Three of the four games in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament on Tuesday saw the lower seed beat the higher seed. Maybe those aren’t upsets when the bottom half of a 16-team conference is fighting for the right to take tired legs into the second round, but the team in last place did beat the team closest to the top half of the standings. 

The 9 vs. 16 game saw TCU start 0-for-13 from the floor and trail by as many as 14 points in the 69-67 loss to Colorado, which started 0-13 in Big 12 play. The Horned Frogs went from the bubble to five losses in the final six games, including back-to-back losses against the Buffaloes, who are now 4-4 in their past eight games entering today’s 3 p.m. quarterfinal against the No. 8 seed, West Virginia. 

“These guys stuck together,” Coach Tad Boyle said. “They didn’t point fingers and we won a few, and now, hey, that’s why they have postseason tournaments. I’m thankful for the Big 12 that we all get to come here because the 16 seed can sometimes surprise some people like we did (Tuesday), and now it’s our job to go do it (today). It’s a new season.”

Colorado set a school record with 26 wins last season, including a First Four and a first-round game in the NCAA Tournament, but lost three NBA players, the top five scorers and the top six rebounders. When this season started, the roster was last in the Big 12 in Division I experience with 5,779 minutes. TCU was second-to-last with 10,930.

Boyle’s team started 9-2 in non-conference play and beat rival Colorado State, which is No. 54 in the NET Rankings, and two-time defending national champion UConn in the Maui Invitational. Big 12 play was a disaster from the start until winning for the first time against UCF on Feb. 15. The previous win was at home against Bellarmine on Dec. 21. But after just one win in Quads 1 and 2 in the first 24 games, the Buffaloes have three in the past four weeks while Saturdays’ 20-point win at home against TCU is just outside Quad 2.

“For the most part we improved, got better, figured each other out a little bit in November and December, but in January, I feel like we did not get better,” Boyle said. “I felt like we plateaued. We did not improve from game to game. We let some get away from us. West Virginia in Boulder was one of them. … And the schedule favored us in January. It did not in February.

“I said to myself — I don’t think I shared it with these guys — we can get better in February and still not win games, and that happened. We played pretty good against Houston. We played pretty good against Kansas. We weren’t great, but we played better than we did in January.”

The Mountaineers (19-12), who trailed once for 18 seconds and led by as many as 14 points in January’s 78-70 win at Colorado, can relate. They’ve had their ups and downs. They have momentum. After starting Big 12 play with the historic win at Kansas and a home win against Oklahoma State, when they led by 26 points, they went 6-10 and crept back toward the pack and onto the bubble.

But they finished with back-to-back wins for the first time since the 2-0 start. In Saturday’s win against UCF, they scored 47 points in the first half and led by as many as 27 points. Both were season-highs, and that mattered as the lead slipped to three points with 2:04 to go as WVU shot 29 percent and scored 25 points after halftime. 

“I think our first half is peaking. We’re going to keep working on the second half,” head coach Darian DeVries said. “I think we’re playing pretty good basketball. Offensively, what I’m really encouraged about is we hit not a stunning percentage, but we hit 12 3s. Probably shot too many — 12-for-37 — but that’s back-to-back games we’ve knocked down some shots. That’s going to be critical as we go into the postseason here.

“You’ve still got to be able to score. Defensively, we’ve got be able to put a full 40 together. Sometimes being able to put that full 40 together requires us making shots so we’re not playing in transition all the time. I thought the second half we were in transition either with turnovers or missed shots on it felt like probably 80 percent possessions. Those are the things we’ve got to eliminate if we’re going be good enough defensively to stay in it and let our offense come along with it.”