AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas and head coach Tom Herman are going with a boxing-type mantra as they attempt to battle off the ropes and play for the Big 12 Championship.

“I thought our guys responded really well to the early adversity in that game. Part of being on the ropes you don’t get off of them with just one game, one win,” Herman said Monday after the Kansas State win.

He’s right — the Longhorns need to go on a run.

Even with two conference losses, they’re not knocked out of the race just yet. However, there isn’t a lot of room for error.

Simplest option…Texas wins out and Baylor loses two games

This is the closest Texas can get to controlling its fate and playing at AT&T Stadium for the Big 12 title. The Longhorns would need to run the table the rest of the way beating Iowa State (road), Baylor (road) and Texas Tech (home). Aside from a loss to the Horns, Baylor would also need to drop the upcoming game against Oklahoma or the regular season finale against Kansas.

In this scenario, Texas would get the Red River rematch against Oklahoma for the league championship with Baylor missing out on a spot by virtue of losing the head-to-head tiebreaker with Texas.

Here’s how the final conference standings would look in this case:

If OU were to beat Baylor and lose one of its final two games to create a three-way tie for first place, the Big 12 conference breaks the tie by looking at how each team fared against the other two opponents. In this circumstance, OU and Texas would finish first and second with better round-robin records.

• Oklahoma: 2-0 against Texas and Baylor
• Texas: 1-1 against OU and Baylor
• Baylor: 0-2 against OU and Texas

Option No. 2: Texas wins out and OU loses two more games

This is also a fairly simple option, but there’s a low probability that OU loses two of its final three games. The Sooners are 10 point favorites at Baylor this weekend. They will be even larger favorites in their final two games against TCU (home) and Oklahoma State (road).

In this scenario, Baylor wins against OU and Kansas, but takes its first loss of the season to the Longhorns.

Let’s take a look at the hypothetical standings:

Things could get weird if Baylor defeats OU this week, but loses to Texas next week and Kansas in the regular season finale.

In this scenario, the three teams would all finish 7-2 creating another three-way tie that can’t be solved with the round-robin tiebreak because each team would be 1-1 against the other two opponents.

Big 12 tiebreak rules state that “conference records of the three teams will be compared against the remaining teams in the conference standings from top to bottom” to decide the order of finish.

Frankly, this is hard to predict with three weeks to go because each of the three teams would be measured against the other teams in the conference standings.

For example, if Kansas State finished No. 4 in the standings, Oklahoma would be the odd team out due to their loss to the Wildcats. Baylor and Texas defeated Kansas State this season.

It’s possible for Texas to reach the championship game with another loss, but…

It would take a truly bizarre sequence of events. This scenario is more feasible with a Texas loss to either Iowa State or Texas Tech and a win against Baylor. If the Longhorns were to drop another game, they would need Oklahoma or Baylor to (somehow) lose the final three games of their regular seasons.

A Texas loss at Baylor in two weeks would guarantee the Bears finish ahead of the Longhorns, so, in this hypothetical, they would be hoping that the Sooners fall apart down the stretch.

If Texas loses to Iowa State this weekend, the Cyclones would need to drop one of its final two games against either Kansas (home) or Kansas State (road).

The final standings could look like this if Baylor loses out and OU wins out…

Or this if OU loses out…