Busting Brackets
Fansided

NCAA Tournament 2021: Buy or Sell Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, and West Virginia?

By Brendan Whitehouse

AUSTIN, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 24: Miles McBride #4 of the West Virginia Mountaineers moves around Matt Coleman III #2 of the Texas Longhorns at The Frank Erwin Center on February 24, 2020 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Covatta/Getty Images)
AUSTIN, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 24: Miles McBride #4 of the West Virginia Mountaineers moves around Matt Coleman III #2 of the Texas Longhorns at The Frank Erwin Center on February 24, 2020 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Covatta/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
4 of 5
Next
NCAA Tournament Texas Longhorns Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports
NCAA Tournament Texas Longhorns Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports /

Texas: Buy

First game: Abilene Christian: Saturday 3/20

Potential opponents down the road: BYU, Michigan State, UCLA, UCONN, Maryland, Alabama 

Texas ended the season hot winning six of their last seven and five straight. Capped off by the school’s first-ever Big 12 tournament championship. It gets even more impressive when you look at the teams they’ve beat.

The Longhorns won a close one to UNC and lost a close one to Villanova. They won two out of three over Oklahoma State and swept Kansas. They also split one-score games with West Virginia and Oklahoma.

A team that kinda has their number this year is Texas Tech who beat them twice and who the Longhorns only beat by one in the Big 12 tournament. Conference teams are usually kept away from each other in tournament brackets but it’s tough to do when you have 7 out of 10 teams in the Big 12 make the dance. Yet Texas is still the only Big 12 team in its region.

Texas has played a tougher schedule than every team in their half of the region and have done well with that schedule. Look out for potential matchups with Michigan or Florida State in the Elite 8 which would be the test of their year.

This is a team that has been well tested in the conference and has had solid non-conference competition as well. They’ve shown they can go on a run and they have a path to the final four that favors their odds.

I would not put this team on any sort of upset alert for the first two rounds. I like them over anyone they could play in the Sweet 16 and I think they’re good enough to get into a tight Elite 8 game against a good team that goes either way.

A win on Saturday would tie their longest winning streak of the season at six. There’s no time for a reset now, they’ll need to make that a 9-game winning streak if they want to make the final four. The resume says they’re more than capable so if you believe they have enough left in the tank as I do then buy on the Longhorns making the final four this year for the first time since 2003.

Home/NCAA Basketball News