Tonight the Longhorns host their second straight home game, just four days after the huge win over then-No. 2 Oklahoma on Saturday night. Texas is now in a tie for fourth in the conference with Kansas State, a team who owns the tiebreaker by virtue of their win in Austin on January 31st. If the Longhorns hope to earn a bye in the Big 12 tournament, they will have to finish at least a full game ahead of the Wildcats, who will likely finish their remaining schedule with a 3-1 or 2-2 mark.

Luckily for Texas, their home slate consists of two very winnable games, starting with tonight’s contest against the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Coach Pat Knight will not be on the sidelines for the game due to a suspension the league levied for his comments following his team’s loss to Texas A&M on Saturday. For a preview of the key players on the Tech squad, check out the game preview from the first game between the two teams, a contest which the Longhorns won by a lopsided 71-49 count behind 18 points from Damion James.

The Erwin Center has been unkind to Tech, as the Red Raiders have lost in their last 12 trips to Austin. It will likely be even tougher tonight, as the jersey retirement ceremony of superstar Kevin Durant will ensure a much larger crowd than typically expected for an 8:30 tip on a Wednesday.

This should be a game that Texas coasts to victory in, but stranger things have certainly happened. Hopefully, the momentum from Saturday night will carry over, and the Longhorns will make this the blowout it should be. But for a Texas team that has seemingly played to the level of its competition all season long, things could certainly be much closer than necessary.

#15 Kansas Jayhawks 87, #3 Oklahoma Sooners 78 – With Blake Griffin out of the game as a precaution following his Saturday-night concussion, Kansas was hoping to exploit their advantage inside by pounding it to Cole Aldrich. While the big man certainly made a difference for the Jayhawks with his 15-point, 20-rebound performance, it was the three point shooters who stole the show late in the game. The two teams combined to shoot 20-of-43 from behind the arc (46.5%), with Sherron Collins and Willie Warren trading bombs from long range. Collins finished the night with 26 points, while Warren had 23 in the losing effort.

With the win, Kansas grabbed sole possession of first place heading into their Sunday showdown with Border War rival Missouri. The Tigers are one and a half games behind the Jayhawks in the standings, but won the first meeting between the two teams back on February 2nd.

#6 Louisville Cardinals, Georgetown Hoyas 76 58 – The Cardinals converted their first seven three-point attempts against Georgetown on Monday night and never looked back, cruising to an 18-point win at the Verizon Center. Terrence Williams had a ridiculous stat line for Coach Pitino, nearly earning a triple-double with his ten points, twelve rebounds, and seven assists. On the other side of the court, DeJuan Summers was nearly non-existent for the Hoyas in the defeat, scoring only four points in his thirty minutes of play. The loss was the ninth in the last eleven games for Georgetown.

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.

After suffering a crushing road loss to the rival Texas A&M Aggies on Monday night, the Texas Longhorns sit in a precarious position. At just one game above the .500 mark in league play, they are in significant danger of missing out on a first-round tournament bye for only the third time in the Big 12 Conference’s 13-year history. Even more chilling is the very real possibility that the Longhorns could melt down just enough this February to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1998.

There are some who would say tonight is a “make or break” game for this team. That’s only half correct. The Longhorns can certainly make their season with an upset victory over the Oklahoma Sooners, a team that is ranked second nationally and is only two days away from ascending to the No. 1 position. But a loss tonight is not the last straw. Although the bookies are favoring Texas from one to two points, make no mistake about it. This is a game that the Sooners are expected to win.

So while the potential reward tonight is huge, the risk is not nearly as great. Texas would still need to win three of its remaining four games and probably even a conference tournament contest to be on the safe side of this year’s soft bubble. But a win tonight? A win could certainly change the picture…

The previous meeting

The two teams first met on January 17th in a game many expected would help establish a favorite in the conference race. But Texas looked awful coming right out of the gates, and an irritated Rick Barnes benched most of his starters to send a message. The fact that Harrison Smith played fourteen minutes in the game should be a crystal-clear indication of just how annoyed the head coach was during the first half. Heading to the locker room, Texas was already down eleven points to the Sooners.

In the second half, the starters seemed to get the message, playing with heart and determination as they whittled the lead down to only four points with just under 12 minutes to play. But then came the meltdown. The Sooners reeled off twelve straight points and kept the Longhorns at arm’s length the rest of the way, cruising to a convincing 78-63 win.

The game showcased just how balanced this year’s Oklahoma team is, with four of the five starters contributing 15 points or more. Superstar Blake Griffin led the way with one of his countless double-doubles, scoring 20 points to go with 10 rebounds.

Since then…

Oklahoma has not lost a single conference game this season, although they have made it interesting a few times. On the road, they struggled with Texas A&M, Iowa State, and Oklahoma State, while letting the Aggies and Colorado Buffaloes hang around in games at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman. But in every single instance, the Sooners pulled away late on the strength of solid rebounding and efficient possessions. Oklahoma has proven that even if they find themselves in a dogfight as the minutes tick away in tonight’s ballgame, you’d still want to bet the house on them.

The biggest storylines since the last time these two teams met are the emergence of Austin Johnson and the addition of Juan Pattillo to the lineup. Johnson, the team’s senior point guard, has absolutely exploded in conference play. He is averaging nearly 12 points per contest in Big 12 games and is shooting 46% from behind the arc. But perhaps most importantly, his assist-to-turnover ratio is a serviceable 2.5-to-1, an impressive achievement for someone who was known as a turnover machine during his first three seasons.

The Sooners also gained a huge advantage when they decided to take the redshirt off of Pattillo, a 6’6″ forward. He has stepped right into the rotation and gives Oklahoma some much-needed depth. Not only is Pattillo an extra body for a team that once had a short bench, but he can actually play. He’s a force inside, but also has a great midrange jumper. He’s another quality shot blocker that pairs nicely with the Griffin brothers down low, and his deft passing is an asset for a team that runs a highly-efficient half-court set.

If you’re looking for a refresher on the rest of the Sooners and their style of basketball, be sure to check out the game preview from the first match-up in Norman.

Keys to the game

Don’t put the Sooners on the line – As we pointed out in that first game preview, Oklahoma owns a distinct advantage at the charity stripe. On the season, they are averaging 9.6 more free throw attempts per game than their opponents, and you can be sure that the Sooners will be looking to exploit that advantage tonight. There is a severe drop-off in talent after the core group of Longhorns, so they simply cannot afford to rack up fouls while sending OU to the line for free points.

Keep it close early – Oklahoma has jumped out to huge leads in many of their games, and that is the one way that the Sooners can quickly mitigate the crowd factor in tonight’s contest. OU has struggled on the road, and the Frank Erwin Center is the largest arena in the conference. If Texas wants to exploit that home-court advantage, they will need to keep the score close.

Defend the three-point line – The Sooners are going to get a ton of points in the paint. It’s simply a given fact that their opponents must find a way to deal with. But in the first match-up, Texas allowed OU to shoot 40% from behind the arc, with many of the three-pointers coming at inopportune moments. Texas is already going to have its hands full in this one, so they simply cannot afford to let Tony Crocker, Willie Warren, and Johnson to make things even more difficult with a barrage of threes.