Texas Tech, of all teams, is shaping and, with (road) games remaining against Kansas and WVU, will continue to shape the Big 12 title race.

Oklahoma effectively bowed out of it with a loss in Lubbock Wednesday night and left the Mountaineers alone in second place, which sets up a big-time tilt Saturday between the Sooners and WVU at the Coliseum.

It matters most, I’d wager to say, for Kansas. If WVU beats Oklahoma, well, the Mountaineers still need Kansas to lose one more game than they do, and the best chance of that happening is to play the rest of the schedule without a loss and have Kansas lose at least once. Not sure that happens.

A Sooners win basically hands the conference championship to the Jayhawks. They play that same day at Kansas State, and if they win they’d be two games clear of the field with four games to go. That’s a pretty firm grip.

The Mountaineers almost certainly can’t lose Saturday and win the league, but a loss is dangerous for reasons beyond that. Let’s discuss a WVU loss and expected outcomes in the other games — Kansas beats Kansas State, Iowa State beats TCU, Texas Tech beats Oklahoma State. Baylor plays at Texas as well, and we’ll leave that as an either/or outcome for a reason.

Kansas would be two games clear of WVU, Oklahoma and Baylor/Texas, who’d all have 9-5 Big 12 records.  If Texas beats Baylor, WVU is the No. 4 seed, and that’s not an unreasonable projection for the final standings. Similarly, if Baylor beats Texas, then Kansas is in first and the rest is jumbled because Baylor plays Oklahoma and WVU to finish the regular season. Needless to say, it’s possible WVU again be tied for second and in fourth place.

In either WVU-in-fourth outcome, it’s very possible the fifth-place team would be Texas. There are a few ways to play out the rest of the schedule and see WVU v. Texas (or Texas v. WVU) as a 3-6 or a 4-5 game in the Big 12 tournament. That’s probably something the Mountaineers want to avoid.

It’s not fair to the Mountaineers to say Texas is a bad draw, because they haven’t lost to anyone outside the top 30 or so in the RPI and have five wins inside the top 50, but Texas went 2-0 against WVU in the regular season and had the least amount of trouble with the press, thanks to guards Isaiah Taylor and Javan Felix.

“Two of the best guards in the conference, two of the top 10 guards in the country,” WVU forward Devin Williams offered Tuesday night.

Texas had just seven turnovers Tuesday, and though the results are skewed because Miles didn’t play, Paige wasn’t himself and the Mountaineers couldn’t press much, Texas only had eight turnovers against full-strength WVU when it won in the Coliseum last month.

Those are the lowest two totals since WVU started pressing last season. Taylor and Felix had five turnovers in the two wins. Four came Tuesday. One came after Texas coach Shaka Smart called a timeout with 15:40 left in the first half. Zero came after halftime.

“They still trap the first pass, and what that means is they’re leaving the inbounder open,” said Smart, a Big 12 coach of the year candidate in his first season after six years at VCU. “We had Isaiah or Javan take it out, which means the ball was going to come back to them. If [the Mountaineers] trap, those are the guys we want the ball in the hands of.

“At VCU, we pressed, and the hardest thing we faced was when other teams used their two best ball-handlers to attack us. It was one of those things where we could still find a way to turn them over, but if that team had two really good ball-handlers, they got everyone else out of the play. That was hard.”

This is their strength. The Longhorns average just 10.5 turnovers per game and have 16 games with 10 or fewer. Taylor is a perfect fit for the drive-and-dish style, and he’s a proper foe for WVU and its press.

“He is so fast that even if you defend him with two guys,” Smart said, “he can beat those two guys if he can get outside of the trap.”

Taylor skated through and around tiring defenders on the way to 23 points, including 13 free throws in 13 attempts. Four of his five baskets were in the paint and five of his seven assists were inside-outside plays for 3-pointers.