After Saturday’s loss to OU, the Longhorns dropped to 14th in both major polls. The Jayhawks maintained their comfortable hold on the No. 1 ranking heading into tonight’s game, while Kansas State moved up to 9th in both polls. Baylor is 25th in the Associated Press rankings, but fell into the “Others Receiving Votes” category in the Coaches Poll. A&M, meanwhile, is on the cusp of both polls, with only Saturday’s road game at Tech standing between them and a ranking next Monday.

Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology slots Texas as a 3-seed in the Salt Lake City regional, where Villanova is projected as the 1-seed. Lunardi has the Horns in New Orleans, with a potential second-round match-up against Georgia Tech and freshman phenom Derrick Favors. Interestingly enough, in this hypothetical bracket, a potential rematch with Michigan State could await Texas in the Sweet 16.

On Thursday night, Kevin Durant was named to the Western Conference All-Star team as a reserve. It’s the first time a former Longhorn has been tabbed for that honor since superstar Slater Martin’s seven-year All-Star run from 1952 to 1959. Durant is averaging 29.3 points per game through Oklahoma City’s first 45 contests, along with 7.3 boards and three assists.

The Texas road win against Arkansas looks a little better after the Hogs knocked off Mississippi State in Fayetteville last night. Courtney Fortson dropped 35 points in the victory on 53% shooting from the field. Elsewhere, the Pitt Panthers needed a second-half surge to knock off visiting St. John’s, while Long Beach State edged out Cal State-Northridge. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the good news for the Longhorn strength of schedule, as Cal-Irvine, Western Carolina, USC, and Gardner-Webb all lost last night.

Texas tumbled to 7th in Luke Winn’s latest Power Rankings, but what interests us most in his column is the conversation with NBA scouts. Winn reports that the consensus is that Damion James is a mid- to late-first rounder, and that the scouts would prefer to see Avery Bradley stay in school for another year, even though he’d be selected early in this year’s draft. Can we get extra copies of that column sent to AB in April?

We squeezed in lots and lots of work on the photo galleries tonight. Our latest update includes albums from the UNC, Rice, and Kansas State games, with the ones for Arkansas and UConn likely coming your way this weekend. Click here to browse all of the photos currently available.

Texas slid to sixth in both polls this afternoon following back-to-back losses on the road. The Kentucky Wildcats ascended to the top spot as the nation’s lone undefeated team, while Kansas moved up to second in both rankings.

The K-State Wildcats took a slight dip after a home loss to Oklahoma State, even though they were the first team to knock off Texas with a Big Monday victory earlier in the week. KSU is 11th in the media poll and is ranked 13th by coaches. Baylor is the only other Big 12 representative, checking in at 24th in the Associated Press rankings, although Texas A&M, Missouri, and Oklahoma State all received votes in both polls.

The Longhorns also took a dive in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology, sliding to the 2-seed line in the Salt Lake City regional. In Lunardi’s mock bracket, Texas is paired with 1-seed Syracuse, an absolute nightmare match-up for a Longhorn team that is paralyzed by zone defenses.

The Jayhawks maintained their hold on a 1-seed, but were moved to the Houston regional that the Longhorns vacated. Lunardi awarded five other bids to the Big 12, putting K-State (3-seed), Baylor (5), Missouri (8), A&M (9), and Oklahoma State (11) in the mix.

With Kansas’ stunning road loss to a depleted Tennessee Volunteers team yesterday afternoon, the Jayhawk stranglehold on the No. 1 ranking is finally over. And with Purdue falling at Wisconsin just a day earlier, that leaves only two undefeated contenders vying for that top spot — the Kentucky Wildcats and your Texas Longhorns.

The Wildcats were pushed for 38 minutes by the Georgia Bulldogs in Rupp Arena on Saturday, while Texas logged double-digit victories against Colorado and on the road against Arkansas. The Longhorns already had eight first place votes in last week’s AP Poll, while one coach tabbed Texas as the best team in the land. Kentucky managed just one vote for first, in the Associated Press rankings.

All signs point to the first-ever No. 1 ranking in school history for the Longhorns. This afternoon, we’ll find out if it really happens.

Texas opens the Big 12 tournament with one of those awful games that means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. A win over the league’s worst team, Colorado, does absolutely nothing for the Longhorns’ computer profile. In fact, playing against a team with such an awful record actually hurts the numbers that the NCAA Selection Committee is looking at as they fill out the bracket. In short, Texas has nothing to gain by beating the Buffaloes, but unfortunately has a lot to lose.

