In the wake of a thrilling upset against No. 15/13 Texas A&M, men’s basketball head coach Rodney Terry talked about opportunity.
“Are you prepared for an opportunity to present itself,” he asked.
Four days later, the Longhorns suffered a loss against No. 23 Ole Miss, marking their fifth loss in four weeks against an AP-ranked team. This leaves Texas sitting at No. 31 nationally, about one month before the conference tournament and March Madness tip off.
NCAA brackets are composed of 68 teams at the beginning of the tournament. The NCAA selection committee chooses 37 “at-large” teams, along with the auto-admit teams that win their individual conference championships. All teams are then seeded and placed within the championship bracket.
This year, Texas will have to fight for a decent spot.
With 10 games left of the regular season before they touch down in Nashville for the SEC Championship tournament, the Longhorns are still in the midst of an extremely competitive schedule. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of ground to cover if Texas wants to keep its hopes for NCAA tournament entry alive — especially when playing teams like No. 4 Alabama, No. 12 Kentucky and No. 14 Mississippi State.
Texas’ bid for March Madness play will heavily depend on its performance during the SEC tournament. The odds of winning the entire thing are slightly less than 1%, according to TeamRanking’s predicted SEC brackets. As long as the Longhorns win a healthy amount of their final regular season games and make it to round two, their chances of at least getting into the NCAA Championship are high. Making it to the quarterfinals will solidify their entry.
Currently, Texas is slated as No. 41 in Andy Katz’s projected March Madness bracket, in the 11th seed. It is one of 13 potential SEC competitors within the tournament. Beating Mississippi State and No. 24 Vanderbilt will be the most realistic path to a seed within the top 10.
As Terry put it, opportunity awaits the Longhorns, but are they ready?
Unlike the men, No. 5 Texas women’s basketball is practically a tournament lock. Sitting at a 21–2 record and 7—1 in the SEC, the Longhorns have an impressive five-ranked wins on their schedule.
Texas’ losses are good ones too, if one can call it that. Both have been delivered by currently ranked No. 2 South Carolina and No. 3 Notre Dame, who together now sit as No. 1 seeds in Charlie Creme’s projected tournament field, respectively.
So, unlike men’s coach Rodney Terry, who’s fighting on the tournament bubble, women’s head coach Vic Schaefer pursues the top seed for the second year in a row.
Currently accompanying South Carolina and Notre Dame in Creme’s projected bracket are No. 1 UCLA and No. 4 USC. That makes one SEC school, two Big-10 schools, and one ACC school atop the four quadrants of the bracket.
With this information, and assuming that South Carolina, Notre Dame, UCLA and USC continue its winning trends, that leaves Schaefer and Longhorn nation with two possibilities to reach that golden No. 1 seed.
Option one: USC falls to UCLA on Mar. 1.
Option two: Texas beats South Carolina at the Moody Center on Feb. 9.
Nonetheless, Texas is expected to host the first round in Austin as one the top four seeds in its bracket.
Texas is as close as they’ve been to a No. 1 seed since its loss to Notre Dame on Dec. 5, and the set up of March is only destined to be determined by the madness of February.