Big 12 Basketball: Buy Or Sell Texas, Baylor, Oklahoma, and TCU
By Chris Kern
Texas Longhorns – Buy
The Texas Longhorns have an interesting NCAA Tournament resume. They have been very inconsistent this season with some bad losses to teams such as home losses to Providence and Radford. They also finished with just an 8-5 non-conference record which isn’t ideal for any team heading into the grueling Big 12 conference slate.
Unlike most teams that struggled in the non-conference, they came up with a couple of huge wins. They beat North Carolina in Las Vegas to go with a home win over Purdue. They have continued their ups and downs in conference play but thus far we have seen more good than bad.
At the moment they are currently slated as a nine seed in the field. If they can finish strong it’s very possible they could work their way up to like a five or six seed but if they go in the other direction they can go the other way, out of the tournament field. They have shown their ability to play at a high level and can compete with anybody in the conference.
They started off conference play with a road win over Kansas State by the score of 67-47. That was when they didn’t have Dean Wade or Kamau Stokes and they also weren’t playing very well but nonetheless a very good win. They also recently picked up a big home win over the Kansas Jayhawks by the score of 80-78.
The Wildcats were able to get revenge in Austin in what would’ve been a huge win for the Longhorns. Kansas State won Tuesday night’s battle 71-64 in what was a very competitive game.
This team has succeeded by having multiple guys who can make plays on the offensive end. Kerwin Roach is their leading scorer as he has averaged 14.8 points in the team’s first 24 games. Dylan Osetkowski and Matt Coleman both started the first 24 games while averaging 10 points per game.
The biggest storyline of this team is the play of freshman forward Jaxson Hayes. He was just the 102nd ranked player in the 2018 class by 247sports. Now he is averaging 10.5 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 2.4 blocks in the team’s first 24 games and he is now a possible lottery pick in the 2019 NBA Draft.
Texas still has a few chances ahead to improve their resume and as long as they can pick up a couple of more wins along the way they should be confident that they will get into the NCAA Tournament. If they can defend the home court and finish with a .500 or better conference record, expect them to be dancing come March without having to worry on Selection Sunday.