The decision to cut the Big 12 Softball Tournament field down to eight this season means there’s a lot to play for in the final week of conference games. While Houston completed its season due to a conference bye the final week, nine of the 10 teams that will play next week can still improve or damage their postseason situations in the last series of the regular season.
Texas Tech’s sweep of Arizona State over the penultimate weekend secured the top seed in the conference tournament. While several
other teams are secure in the knowledge that they will be included in the league tourney, none of the other nine teams have a seed wrapped up.
The four teams behind the Red Raiders could all technically end up with the No. 2 seed in Oklahoma City two weeks from now. Arizona’s sweep of Houston gave the Wildcats a 15-6 record and (most importantly) a .714 winning percentage to retain the second position in the league rankings. Winning percentage is especially important because one of the teams hunting Arizona has a tie and has a very remote chance of surpassing Arizona based on that tie.
The club with the best shot to overtake the Wildcats is the Oklahoma State Cowgirls. OSU is on a five-game winning streak, including a sweep of Baylor in Waco, Tex. over the weekend. That gives the Cowgirls a 14-7 Big 12 record and .667 winning percentage.
The advantage for the Cowgirls is that they’ve already taken two of three games from Arizona this year. They only need to tie the Wildcats’ winning percentage to get the second seed.
OSU hosts No. 4 Kansas (13-8/.619) to wind up the regular season. Arizona goes to No. 7 Utah (8-12-1/.405). OSU needs to win one more game than the Wildcats the final weekend to take over that second spot. The Cowgirls do not control their own destiny. If Arizona sweeps Utah on the road, the Wildcats will stay in second no matter what anyone else does.
Both the Wildcats and the Cowgirls are trying to hold off the Jayhawks and the UCF Knights, who sit at No. 3 and No. 4 heading into the final weekend. KU has a better chance to get to No. 2 than UCF does, but both have an outside chance. Kansas also controls its own destiny as far as getting to No. 3 in the standings.
If the Jayhawks go 2-1 or better in Stillwater, they will leapfrog Oklahoma State for third. A 2-1 weekend would tie the two teams on record and winning percentage, but KU would have the tiebreaker based on head-to-head results.
To get to second, Kansas must win at least two games at Oklahoma State and finish with a better winning percentage than Arizona. If Kansas and Arizona end up tied, the current Big 12 tiebreaker for conference seeding falls heavily on winning percentage and runs allowed if two teams don’t meet head-to-head:
- Head-to-head
- Winning percentage versus common conference opponents
- Runs allowed divided by innings pitched of teams ties
- Runs allowed divided by innings pitched in all conference games against common conference opponents
- Runs allowed divided by innings pitched versus common conference opponents occupying the highest position in the final regular standings
- NCAA RPI
- Coin toss
A tiebreaker between UA and KU would fall to the second tiebreaker with common opponents being Oklahoma State, Baylor, Utah, ASU, BYU, and Houston. Prior to the trip to Utah, Arizona has a record of 14-4 against the common opponents (including the Cowgirls), giving it a winning percentage of .778. Prior to taking on OSU, Kansas has a record of 12-6 against common opponents (including Utah) for a winning percentage of .667.
The Wildcats could end up with a winning percentage as high as .810 against common opponents with a sweep. At 2-1 in Salt Lake City, that drops to .762. At 1-2, they would have a winning percentage of .714. If the Utes sweep, it would drop to .667.
The Jayhawks could end with a winning percentage of .714 against common opponents with a sweep in Stillwater. A 2-1 series would drop that to .667. Anything less, and they cannot even tie Arizona based on the second tiebreaker.
What it comes down to is that the Jayhawks need to win at least two games against the Cowgirls and have Arizona lose at least two to Utah to have a chance to get to the third tiebreaker or overcome the Wildcats. If they can get to the third tiebreaker, though, they have a very good chance of leaping Arizona based on superior pitching numbers.
The third tiebreaker comes down to runs allowed divided by innings pitched. Arizona currently sits at 0.91 runs/IP against Big 12 competition. Kansas has allowed 0.68 runs/IP in league play.
The problem for the Jayhawks is that it’s tough to know how good they actually are. They are in the same position Iowa State was in last year. The Cyclones finished third in the regular season, but they did not face Texas Tech or Arizona, which finished first and second. KU will face neither of those teams this season, so they are also missing the top two teams in the standings. All of its wins come against the bottom seven teams in the league and all of its series wins come against the bottom six. They were one of only two Big 12 teams to drop any games to Houston this year.
UCF is in a similar position as KU if it wants to help its cause, but it has an easier opponent. Its final series is against Iowa State, which is one of the teams in danger of not making the eight-team conference tournament at all.
The Knights need to sweep ISU and have Arizona get swept by Utah to overtake the Wildcats. While the two teams would both end with 15 wins in that scenario, UCF would have a higher conference winning percentage because one of its games ended in a tie. It would end with a 15-8-1 record for a .646 conference winning percentage. Arizona would end 15-9 with a .625 winning percentage in this situation.
This is the only way UCF can move past Arizona. The tied game against Utah earlier in the season means the Knights cannot end up knotted with any other team in the standings.
As for who Arizona would face in the opening round of the conference tournament, that doesn’t just depend on where it ends up. The final two teams in the field are still up for grabs with No. 6 Baylor (9-12/.429), No. 7 Utah (8-12-1/.405), No. 8 ASU (8-13/.381), No. 9 Iowa State (8-13/.381), and No. 10 BYU (7-14/.333) still battling to get in and secure seeds. If the Wildcats finish second, they will play the 7 seed.
The convoluted scenarios have each of the five teams teams facing at least outside chances of climbing to sixth or missing the tournament. Many of those scenarios require falling back on the third tiebreaker, and in some cases, the team that seems like it would come out on top in the third tiebreaker currently does not. For example, the third tiebreaker between Baylor and ASU goes to the Bears, which have allowed 0.71 runs/IP in conference play compared to 0.94 for the Sun Devils.
While it may seem anticlimactic to have the conference regular season champion decided before the final weekend, the competition throughout the rest of the standings means there’s a lot to follow the last week of the regular season.
