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COLUMBIA, Mo. — It’s time for Missouri men’s basketball to win out.

At least, if the Tigers want their most advantageous spot in next week’s Southeastern Conference Tournament, anyway.

With two games to go in the regular season, No. 15 Mizzou (21-8 overall, 10-6 SEC) has lost control of its destiny in the race for one of the league’s coveted double byes in the conference tournament bracket. The structure for the SEC’s postseason sends the top four regular season finishers straight to the quarterfinals — one round farther along than where the teams that finish fifth-eighth enter the fray.

MU coach Dennis Gates has called securing a double bye “the next phase� of his team’s march to contending for an SEC championship, but a favorable path to that kind of finish turned rotten with Saturday’s overtime loss at Vanderbilt.

Entering the final week of the regular season, in which every SEC team will play two more games, Missouri sits fifth. To secure a double bye now, it’ll need to win at Oklahoma (17-12 overall, 4-12 SEC) on Wednesday and home against No. 19 Kentucky on Saturday.

Wednesday’s action will see the Tigers play in Norman, Oklahoma, for the first time since 2014, when MU and OU faced off in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. Both programs are back in the same conference once again, and Mizzou beat the Sooners 82-58 a few weeks ago.

But Missouri has not been effective in securing season sweeps, having lost to Arkansas and Vanderbilt after defeating those teams at home earlier in the season.

“I think the second matchup is all preparation,� Gates said. “Teams get a feel for each other.�

And with a full game against each other for coaching staffs to unpack — plus nearly 30 other games of data at this point in the season, game plans are largely known quantities.

“We’re not going to do anything that surprises them,� Gates said. �They won’t do anything that surprises us.�

MU will need to sweep the Sooners to stay alive in the battle for a double bye.

Entering this week’s slate of Tuesday and Wednesday games, the SEC standings and tiebreakers look as follows:

Auburn, at 15-1 in league play, has clinched the top spot.

Florida, at 12-4, is above Alabama because it beat Auburn while the Crimson Tide lost to the Tigers.

Alabama is also 12-4 but loses, for now, the tiebreaker with the Gators.

Tennessee is 11-5.

Missouri is 10-6.

Texas A&M, at 9-7, hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over Mississippi.

Mississippi, also 9-7, is on the wrong end of that tiebreaker.

Kentucky leads a trio of 8-8 teams because it has a 2-1 record against the next two programs.

Mississippi State, also 8-8, is 1-1 against this group.

Vanderbilt, the final 8-8 team, sits last of the three because it is 1-2 against them.

There is still plenty of room for change in those standings. Mizzou, for example, could finish as high as third or as low as ninth, depending on how other results break for or against the Tigers. That could mean MU secures a double bye, or it plays in the first game of the tournament against last-place South Carolina — though the results needed to set up the latter scenario are almost impossible.

To get into double-bye position, Missouri will need to leapfrog Florida, Alabama or Tennessee in the standings — and only needs to get past one of them.

The Volunteers will be difficult to pass. The Tigers lost against the Vols earlier this season, which gives Tennessee the head-to-head tiebreaker should the teams finish with the same record. With MU one game behind Tennessee, that would then require the Volunteers to lose their final two games while Mizzou wins out. Given that the Vols host the struggling Gamecocks on Saturday, it’s unlikely they will drop two games while also battling for seeding.

Missouri’s more likely path to a double bye involves Florida and Alabama, both of which the Tigers beat and hold a head-to-head tiebreaker against. The Gators and Tide both have a two-game lead over Mizzou, but if either loses their final two games and MU wins out, Missouri gets the spot via the tiebreaker.

The good news for Mizzou is that either Florida or Alabama is guaranteed to pick up at least one more loss: They play each other at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Tuscaloosa.

In addition to needing to win out, the Tigers can then hope that whichever team loses that matchup loses again Saturday. ‘Bama closes out the regular season at Auburn while Florida hosts Ole Miss. The Tide are the more likely team to lose their finale, so Mizzou’s best interest would probably be the Gators winning Wednesday — but that’s getting into the weeds.

And none of that matters if MU loses its third road game in a row — making Wednesday at Oklahoma a must-win game in the race for the double bye.

“This last, final week is very important to several teams, (with) its implications for our SEC Tournament and also standings,� Gates said.