Texas Basketball: 3 reasons Longhorns can win Big 12 Tournament

3. Enough momentum to carry them through

There might not be a better time for the Texas basketball program to establish a five-game winning streak at any point over the course of the last two seasons than now. Smart is getting the Longhorns to put it all together at the perfect time, and they did it at one of the more difficult and crucial points of the regular season schedule.

Texas has managed to work their way into a two-way tie for third place in the Big 12 standings as of March 3. They now sit with a 9-8 record in conference play, which is the same as Texas Tech. Texas and Texas Tech are one game ahead of both West Virginia and Oklahoma. They definitely can’t catch either the Baylor Bears or Kansas Jayhawks (both have 15 wins in Big 12 play), but at least they won’t have to play either of them early on in the conference tournament.

Instead, Texas will either play the five or six seed in all likelihood. That either pits them against West Virginia or Oklahoma if the regular season were to end today. But that matchup could possibly come against either of those four aforementioned teams, or even the TCU Horned Frogs.

Depending if the Longhorns take down the Pokes this weekend at home for Senior Day at the Frank Erwin Center on Saturday afternoon, they are likely to either be the three or four seed. Texas Tech finishes out the regular season with about the most difficult matchup possible, which will come against No. 1 ranked Kansas on March 7 at 1 p.m. CT.