We’ve now arrived at the halfway point of the Big 12 season and the league standings certainly have a familiar feel to them. After winning at least a share of the regular season title in each of the last 10 seasons, Bill Self’s Kansas group once again sits atop the conference with a remarkable 8-1 record. The Jayhawks currently hold a two-game lead over their closest competitors, Iowa State and West Virginia, so even at this midway point, it’s already worth asking if another team can stop Kansas from snagging a share or an outright 11th straight regular season title. Ken Pomeroy’s ratings system currently projects Kansas to finish Big 12 play with a league-best 14-4 record. The Jayhawks are expected to be favored in all but two of their remaining games — road trips to West Virginia and Oklahoma are the pair of outliers. Because Pomeroy’s system factors in the cumulative probabilities of winning each game, he expects Kansas might drop one other unnamed game along the way.

Brannen Greene celebrates with fans after the Jayhawks’ win over Iowa State. (Nick Krug/KU Sports)

The Jayhawks’ season will turn on their final five road games, something Self is keenly aware of. “If you’re able to go steal another game or two on the road, then you’ll be in better shape.” he recently said. “But hey, we’ve got five road games left and if we don’t go and play well, we’ll go 0-5.” That scenario, of course, is extremely unlikely with a road game against league-worst Texas Tech coming up. Kansas is also likely to win its four remaining home games (Baylor, TCU, West Virginia and Texas). Pomeroy gives them at least a 70 percent win probability in each and Kansas is on a 20-game winning streak at Allen Fieldhouse. Even if the unthinkable occurs and the Jayhawks lose their four remaining road games, that would likely put them at 13-5 in Big 12 play to end the season.

Their next closest competitor, according to Pomeroy’s rankings, is Oklahoma. The Sooners are coming off a strong 19-point Big Monday win against West Virginia and are projected by the statistical guru to finish 12-6 in conference play. However, despite a current 6-4 record, Lon Kruger’s squad is favored to win all of its remaining games (including both contests against Iowa State). The Sooners have one of the easier remaining schedules in Big 12 play, but Oklahoma would have to realistically run the table — including a Senior Day win over Kansas in Norman — to have a chance to steal the title outright from Self’s clutches. The two teams closest to Kansas in the standings are projected to finish the Big 12 season with seven losses. The Cyclones will be favored in fewer than half of their remaining games because of road match-ups against quality opponents, and the Mountaineers are on a similar path for largely the same reason.

With the rest of the league regularly beating up on each other, Kansas has played so well through the first half of conference play that it would take a monumental collapse for the Jayhawks to miss out on at least a share of another Big 12 title this season. The math is certainly in their favor. The fat lady up in Lawrence hasn’t sung just yet, but she’s assuredly tuning up.

Chris Stone (136 Posts)

Chris Stone is a contributor to the Big 12 microsite. You can find him on Twitter @cstonehoops.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 at 10:01 am by Chris Stone and is filed under big 12, microsites. Tagged: bill self, feature, iowa state, kansas, oklahoma, west virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.