Texas Basketball: 1 unbelievable NCAA Tournament stat for Longhorns

For the second season in a row, the Texas basketball program is headed to the NCAA Tournament as a single-digit seed. This is also the second straight year where Texas men’s hoops were seeded at least inside the top six in the NCAA Tournament.

In theory, you would think that this would present the Longhorns with a good opportunity to make a solid postseason run. Yet, that was definitely not the case last season when Texas was downed in the Round of 64 in major upset fashion by the 14-seed Abilene Christian Wildcats.

Stream Texas in the NCAA Tournament with a free trial of Sling TV.

The hope is that first-year head coach Chris Beard can turn the Longhorns’ fortunes around in the NCAA Tournament this season. Despite the early exit in the Big 12 Tournament last week after a first-round upset loss to head coach Jamie Dixon and the TCU Horned Frogs by the final score of 65-60, Beard and the Longhorns can still be redeemed with a successful run in the Big Dance.

But Texas will be doing so without much experience at all in the NCAA Tournament on their current roster. That is, Texas at least doesn’t have much winning experience from the NCAA Tournament on the roster.

Christian Bishop and Avery Benson are the lone Texas basketball players with at least one tourney win

Since the Longhorns are riding a four-game losing streak in the NCAA Tournament dating all the way back to 2014, there aren’t many players that have experienced winning that are now a part of this team. The only players that experienced at least one win in the Big Dance are those Beard got out of the NCAA Transfer Portal last offseason.

In fact, Texas only has two players on their current roster that have even experienced one NCAA Tournament win in their collegiate careers. And those two players are the former Creighton Blue Jays forward Christian Bishop and former Texas Tech Red Raiders guard/wing Avery Benson.

Bishop actually has two NCAA Tournament wins under his belt from Creighton’s run to the Sweet 16 last year. Creighton won two games against Ohio and UCSB before eventually falling short to the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the Sweet 16.

Meanwhile, Benson also has two NCAA Tournament wins under his belt from games that he actually played in during Texas Tech’s run to the National Championship Game in 2019. Yet, Benson has obviously been present for plenty of postseason wins thanks to the run that Beard and the Red Raiders made to the title game in 2019.

All in all, there is plenty of postseason inexperience on this Longhorns’ roster, despite having a plethora of upperclassmen up and down the rotation. It will be interesting to see how that plays a factor when Texas takes on the 11-seed Virginia Tech Hokies in the Round of 64 on March 18.

Texas heads into their Round of 64 matchup with Virginia Tech sporting a record of 21-11 (10-8 Big 12) following their Big 12 Tournament loss to TCU. Tip-off time between the six-seed Texas and 11-seed Virginia Tech on March 18 is set for 3:30 p.m. CT.