Stumbling against Colorado — something that Baylor did in last season’s tournament as the 5-seed — could easily cost the Longhorns a seed line or two when the NCAA brackets come out next Sunday. And for a team that has been vacillating between 7- and 8-seeds in most projections for the last four weeks, losing ground on the S-curve is a recipe for disaster. The Longhorns have to make a showing in this week’s tournament if they want to avoid a potential match-up with a 1- or 2-seed in the NCAA’s second round. Unfortunately, that run will have to start with this damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t trap game.

If you missed the game preview from the first time these two teams met, you will want to check it out for a detailed look at the Colorado players, their style of basketball, and how they match up with the Longhorns. If you’ve already read over that fine piece of literature, carry on for a quick preview of today’s tilt…

The previous meeting

Although Texas needed overtime for an 85-76 win, the Longhorns actually played remarkably well for most of the game. A.J. Abrams dropped 29, while Damion James had a double-double with 21 points and 14 rebounds. Texas fans will remember that James missed two opportunities to win the game at the free throw line in regulation, but his performance in overtime is what sealed the deal.

It wasn’t just the two stars who were clicking, as the Longhorns shot over 57% from the field and were seemingly unstoppable. Where they tripped up was in allowing the much shorter and guard-oriented Colorado team to grab just two rebounds less than the Longhorns. As we mentioned in the game preview of the first match-up, the lineup and style of play that Colorado coach Jeff Bzdelik employs means that Texas should be absolutely dominating the glass when these two teams meet.

Texas was also completely unable to shut down super soph Cory Higgins, who went off for 34 points, nine of which came at the line. Higgins shot 55% from the field, including a 3-of-5 afternoon from long range. Jermyl Jackson-Wilson doubled his season average with 10 against the Longhorns, while grabbing three key offensive rebounds in the game.

Since then…

When these teams first met on Valentine’s Day, the Buffaloes were fresh off a string of games where they had been putting scares into the top teams of the Big 12 Conference. Since then, Colorado has lost its remaining six games, but continued to play tough basketball that kept them in the contests until late.

Although the Buffaloes suffered a 21-point blowout loss at home against Oklahoma State followed by an 18-point embarrassment versus Baylor in Waco, they hung tough against quality teams from the top half of the conference in the other four losses. While none of those games were as impressive as the mid-season games that Colorado played on the road against Oklahoma and Kansas, their performance shows that these young Buffaloes are not yet throwing in the towel.

Higgins is one player in particular who is still giving 110% every night. In the last three games of the season, he averaged 23 points per contest on 49% shooting and swiped five steals. Unfortunately for the Buffs, Higgins still struggled with hanging on to the basketball. The Wildcats forced him to cough it up six times in the season finale on Saturday, giving him a final line on the year that includes a troubling 0.9 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Keys to the game

Dominate the rebounding battle – As it was in our first game preview for Colorado, the No. 1 key for this game is rebounding. Texas is much bigger than Colorado, and the Buffs’ affinity for a four-guard look with a post that sets high screens means that there is no excuse for the poor job the Longhorns did on the glass during the first match-up. Today Texas needs to keep Colorado off the boards — particularly Jackson-Wilson on the offensive end — and convert those solid defensive stands into one-and-done possessions.

Turn Higgins into a mere mortal – There is no doubt that this sophomore sensation is a great player, and next season could even lead Colorado out of the bottom rungs of the league standings. But if you take away even half of his 34-point performance from the February 14th game, Texas wins that one in a cakewalk. The Longhorns can’t sell out to guard Higgins, but he is by far their biggest offensive threat, and he warrants added defensive attention today. Texas needs to communicate on defense so they don’t lose the little guard as they fight through the infinite number of screens that Colorado is going to throw out there.

Play injury-free – Rather than a key to winning this game, we’re going with the big picture for No. 3 in our rundown. As we mentioned in the lead, Texas is in a no-win situation with this game. Losing it will cost them a few seed lines, but losing any of their key players in a win is no better. While you can’t really plan for a game with no tweaked ankles or knees, let’s all pull for the Longhorns to come out healthy on the other side of this one.

It’s the first Monday in March, which means that the power begins to shift from the pollsters and over to the bracketologists. We’ve still got your weekly rundown of both, but you can be certain that fans of teams on the cusp of the polls are just a teeeeensy bit more concerned about the various bubble watches floating around the internet. On to the goodies……

Following Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma State, the Longhorns slipped from both major polls this week, falling into the “others receiving votes” category. Oklahoma slid only a few spots after their Griffin-less loss to Kansas on Monday night, checking in at 4th with the AP and 5th with the writers. The Jayhawks benefitted from that victory and their blowout win over Missouri yesterday, jumping to 9th in both polls. The Tigers slid to 12th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches poll, while the much more vengeful Associated Press shipped them all the way to 15th for their deer-in-the-headlights performance at Allen Fieldhouse. Oklahoma State also grabbed a slight bit of attention from the AP, earning two points in this week’s poll for their five-game winning streak.

