Bedlam basketball: Fighting for ninth place

We’re down to three games left in this horrid, horrid college basketball season in Oklahoma. OSU, OU and Texas Tech are in a three-way tie for ninth place in the Big 12, each at 4-9.

What an awful season. We knew it was coming for the Sooners, but no one saw it coming for the Cowboys.

There isn’t a lot to get excited about when the goal becomes reaching ninth place in a 12-team league. But that’s all we’ve got left.

Here’s what’s interesting about the three-way square dance for ninth place. All three play each other. I know, it’s not much, but work with me.

Texas Tech plays at OSU on Saturday. OU plays at Tech on Wednesday. OSU plays at OU next Saturday.

So let’s say the home team wins each of those games. That makes a three-way tie at 5-10. So the final standings would be determined by each team’s other game. Kansas at OU on Saturday, Baylor at OSU on Tuesday and Tech at Texas A&M next Saturday.

You wouldn’t think OU would beat KU or Tech would beat A&M. So if OSU can win at home against Baylor, the Cowboys are headed for the ninth seed.

Not that it’s any big deal. Seeds 9-10-11 will meet seeds 8-7-6 in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament. Nebraska, Colorado and Baylor are tied for sixth at 6-7. So that’s your tripleheader on Day 1 in Kansas City, some version of those six teams playing. The fourth game almost surely will be Kansas State-Iowa State.

Depressing, isn’t it? A tournament that OU and OSU once ruled — the Bedlam rivals won five straight Big 12 Tournaments, 2001-05 — is now almost meaningless for the Cowboys and Sooners.