Texas Longhorns Probabilities (Week 11)

Texas managed to hold onto a win on Saturday despite a lot of mistakes, including a heartbreaking (questionable?) turnover that resulted in a 14-point swing.  In so doing, they now find themselves in a pretty good spot with respect to finishing out the season in a respectable fashion.  Just a few weeks ago the prospect of even getting to bowl eligibility was shy of 70% whereas that outcome is nearly a certainty today.  In fact, there's about a 1 in 5 chance that the 'Horns go undefeated the rest of the way.  As it was last week, 7-5 continues to be the most likely finish.  Here is the density of outcomes for their expected final regular season record.

The probabilities listed above correspond to this week's Sagarin Ratings. However, the best indicator of a team's likelihood of winning a game is given by the consensus point spread line (rather, the line just prior to kick off to ensure that it reflects the market equilibrium expectation).  Naturally, we don't have this information for games two or more weeks out; but we do have it for this week's game against West Virginia.  Again, I wouldn't put too much stock in lines this early in the week, but even this early line arguably incorporates more information than does the Sagarin predictor.  Here's a look at the consensus line movements since it opened on Sunday.

Texas is currently favored by two points, which corresponds to a 55.5% probability of winning.  A lot can change between now and noon on Saturday, but if we use this probability in lieu of that implied by Sagarin's model, we get the following density of final regular season outcomes and a 26.5% chance of going undefeated the rest of the way.

Hook 'em!