While much of the attention this weekend will be focused on the likes of Greg Oden, Arron Afflalo, Joakim Noah, and Roy Hibbert, Longhorn fans will be paying special attention to Kevin Durant. One of four finalists for the Naismith Award, KD will find out on Sunday whether or not he will win the prestigious award as only a freshman. And if he does in fact bring home the hardware, you’ll find full coverage here at Longhorn Road Trip to peruse while eating your Monday morning bagels.

In the coming weeks, I’ll also be working to bring you the tales from the road that have yet to be posted. My goal is to unveil one a week, but if I’m feeling extra-productive, who knows what will appear. Along with that comes the remaining photo galleries, which includes all of the home games and post-season as well. And along the way, I will randomly be revealing different top-ten lists regarding my time following UT hoops — top arenas, top games, best fans, and the like.

If you don’t feel like visiting the page on a daily basis, you can always add the RSS to your news feed if you’ve got an aggregator. Or you could just join in with the hundreds of folks who are bookmarking the page. Either way, you’ll be sure to find new content all spring and summer as we await the start of the next season of Longhorn basketball….and perhaps a new season of road trips.

Yes, we’re alive and in Austin, not dead somewhere on a mountain in Montana. It’s been a weird, weird week without Texas basketball around to talk, think, or write about. I guess I didn’t realize it while the season was going on, but making all of these trips had essentially whittled my life down to school, work, and basketball. It’s kind of odd to have the biggest part of that suddenly missing.

But fortunately, tonight the NCAA tournament is back. I can only hope that these Sweet Sixteen games are as thrilling as Saturday’s second-round action. I may or may not get to a USC wrap at some point this weekend. In all honesty, that game was so ugly and demoralizing, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

There is still a ton of stuff going on in the basketball world, though. We’ve got ex-Horns playing in the homestretch of the NBA season, there will be a ton of coaching changes in the college ranks — Tubby Smith is out at UK as of today — and, of course, we get to play the “Will he or won’t he?” game regarding Kevin Durant.

Once again, apologies for the disappearing act this week and enjoy the ballgames tonight. Longhorn Road Trip should be back full force by Monday.

Today I am really excited to finally unveil a new feature here on the site. I’ve mentioned in some previous posts that I have been fooling around with the Google Maps API in order to give you an easier way to navigate the content from all of my trips. I think I have finally gotten the finished product to a point that I am comfortable with showing the public. That finished product is, of course, the map you see below.

Each city I have visited is represented by a basketball, which you can click to open an info bubble for each trip. There you will find links to the previews and wrap-ups from each game, along with the photos and blogs from each city. As I continue to add more pictures and blog entries from past trips, I will update the links in the map.

There is a slight delay between clicking a link in an info bubble and the new page replacing the current one. I’m not sure if there’s any way around that, since I am forced to use IFRAMEs in order to work around the way WordPress sets up directories. If any of you out there are more technologically inclined than yours truly, feel free to leave ideas in the comments section or shoot me an email.

While this map will slide further down the main page as I write more entries, you can still easily find it every time you visit by clicking on the brand new “Map” link in the grey navigation bar up top.

Jayhawk preview coming at you either later this morning from Austin or late, late, late tonight from the outskirts of Kansas City.

Edit: Apparently there is only one basketball showing up for users who have Internet Explorer. I’m not sure what is causing this and I likely won’t fix it before I leave for Kansas. But hey, isn’t this a great opportunity to finally download Firefox like you’ve been meaning to?

Buenos días, readers. This morning, I’ve got three new photo galleries up for you to peruse — Houston, Stillwater, and Lincoln. After I get the Tech re-preview posted, I’ll get back to the rest of the photo galleries and hopefully get them all knocked out before the OU trip this weekend.

The Google Maps feature is coming along quite nicely and should also be ready to roll once the last photo gallery is posted. That will make it a lot easier to find all of the content that’s spread out across the site in an easy-to-navigate map.

Then all that’s left is to finish updating the trip blogs. (Phoenix was posted on Friday night, for those of you who may have missed it over the weekend.) If all goes according to plan, everything should be up-to-date and all of the bells and whistles functional before conference play is over. Which sets us up quite nicely for all of the tournament action, of course.

Can you smell that? March is right around the corner.

Last night, Kansas easily handled Colorado at the Coors Event Center, the only arena in the Big 12 I’ve been to that completely lacks a home court advantage. Hell, for Texas it even skewed neutral if not in favor of the Horns. I would not be surprised to hear that there was more blue and red in the stands last night as the Jayhawks steamrolled the Buffs by 29. It keeps KU right in the hunt for the conference title, as they await a stumble from Texas A&M.

There’s not a whole lot going on in the world of basketball today, besides some games out west in the Pac 10. USC heads to Arizona at 9:30 PM (Central) in a game that is absolutely huge for the up-and-down Wildcats. After losing five of six, including that embarrassment at home to UNC, Arizona has won their last three. They are tied for fifth in the stacked Pac 10, but a visit from UCLA is just two days away. A win tonight is necessary to stop another momentum-killing losing streak.

In Austin, we don’t get this game, but instead UCLA at Arizona State followed by Oregon State at Stanford. Good choice on that one, FSN. Perhaps Austin viewers will find the A-10 clash between UMass and Fordham (8 PM, ESPN2) a bit more thrilling. If not, there’s always the 2004 Powerade Jam Fest at 10 on the Duece. I might just have to clear my calendar for this lineup.

At 6 PM (Central), there’s a generally useless game back east, as St. Francis takes on St. Francis. The two schools — one located in Loretto, PA, and the other in Brooklyn — are in the midst of abysmal seasons. The loser gets the glory of having a 21-loss season, while they both will still be slumming it in the bottom of the Northeastern Conference. If I haven’t sold you on watching this painful display of mediocrity, I’m just not sure what else I can do.

I’ve been toying around with the GoogleMaps API to create a clickable map of the places I’ve visited that will hopefully organize things a little nicer and spruce the place up. Tomorrow I’m dedicating the entire afternoon to the site, so look for some new content and a Baylor re-preview.