For once, the resident bracketologists at Sports Illustrated and ESPN agree on the Longhorns…sort of. Andy Glockner seeds the Longhorns 9th, facing off against Utah, while Joe Lunardi pegs Texas an 8, taking on UNLV. The common ground for the two men? A trip to Dayton for this first weekend, which sits just fine with this basketball traveler, who is strongly pulling for a Friday/Sunday pod that doesn’t involve the fabulous March weather of Minneapolis. For a complete list of the tournament sites this year, click on over to my favorite Wiki.

The folks assigned to watching the bubble are also in agreement that the Longhorns really just need to win tonight to seal up their tournament bid. Both Andy Glockner of SI.com and Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com think Texas should be in. But like any good college basketball fans would know, Andy and Mark are fully aware that this schizophrenic Longhorn team could just as easily lose their last two regular season games, lay a turd in the Big 12 Tournament, and be sweating things out on Selection Sunday. For the sake of my heart and currently-forming ulcers, this doomsday scenario would be best left on the table.

This week’s consensus blogpoll at CBS Sportsline follows the lead of the major polls, with UConn ascending to the top spot. For the second straight week, our ballot was dubbed “Mr. Numb Existence” for being the one amongst the 42 submitted which most closely approximated the consensus poll. We’re not sure if that’s some sort of sign that we watch too much basketball, but we’ll take it as a compliment. Be sure to check out the link in this paragraph to not only see the rankings, but to get all of the great analysis by Jerry Hinnen of the Auburn blog The Joe Cribbs Car Wash.

Last week’s ballot was admittedly a tough one, with teams around the country refusing to play consistent basketball. As a result, we submitted rankings which we weren’t exactly proud of, but ones which best reflected the muddied state of college hoops this year.

It’s painfully clear now that there is a very thin upper crust in the NCAA this season, and a lot of other mediocre teams filling up the middle. But even amidst that thin upper crust, there’s not much differentiation, as it’s a season in which no one is the clear frontrunner for the national title.

This week’s vote was a little easier, as only ten teams which we ranked were victims of a loss over the last seven days. Below is our ballot from this week, followed by superfluous explanation. If you’re enjoying the new “change” data in the third column, you might also be interested in our previous ballot, from February 23rd.

Rank	Team	Change
1	Connecticut	1
2	Memphis	2
3	Pittsburgh	2
4	Oklahoma	1
5	North Carolina	—
6	Louisville	—
7	Duke	—
8	Wake Forest	1
9	Michigan St.	1
10	Kansas	5
11	Missouri	3
12	Villanova	1
13	Marquette	1
14	Gonzaga	2
15	Clemson	2
16	Washington	4
17	Arizona St.	3
18	UCLA	1
19	Louisiana St.	2
20	Illinois	2
21	Purdue	4
22	Xavier	1
23	Florida St.	1
24	Brigham Young	2
25	Syracuse	1

At first glance, some readers may be confused by the very minor slides from Pitt and Oklahoma. At this point, we feel that a team should be valued more on their overall body of work than simply the results from the last seven days. The recent games certainly must be taken into account, but even Pitt’s road loss to unranked Providence isn’t enough to overshadow the fact that the Panthers have many more quality wins than the Tar Heels. As for the Sooners, they get some leniency when you consider that they lost to a Kansas team which we’ve moved into the Top Ten, and that they did so without superstar Blake Griffin.

Those Jayhawks are our biggest movers of the week, shooting up from No. 15 to tenth in this week’s ballot. Kansas finished the week with an absolute mudholing of Missouri in Allen Fieldhouse yesterday, and they were also aided by the fact that Marquette, Clemson, and Arizona State all lost a pair of games during the last week.

The other portion of our ballot that is worthy of discussion this week is, as always, the troubling bottom five spots. As we mentioned in the introduction, there’s really not any consistency or exceptional quality once you get past the initial contenders, and losses this week by West Virginia and Texas muddied things up at the bottom once again. You may notice that even though Florida State lost on the road against Boston College, they actually climbed a rung in our rankings this week. That’s an anomaly explained by both the Seminoles’ huge win against Clemson on Saturday, and the fact that once again there was a dearth of teams wanting to crack the rankings.

Some bloggers have been ranking Butler, which actually resulted in the Bulldogs checking in at 24th in our consensus poll last week. Considering that they won their pair of games this week, they likely will even climb when the consensus poll is released this afternoon. But the simple fact of the matter is that Butler lost at home to Loyola-Chicago and on the road to Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Wisconsin-Green Bay. Do you honestly think the Bulldogs would be sitting at 25-4 if they played in a conference that was worth a damn?

