NCAA Basketball: 5 sleepers for the Final Four in San Antonio

4. Texas Longhorns

Having a 6-2 record doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence about a run to San Antonio. Those two losses, however, were to ranked squads in Duke and Gonzaga; neither loss was by more than seven points.

Freshman Mohamed Bamba has been good as advertised. He’s averaging a double-double with 10.7 points and 10.1 rebounds per game. He also has 4.0 blocks per game, one of the best marks in the country.

While he settled down after a strong first couple of games, it appears as if he’s improving with the season. In Tuesday’s win over VCU, he reached 13 points for just the third time and grabbed a career-high 13 rebounds.

Dylan Osetkowski is displaying why he made the leap up from Tulane, averaging 14.0 points and 7.9 rebounds.

Before the four-point road win at VCU, every victory for the Longhorns was by at least 13 points. They don’t take their foot off the gas when the game is in hand.

With a relatively young team and a very young star, there is still room to grow. The rest of the non-conference slate has some challenges, with Michigan and Alabama both on the schedule.

The Big 12 slate will be the ultimate barometer for this team, though, starting immediately with a game against Kansas.