Pac-12 Tournament 1st-round byes at stake with ASU and Arizona still alive

The battle for a first-round bye in the Pac-12 Tournament comes down to four teams with identical 10-7 conference records in the final day of regular-season action.

Arizona and Arizona State are both in the mix along with Colorado and USC.

Two of those teams will head straight to the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals as the No. 3 and 4 seed, the other two will have to battle it out in the first round as the No. 5 and 6 seeds.

Oregon and UCLA are already locked into the top-2 with both teams sitting at 12-5.

None of the four teams jumbled at No. 3 through 6 play each other, which makes the possible outcomes for the final regular season standings even more complicated.

This bracket generator does a good job of breaking down the nearly 1,000 different what-if scenarios.

Ideally, two of the four teams win and the other two lose and the standings naturally settle themselves out. In the case that doesn’t happen, the Pac-12 has set tiebreakers for two-team ties and multiple-team ties.

Multiple-team tie
a. Results (won-lost percentage) of collective head-to-head competition during the regular season among the tied teams.
b. If more than two teams are still tied, each of the tied team’s record (won-lost percentage) vs. the team occupying the highest position in the final regular season standings, and then continuing down through the standings, eliminating teams with inferior records, until one team gains an advantage.
When arriving at another group of tied teams while comparing records, use each team’s record (won-lost percentage) against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tie-breaking procedure), rather than the performance against individual tied teams.
After one team has an advantage and is seeded, all remaining teams in the multiple-team tie-breaker will repeat the multiple-team tie-breaking procedure.
If at any point the multiple-team tie is reduced to two teams, the two-team tie-breaking procedure will be applied.
c. Won-lost percentage against all Division I opponents.
d. Coin toss conducted by the Commissioner or designee.

Two-team tie
a. Results of head-to-head competition during the regular season.
b. Each team’s record (won-lost percentage) vs. the team occupying the highest position in the final regular standings, and then continuing down through the standings until one team gains an advantage.
When arriving at another group of tied teams while comparing records, use each team’s record (won-lost percentage) against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tie-breaking procedure), rather than the performance against individual tied teams.
c. Won-lost percentage against all Division I opponents.
d. Coin toss conducted by the Commissioner or designee.

Colorado is the only team among the four at 10-7 to play its finale on the road against Utah beginning at 12:30 p.m.

USC is the only team among the four to face a team higher then them in the standings as they take on UCLA at 1:15 p.m.

Both Arizona schools have home match ups against the Washington schools, who both sit at the bottom of the Pac-12 standings.

ASU takes on Washington State 4:30 p.m. and Arizona takes on Washington at 8:00 p.m.

The Pac-12 Tournament begins on Wednesday with four first-round match ups beginning at 12:00 p.m.

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