three or four seed would be faced with.
As a No. 2 seed, the Sooners would face the winner of the Texas Tech-TCU game in the quarterfinals and would not have to face Kansas until the championship game, if at all. That would certainly be a dream matchup, with Kansas winning the two regular-season games against the Sooners by a combined seven points. And no one will soon forget the triple-overtime thriller at Kansas early in the conference season, with Buddy Hield pouring in a season-high 46 points for the Sooners.
If Oklahoma is unable to move back into the No. 2 spot in the conference tournament seedings, that would mean the Sooners would need to face Texas, Iowa State or Baylor in the quarterfinals, and if they were to survive that, a probable date with either West Virginia or Texas Tech in the semifinal round.
Had the Sooners held on in the late going and defeated Texas last weekend, it would not matter what West Virginia does against Baylor this weekend. The No. 2 seed would have been Oklahoma’s to lose, providing the Sooners are able to get by TCU in the regular-season finale.
For now, West Virginia is in the driver’s seat, while Oklahoma waits patiently in the backseat, hoping things will turn out in the Sooners’ favor.
Here is something else for fans of Oklahoma basketball to keep in mind: Were to Sooners able to go 3-0 in the Big 12 Tournament and capture the conference’s postseason championship, they likely would put themselves in good standing to regain a place on the top line for the NCAA Basketball Championship.
A lot of ifs, for sure, but not at all outside of the realm of possibility.