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02.19.2012 Daily Bears Report: Dealing with Disappointment and Success

Well, that was a drama-filled day with two very different results. Baylor loses to Kansas State by one in a game where shots wouldn't fall for Baylor, Kansas State did just enough on offense, and the referees had some critical no calls late in the game. Our preseason Player of the Year Candidate fouls out after another appearance where he seemed to bring more effort, but not enough to the stat sheet.

Fortunately, we have a great achievement to celebrate as the Lady Bears win over Texas Tech yesterday saw them clinch the Big 12 Title! Congratulations, ladies!

Tim wrote up a game recap last night and I would like to expand on that here now having had some time to mull over the loss. I've mentioned previously that a team who has a lot of close wins on their ledger is one that's going to lead to overreactions of their overall quality after good wins and tough losses. After good wins, you can't help but look at that shiny record and think about where this season could end up. After the tough losses, it's hard not to look back and think about how rough things would look if a few bounces hadn't gone our way.

Taking this a different, and more statistically sound direction, it's important to note that a team with many more wins than losses in close games is likely to see a regression to the mean in the their success rate moving forward. Please note that this is not to say that Baylor will lose enough close games over the next few weeks to end up close to the .500 record that one should expect. What it does mean is that Baylor is that if Baylor played close games in their last 4 regular season games, we should expect them to be closer to a .500 success rate than the .778 rate that they have been at in games decided by less than 5 points this season.

Taken individually, none of the losses outside of possibly the home loss to Kansas are ones that would significantly detract from how the Selection Committee is likely to look on our Bears. However, we do know that the Selection Committee values recent performance over early season performance, which means that Baylor is going to be under a lot of pressure to flip the momentum of losing 3 of the past 4 (and being 5-5 in the past 10). Continued play like this is going to necessitate a great run in the Big 12 Tournament just to maintain the #3 seed.

Links from around the web after the jump...

First up, coverage of the men's game...

And now on to the Big 12 Women's Basketball Champions!