Selection committee reveals why Texas made 2025 NCAA Tournament field

The NCAA Tournament selection committee had plenty of questions to answer after revealing the bracket on Sunday. One of those happened to be about why it gave an at-large bid to Texas.

The Longhorns (19-15, 6-12 SEC) got in the field as one of the last four in to give the SEC a league-record 14 total teams. They edged out schools such as West Virginia and Indiana, both of which were among the first four out.

Selection committee chair Bubba Cunningham addressed the decision in a press conference shortly after the field was announced. He pointed to Quadrant 1 victories for the Longhorns and the fact that they played in what is considered the toughest conference in basketball this season.

“It’s incredible when you get down toward the end,” he said. “As we mentioned previously, San Diego State, Texas, Xavier, North Carolina, all of us got in right at the very, very end, and the committee looks at 12 different metrics, including this year the Torvik and the WAB, and I can’t speak for everyone on the committee, but I do think that the seven wins in Quad 1 was significant, and I think that’s probably one of the things that moved them in.

“They played in the hardest conference in the country. That conference has just won 88 percent of their non-conference games, and they didn’t have a single loss in Quad 3 or Quad 4. They had an outstanding year, and their competition was really mostly in their conference.”

Texas finished the season at No. 39 in the NCAA’s NET rankings, several spots higher than many of the teams it beat out. The Longhorns also finished 7-10 against Q1 opponents and, as Cunningham mentioned, didn’t have a bad loss.

Additionally, they were 13-3 in the nonconference, a fact that the committee seriously considered. But this was the first year that Texas played in the SEC, and that might ultimately be what pushed it over the edge.

“We had to look at the non-conference strength of schedule but we also looked at the conference,” Cunningham said. “When you look at the overall strength of schedule for the entire year, we talk about a full body of work. Quite frankly, teams that don’t schedule hard in the non-conference have to rely on an incredible conference season with great teams within their league, and this year for Texas it worked out.”