The Longhorn Road Trip just got a whole lot longer. Thanks to the genius of the the NCAA Selection Committee, Texas — a “protected” four seed — will be playing its first two rounds over 2,000 miles from home, with a possible Sweet 16 date in East Rutherford, New Jersey their reward for a pair of victories.

Does anybody actually know anything about Spokane, Washington? Or have any tips of what to see along the way? I’m guessing there won’t be a whole hell of a lot once we get past Denver, but looking at mountains for 891 straight hours ought to be grand. If you’ve got any sights or restaurants for us to check out, feel free to leave them below in the comments.

Honestly, the entire Big 12 got shafted by the committee. A&M is a 3-seed that gets sent to Lexington, while Memphis gets sent to New Orleans as a 2-seed? Why aren’t the Tigers close to home in Lexington while the Aggies play closer to home in Nawlins? And that doesn’t even address the fact that A&M could end up playing Louisville in the second round, only 75 miles down I-64 from the UL campus.

Then Kansas is given a 1-seed, but is rewarded with a regional where 2-seed UCLA gets to play only five hours from home? I realize that the top seeds are only supposed to be protected in the first two rounds — unless, apparently you’re a top four seed from the state of Texas — but is preserving the S-curve so important that a 1-seed should get jobbed that badly?

Why not ship UCLA to the San Antonio regional and send Memphis out to the San Jose regional? I’m assuming, of course, that the S-curve held perfectly for these top eight seeds. If that’s so, you’ve got the overall third-best team (Ohio State) playing the fifth-best team (UCLA) if chalk holds to the Elite Eight, while the fourth-best team (Kansas) gets the sixth-best (Memphis) and no top seeds are absolutely screwed by road games in the second weekend.

That’s enough bitching for now. At least Texas has two winnable games in front of them. We’ll be driving to Spokane on Wednesday and Thursday, so there will likely be few updates to the website in the middle of the week. A preview of the New Mexico State Aggies should be coming on Thursday night once we arrive at the hotel.

I’ve been toying with the idea of another year of Longhorn Road Trip during the 2007-08 season, but today’s scheduling news has me geeked beyond words. Mark Rosner of the Austin American-Statesman posted the story to his blog earlier today, announcing that the Horns would host Wisconsin and play Michigan State in Detroit next year.

Readers of this blog may have noticed my infatuation with the Badgers, thanks in no small part to a former co-worker from my days in Belmont. And granted, Wisconsin is going to be rebuilding next year much like we were this season. But I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to see the Badgers here in Austin and then get to see a game up in ‘Scon in the 08-09 season. Hopefully Bo Ryan will still have some hair left by then.

So what’s on the slate for next year’s schedule? Check out this nice package of non-conference opponents:

at UCLA in December
at Michigan State (Detroit)
at Arkansas
home against TCU
home against Wisconsin
plus, a November tournament in Austin/New Jersey

I was waffling on the idea of another season following the team, but that schedule right there may have pushed me over the edge. You can be sure that I’ll revisit the topic during the offseason.

Quarterfinal preview coming at you early on Friday morning before I drive to Oklahoma City.

It’s almost time to hit the road, and it appears that Oklahoma is a rain-soaked, thunderstorm-ridden area under a tornado watch. So now not only do we have to worry about running into Jason White’s mother, but there’s the danger of flying trailer homes. Faaaaantastic!

This has led me to an important conclusion, one that you may dissect and discuss with friends throughout the day. You see, my theory is that OU still sucks.

The photos from the long road trip to Tennessee are now online. Just click “photos” above and then select that album from the next page. As for the actual write-up about the Tennessee trip? Slow your roll, kid.

Texas Tech preview will be at your browsers by the time you scramble some eggs in the morning.

Chances are, you didn’t notice the new link stuck at the top of the page today. But it’s there, hidden in between the schedule and our contact information. I’ve got the first two photo galleries up online, with more coming throughout the weekend.

For now, I’ve only got them grouped by city. That means pictures from the game, the arenas, and the places around town are all stuck in the same place. Eventually, I’ll create albums for photos of each player, each game, and one combining all the arenas. Then you can skip the stuff you don’t want to see and get right to what you are looking for.

But in the meantime, click the link above and you can get started with the shots from New York and Phoenix. I’ll get around to the others sometime after I bring you the Baylor preview.