Obviously a win would have been preferable, but last night honestly felt like the team and coaches had either: (i) gotten complacent by listening too much to their own press on the heels of a shiny #6 ranking, or (ii) were suffering from a hangover following the Utah game. So if there's anything positive about that game it's that a good old fashion loss to a so-so team should bring everyone back into focus. They say a team improves the most after its first loss, so hopefully BYU, and our offense in particular, gets a shot in the arm from this humbling loss.

There were other positives yesterday in terms of the CC race. The group of 6 teams with a shot for the CC game beginning yesterday was whittled down to four teams because of losses by WVU and KSU, although it would have been better for ASU to lose to KSU since we own the tie-breaker against KSU based on head-to-head competition. Regardless, we still control our own destiny where if we win the next two we play in the CC game. That's a great place to be after 10 games and any of us would have taken it. It's basically playoff season for us now.

If we do lose one more regular season game then you have to look at tie-breakers. It's almost impossible for us to get in with 3 losses and it's now essentially a four-team race between BYU, Colorado, ASU, and ISU with only BYU and Colorado controlling their own destinies.

Colorado plays at Kansas, who is obviously not a push over right now, and then against Oklahoma State. They'll be favored in both games and will probably win both, but if both Colorado and BYU lose one more game, BYU has the tie-breaker on Colorado as of right now. Since we do not play head to head in the regular season, the tie-breaker is based on the result against the highest ranked common opponent in the final B12 standings. This means first whether we won or lost and then, if both teams won or both teams lost, it's based on the score differential in the game. If the score differential is the same you go to the next highest team in the standing. As of right now, the tie-breaker against Colorado would be Kansas State and Baylor. BYU and Colorado both beat Baylor (BYU by 6 and Colorado by 7), but BYU beat KSU and Colorado lost. So if nothing changes in the standing from here to season's end, BYU has the tie-breaker against the Buffs. KSU beating ISU is really important because it would keep them high in the standings and eliminate one of the three remaining teams that could bump us from the CC game. If Baylor is the determining game, Colorado gets the nod.

ASU plays against us and then plays their rivalry game at Arizona. If ASU beats us and Arizona so that both BYU and ASU end with 2 conference losses, ASU gets the nod over BYU based on winning this head-to-head matchup (of ASU beat us and both ASU and BYU lose their last games then we could be in a crazy 3 loss tie breaker situation). If BYU beats ASU and loses to Houston, BYU gets the tie-breaker as a two loss team based on the head to head win.

ISU and BYU also did not play each other. Their highest ranked common opponent in the standings are KSU and Baylor (both 3 loss teams). KSU and ISU play the last game of the season and if KSU wins then ISU is out of contention for the CC game. If ISU wins then KSU won't be a tie-breaker team. ISU's margin of victory against Baylor was 22 points whereas BYU's margin of victory was just 6 points. So BYU will need KSU to beat ISU if we lose another game, assuming no other changes to conference standings.

Obviously all of the analysis above is based on the current conference standings and so there's still a lot that can change in the last two weeks of the season. I don't even want to think about a five way tie between 3 loss teams for the CC game, both because it would take forever and because that's only relevant if BYU loses out, which I don't want to accept as a possibility.