As we’ve mentioned, the consensus blogpoll will be up later this afternoon. Fast Break will be here for your late afternoon enjoyment, including new bracket projections, bubble watches, and the real polls from the AP and coaches. The Baylor game preview will follow in the late afternoon.

Texas has climbed back into the rankings as a result of Saturday’s upset of Oklahoma, who was ranked No. 2 nationally at the time. The Longhorns are now 24th according to the coaches and 25th according to the writers. The Sooners slid only one slot after the loss, checking in at No. 3, while Missouri cracked the top ten in the ESPN/USA Today rankings at eighth. Kansas held serve with a pair of wins this week, and the Jayhawks were rewarded with the 15th slot in both polls.

The seed line improved for the Longhorns as well, according to ESPN’s bracketologist Joe Lunardi. He has Texas slotted as a 6-seed, playing in Minneapolis to open the tournament. This is a marked improvement for Texas, which was sitting in the dreaded 8/9 game as of last week’s update. Should Texas take care of business and finish 3-1 in league play, one can only assume that they’ll hold steady as a 6-seed in this year’s remarkably weak field.

Andy Glockner of SI.com was less impressed with the win, leaving Texas as a 9-seed in Greensboro. It’s safe to say that the potential of playing North Carolina in a second round game in their own backyard would be a nightmare scenario.

After a week’s absence in the blogpoll, we’re back in the mix with today’s ballot. Here are our votes, with the official compilation poll to come later today:

Rank	Team
1	Pittsburgh
2	Connecticut
3	Oklahoma
4	Memphis
5	North Carolina
6	Louisville
7	Duke
8	Missouri
9	Wake Forest
10	Michigan St.
11	Villanova
12	Marquette
13	Clemson
14	Arizona St.
15	Kansas
16	Gonzaga
17	Purdue
18	Illinois
19	UCLA
20	Washington
21	Louisiana St.
22	West Virginia
23	Xavier
24	Florida St.
25	Texas

It was an interesting week with losses by half of the top ten teams from the last poll. Only Wake Forest and UConn suffered their defeats at the hands of other top ten teams, while North Carolina, Michigan State, and Oklahoma all lost on the road to unranked opponents. As a result, it was a little easier to ignore the instinct to slide teams up and down based on the most recent results and instead reshuffle everyone based on their complete body of work this season.

The middle of the pack all held their own by winning their games this week, but our votes differed slightly from the consensus of last week’s blogpoll, when we didn’t submit a ballot. We chose to slot Marquette ahead of Clemson based on a more robust list of quality wins, although they could quickly take a nosedive with an absolute nightmare of a schedule awaiting them over the final two weeks. The Golden Eagles have to face UConn and Louisville this week before closing the season with a road trip to Pitt and a home game against Syracuse.

After that quality in the middle of the poll, things were a bit dicier with the lower rankings. Five of the bottom seven teams lost a game this week, and practically every other team that could have been considered for the 24th or 25th slot dropped at least one game as well. LSU slides up two spots to No. 21 in our ballot, but it’s more a reflection on the lack of other candidates than a rousing endorsement of the Tigers. They are playing in an incredibly weak SEC, leaving a home win over Washington State as their only remarkable victory this year.

The full compilation ballot will be released later this afternoon.

In the midst of a three-game losing skid, Texas dropped from both the AP and ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll for the first time since February 19, 2007. The sudden plummet ended a streak of 37 consecutive weeks ranked in the Coaches Poll and 39 straight weeks in the Associated Press rankings. The Longhorns still received votes in both tallies, which put them at 27th in the Coaches Poll and 28th according to the media.

Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri are still the only three ranked representatives from the Big 12 conference, with the Sooners holding firm to their grasp on second place in both polls. The Jayhawks are slotted 16th by both groups, while the Tigers were placed 15th and 17th by the media and coaches, respectively.

The losing skid is hurting Texas in more important ways, as their NCAA outlook is getting cloudier by the day. Fortunately, many other teams across the country are stumbling at the same time, but it still hasn’t stopped the Longhorns from sliding another line in today’s Bracketology, where Lunardi slots the Horns as a 7-seed in Dayton. Andy Glockner still believes the Longhorns should be in the field of 65, but he echoes Lunardi’s sentiments and tabs Texas as a 7-seed.

If you were here back in the infancy of Longhorn Road Trip — or perhaps just attended the first two rounds of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic back in 2006 — you might remember tiny Chicago State guard David Holston lighting up St. Bonaventure for 43 points at The Drum. Now just two years later, Holston is the NCAA’s third-leading scorer, averaging 25.6 points per contest. Sports Illustrated’s Bill Trocchi shed some extra light on the “little package of dynamite” in a piece on their website a few weeks ago. Be sure to check it out.