Entering Saturday’s Lone Star Showdown in College Station, the NCAA Tournament stakes were clear — the winner would move off the bubble and the loser would remain on it.
The win helped avoid a worst-case scenario for the Longhorns as the conference schedule veered from winnable to difficult. In the wake of five straight wins, Texas had to host Florida, the reigning national champions, travel to College Station to face Texas A&M, then make the trip to Fayetteville to face third-place Arkansas before closing the regular season against Oklahoma at home, setting up the possibility of four straight losses heading into next Saturday.
That potential losing streak had the ability to push the Horns off the bubble and into danger of missing the tournament by putting significant pressure on Texas to win multiple games in the SEC Tournament next week in Nashville.
Instead, Miller’s team secured a big rivalry win on the road to bolster its resume and decrease the impact of a loss on Wednesday in Fayetteville.
Of course, the Longhorns still need to take care of business against the Sooners at the Moody Center, a task that looks more difficult now than it did several weeks ago with Porter Moser’s team playing better basketball, rebounding from nine straight losses to win four of its last six games.
And the ideal scenario is for Texas to win two or more games in the SEC Tournament — the ultimate goal is to get to the No. 7 seed to avoid a potential second-round matchup against the No. 1 seed.
But if the team’s moving NCAA Tournament odds reflected the vibes surrounding the program in Miller’s first season, from the depths of a 6.3-percent chance to make the Big Dance after the loss to Tennessee in the second SEC game, up and down again, and now to a season high, Texas has shown an impressive amount of resilience.
There’s further heartening news, too — of the 10 teams with the most similar resumes to Texas, not only have all 10 of them made the NCAA Tournament, three of them made deep runs with South Carolina making the Final Four in 2017, Clemson getting to the Elite Eight two years ago, and Stanford advancing to the Sweet 16 in 2024.
