Tourney Time: Texas receives at-large bid to NCAA Tournament, will face Virginia Tech
For the 36th time in program history, the Longhorns are dancing. Texas received an at-large invitation to the NCAA Tournament as a six seed, where they will face the Virginia Tech Hokies on Friday.
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The Longhorns, in their first season under head coach Chris Beard, are in search of the program’s first win in the NCAA Tournament since 2014. Texas made the tournament in 2016, 2018, and 2021, losing first round games in each appearance.
“I think you never take for granted getting in the NCAA Tournament,” Beard said Sunday. “There’s a lot of good teams that wanted to see their names come across and they didn’t. I have a lot of appreciation for our players. Coaching changes, first year, to get back into the tournament with a good seed and a chance to make the run, I’m super proud of the players.”
On Virginia Tech, Beard said: “Mike (Young) is a friend of mine. Coach is one of the best coaches in the country. We played his team previously at his first school, I think Wofford. I know they won the ACC Tournament yesterday. Above all, you guys know me. I’m kind of a basketball junkie, so I’ve probably watched Virginia Tech play a dozen times this year. Any team in the tournament is good. I tell the guys all year long, you’re going to have to play really good teams in the tournament. It’s no different for us, we have a really tough challenge in the first game. We have a lot of respect for Mike and his team, and we look forward to the competition.”
Texas is seeded in the East region. Their potential second round matchups are against the Purdue Boilermakers or the Yale Bulldogs. The No. 1 team in the East region is the Baylor Bears.
Texas is led by Timmy Allen, who averages a team-best 12.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game. Allen, fellow transfer Marcus Carr, and sixth-year Longhorn Andrew Jones all average double figures in scoring for Texas.
The Longhorns finished the regular season 21-10 and 10-8 in the Big 12. They failed to win a game in the Big 12 Tournament, falling to TCU in the first round in Kansas City, Mo.
This is Beard’s fifth appearance in March Madness as a head coach, joining one appearance at Little Rock and three at Texas Tech. Beard has a 9-3 record in the Division I NCAA Tournament, with several of those wins coming during his run to the national title game in 2019. Beard and the Red Raiders fell in overtime to the Virginia Cavaliers.
Beard’s first NCAA Tournament appearance was in 2016 with Little Rock, where his Sun Belt champion Trojans topped Purdue in round one as a 12-seed. In 2018, his second season as head coach of the Red Raiders, Beard helped Texas Tech to its first ever Elite Eight. The following year, he put Texas Tech on the precipice of the national championship. His final year in Lubbock, he reached the second round as a six-seed before falling to Arkansas.
Beard joins Bully Gilstrap, Harold Bradley, Tom Penders, Rick Barnes, and Shaka Smart as Longhorn head coaches to reach the NCAA Tournament in their first season in Austin.
Texas has an NCAA Tournament record of 35-38. The Longhorns’ 36 appearances is 11th all time behind the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The program’s most recent trip outside of the first weekend was in 2008, when Texas reached the Elite Eight before falling to eventual national runner-up Memphis.
