For some reason the committee placed some emphasis on # of top-25 wins. That seems rather arbitrary to me, but I read that they used top 25 wins as a key stat to evaluate.

If an unimpressive showing by the loser would lead them to drop out of the top 25, then Boscatar might be right. A win could change the winner's resume from having 3 top 25 wins to having 2 top 25 wins.

But that is unlikely for the Big-12 to be so bad that even their second best team would fall out of the top 25.