The team that handed 3rd-ranked Kansas its worst loss of the season back in January did the Jayhawks a pretty big favor on Wednesday night in Fort Worth, Texas.
TCU’s 75-73 win over Texas made the Jayhawks the outright Big 12 champions for the 2022-23 season.
KU clinched a share of the title with its win over Texas Tech at Allen Fieldhouse on Tuesday night. But the Longhorns loss on Wednesday at TCU put Texas two games behind KU in the Big 12 standings with just one game to play.
That means, for all intents and purposes, Saturday’s KU-Texas game in Austin will mean very little.
Both teams are still playing for seeding, of course. And KU has its sights set on the No. 1 overall seed and a spot in the Midwest Regional, which runs through Kansas City for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.
But the game will mean nothing of significance for the Big 12 race, which KU now can win by a whopping three games should it win on Saturday.
While the rest of the Big 12 standings could still shift depending on the outcome of this weekend’s games, we now know for sure that the Jayhawks will be the No. 1 seed in next week’s Big 12 tournament.
That means they’ll play the winner of Wednesday’s 8-9 matchup at 2 p.m. next Thursday.
As things currently sit, that 8-9 game pits West Virginia against Texas Tech, two teams that came to Allen Fieldhouse this week and took the Jayhawks to the wire before losing.
If Kansas gets past Thursday, they could be looking at a matchup with the winner of the 4-5 game between TCU and Texas.
If that doesn’t tell you how tough this conference is, I’m not sure anything will. Texas has been a top-10 team for almost the entire season and it’s staring at the real possibility of being the 4 seed in the conference tournament. Of course, with a win over KU on Saturday, the Longhorns could still finish as high as second.
Right now, it’s all-Sunflower power at the top of the standings, with KU in first place at 13-4, two games ahead of Kansas State, Baylor and Texas at 11-6.
Your other Saturday matchups in the Big 12 this week are:
Iowa State at Baylor, 11 a.m.
Kansas State at West Virginia, 1 p.m.
TCU at Oklahoma, 2 p.m.
Oklahoma State at Texas Tech, 5 p.m.
KU and Texas will tip off at 3 p.m. on ESPN from the Longhorns’ new home arena, the Moody Center.
The game will be hotly contested and there’s no doubt that the Longhorns, who have suddenly lost two in a row and three of their last five, will be looking to get back on track while Kansas continues its quest to stay on its recent hot streak.
One of the bigger questions surrounding that game will be how KU coach Bill Self plans to approach it. The Jayhawks are banged up and could use some rest. They also could use the 1 seed in the Midwest.
Self’s next press conference is slated for Thursday afternoon and we’ll be sure to ask him if he’s thought much about how to approach Saturday’s matchup with Texas.
