With the win against Oklahoma State, I think a lot of people were looking ahead and considering what the rest of the season had in store. The OSU win was a bit lopsided so it may have skewed the results, and we were all a bit giddy with the thought that 8, 9, or 10 wins could be on the horizon. The West Virginia game was most likely going to be a loss (which it was), but now the question is what the rest of the season has in store and what the advanced stats say about the rest of the season.
Since there are three main advanced stats predictors, I wanted to display and combine the three of them so you could see what each of these three numbers were predicting for the rest of the season (you can actually click on the heading if you want to dig into a particular site’s numbers).
| Remaining Schedule | S&P+ | CFA | ESPN FPI | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| at TCU | 44% | 52% | 51% | 49% |
| Kansas | 87% | 69% | 89% | 82% |
| at Iowa State | 51% | 50% | 56% | 52% |
| Oklahoma | 27% | 50% | 33% | 37% |
| Texas | 53% | 55% | 58% | 55% |
| at Kansas State | 81% | 63% | 78% | 74% |
| Baylor | 63% | 57% | 76% | 65% |
| Record | 7-5 | 8-2-2 | 9-3 | 8-3-1 |
The last guess at the average record is a guess by me as I’m not exactly sure how to average the two ties as predicted by CFA. In any event, the advanced metrics at this point say that Texas Tech should win around 8 games. The only thing that I’d caution you about is that there are lot of toss-up games, so counting something as 52% chance of winning as a given “W” is probably fool-hearty.
I’m considering anything within 5% of 50% as a toss-up game, so of the S&P+ games, there are 2 games that are toss-up games, Iowa State and Texas. CFA has 4 toss-up games, TCU, Iowa State, Oklahoma (which is very generous that it’s even a toss-up game), and Texas. ESPN has only 1 toss-up game, Thursday’s game against TCU. And of the average of the three combined there are 3 toss-up games, TCU, Iowa State, and Texas.
Personally, I think the average of the three toss-up games is probably correct, which makes those games absolutely vital. Sitting at 3-2, the wins that are legitimately expected are Kansas, Kansas State and Baylor, with the one expected loss being Oklahoma. That gets you to 5 wins and 4 losses. Those three toss-up games, TCU, Iowa State, and Texas, are what’s pivotal for the remainder of the season and that starts on Thursday of next week.