AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas didn’t make the NCAA Tournament field of 64, but they made the field of 68.
The Longhorns will play a First Four game at 8:10 p.m., March 19 in Dayton, Ohio, against the Xavier Musketeers. The game will be broadcast on truTV.
A win will give them a No. 11 seed in the official first round of the Midwest Region against No. 6 seed Illinois on March 21 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the overall seed list, Texas was one of the lowest-seeded at-large teams at No. 41. Xavier was seeded No. 42, putting them in the play-in round for a No. 11 regional seed.
“We’re excited about the opportunity we have right now,” Longhorns head coach Rodney Terry said. “This is validation for our guys, support staff, everybody. If we didn’t have a great attitude or approach, we wouldn’t be talking about this right now.”
In their first season in the Southeastern Conference, the Longhorns posted a 19-15 overall record and 6-12 in SEC play. With the SEC’s strength this season, the selection committee felt six regular season wins plus two in the conference tournament were enough to give them a shot in the play-in round.
Xavier (21-11, 13-7 Big East) lost in the Big East tournament quarterfinals to Marquette to end its regular season.
Texas posted seven Quad 1 wins, two more than last season when they were a No. 7 seed in the tournament. Texas ended the season with a NET ranking of No. 39.
SEC freshman of the year Tre Johnson, who in all likelihood will enter the NBA draft after the season is over, will get his shot in March Madness. Now that the team is fully healthy, he said they are ready to make a run.
“We need to lock in on defense,” he said. “We showed spurts during the tournament and conference play, so it wasn’t just a completely different team that came out of nowhere.”
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Houston is the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region.
Texas A&M is the No. 4 seed in the South Region and will face 13-seed Yale, the Ivy League champions.
Auburn is the No. 1 overall seed playing in the South Region. The SEC earned 14 bids, a record for any conference in tournament history. The Final Four is April 5 and 7 at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
Terry stressed how historic of a year the SEC had, saying that several teams “could go win the whole thing.”
“You can go right down the list, and this has been the best of the best,” he said. “There hasn’t been a conference race like what we’ve embarked on. You had to have a short memory in this league to move on to the next challenge.”
