Big 12 Basketball: Where the odds are sometimes in your favor

Welcome to the Big 12 basketball hunger games: where the odds are sometimes in your favor! The Texas Longhorns just lost to the Oklahoma Sooners, who previously lost to the Kansas Jayhawks, who just lost to the Oklahoma St. Cowboys, who have won four straight after losing seven in a row, including a loss to the Baylor Bears, who had recently lost to Texas but just beat the Iowa St. Cyclones, who despite being the second highest nationally ranked team in the Big 12 have now lost two in a row, including a loss to the Kansas St. Wildcats, who just lost to the aforementioned on fire Cowboys.

Luckily for Texas, the Longhorns play the TCU Horned Frogs tonight. TCU is an astounding 0-16 in conference. According to Ken Pomeroy's rankings, the Horned Frogs are the worst power conference team in the country. But they still rank above 20-6 Incarnate Word. Yay!

For a brief rundown of TCU's terrible team, check out the preview from earlier this year. Suffice to say, this needs to be a cakewalk win for Texas.

Thanks to the fortunate series of events listed above, Texas once again finds itself tied for second place in the conference. Unfortunately, that tie is now with Oklahoma. The Sooners hold the tiebreaker over Texas by virtue of its regular season sweep. Should Texas win out and Oklahoma drop a game, the Longhorns would get the second seed in the Big 12 Tournament. If both teams win out, Texas gets the third seed.

If the Longhorns lose either tonight or on Saturday (not a cakewalk playing in Lubbock), tiebreakers with Iowa State, Kansas State, and/or Oklahoma could come into play. We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. For now, Texas just needs to focus on winning its last two. The Longhorns are currently projected as a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but a strong end to the regular season and solid showing in the Big 12 Tournament could bump them past the dangerous 5-12 or 6-11 lines.

Again, TCU is terrible, but Texas did manage to shoot a miserable 32.5% in Fort Worth, barely squeaking by with a 59-54 victory. Let's do better tonight, gents.

The game is at 7 p.m. on the much-maligned but now DISH-carried Longhorn Network. Hook 'em.