Can Texas basketball pull off the upset of No. 20 Texas Tech?

The first game of the Big 12 Tournament has nearly arrived for No. 13 ranked Texas basketball and head coach Shaka Smart as they get set to take on head coach Chris Beard and the No. 20 ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders on the night of March 11. Texas and Texas Tech got the prime time tip off in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal games on March 11.

A pretty crazy day of action on March 11 during the Big 12 Tournament started out with the No. 12 ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys pulling off an upset of the No. 10 ranked West Virginia Mountaineers for the second time in one week. Tip off between Oklahoma State and West Virginia came in the mid-morning CT on March 11.

And then the Kansas State Wildcats put a scare in the top seeded Baylor Bears in an afternoon tip off. It all rounded out prior to tip off of Texas and Texas Tech with the seven-seed Oklahoma Sooners and head coach Lon Kruger falling shot to the two-seed Kansas Jayhawks earlier in the evening.

Tip off time between Texas and Texas Tech is set for 8:30 p.m. CT at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, MO. The last game that the Longhorns played in resulted in a comfortable 12-point win over head coach Jamie Dixon and the TCU Horned Frogs back on March 7.

This would be the first time this season that Smart and the Longhorns were able to take down the Red Raiders. In fact Texas Tech was the only team that the Longhorns played twice during the regular season in which they did not pull out a single win.

How Texas basketball can get the win over the Red Raiders

On March 11, Texas can exact their revenge as they are actually underdogs against Texas Tech in this quarterfinal matchup. Although Texas has the better record and higher ranking in both major polls, Texas Tech winning both regular season meetings and carrying a good level of momentum into the Big 12 Tournament is apparently giving them the edge.

Texas Tech is a slight 1.5-point favorite ahead of tip off over the Longhorns. And the ESPN matchup predictor gives Texas Tech slightly more than a 60 percent chance to beat Texas in Kansas City on this night.

If Texas wants to finally get over the hump against the Red Raiders, they will need their standout backcourt trio of senior guard Matt Coleman, junior guard Courtney Ramey, and redshirt junior shooting guard/wing Andrew Jones, to come through in a big way. Texas got nice outings from that trio in the March 7 win over the Horned Frogs.

More than anything, Smart needs this win to finally prove some level of postseason success. He hasn’t found much of any success since taking over as head coach on the Forty Acres more than five years ago in the Big 12 Tournament or the NCAA Tournament.

This is the best Texas team that Smart had during his tenure as the program’s head coach to date. What better way to break through in the postseason than against a Texas Tech that the Longhorns are looking to exact revenge against.

Smart and the Longhorns carry a record of 17-7 (11-6 Big 12) into this Big 12 Tournament matchup in the quarterfinals against the 17-9 (8-8 Big 12) Red Raiders. Texas would also move their winning streak to four games if they can top Texas Tech on this night.