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Texas' two-game road trip features a can't-lose game at a crucial time

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•about 20 hours•

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Tre Johnson
Tre Johnson (Scott Wachter-Imagn Images)

The Texas Longhorns (16-10, 5-8 SEC) are set to play their final two-game road trip of the 2024-25 regular season this weekend, and any scenario where Rodney Terry‘s team does not start the trip with a win at South Carolina would be detrimental and possibly fatal for Texas’ chances at securing a bid in the NCAA Tournament.

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This year’s Gamecocks are much different than the squad Lamont Paris put together last season that went 26-8 and 13-5 in the SEC, a mark good for second behind regular season champion Tennessee. They aren’t even close to sniffing .500 with a 10-16 overall record and a 0-13 mark in SEC play. South Carolina hasn’t won a home game at Colonial Life Arena since they defeated Presbyterian 69-59 on December 30. They’ve suffered some tough losses, including single-digit defeats versus Auburn, Vanderbilt, Florida, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss. But in league play, they’ve yet to notch a win.

Texas travels to Columbia looking to turn South Carolina into a 0-14 team. Should they do so, they’ll leave the Palmetto State with a Quadrant 2 win as defined by the NCAA’s NET Rankings and improve to 4-2 in that classification of games. USC features double-digit average scorers in Collin Murray-Boyles (15.5 ppg) and Jamarii Thomas (13.3 ppg), but the Gamecocks rank in the mid-to-high 200s in field goal percentage, three-point percentage, free throw percentage, rebounding, and assists.

While South Carolina would be a Quadrant 2 opponent, providing the Gamecocks with their first SEC win would be the worst possible start for Texas as it tries to bolster its resume off the NCAA Tournament bubble.

A win for the Longhorns would mean that Texas would have to only split its final four games at Arkansas, versus Georgia, at Mississippi State, and at home versus Oklahoma. A loss? They would have to go 3-for-4.

And there may be no team on the schedule that would relish preventing that from happening while earning the season sweep over the Longhorns than the Razorbacks, the program on the other side of this two-game road trip.

Arkansas thumped Texas 78-70 on February 5 in a contest that was not as close as the score suggests. John Calipari‘s squad has been up and down this year and also finds itself at the risk of heading to Dayton for the First Four. A win over a Texas team, whether reeling or looking to extend a streak, would do as much for the Hogs’ NCAA Tournament chances as it would for the Horns’.

Looking at the rest of the schedule, the Longhorns have not yet played Georgia, whose NCAA Tournament chances are slimmer than those belonging to the Longhorns. The Longhorns have not yet played Mississippi State, likely the toughest remaining opponent on the schedule. The regular season ends with Oklahoma, who has slid worse than any program in the SEC outside of South Carolina under Porter Moser‘s watch.

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The SEC Tournament in Nashville follows that stretch of games. By winning three of the next five, Texas can ensure it won’t have to sweat its games in Bridgestone Arena. A loss tomorrow? And that becomes a much, much taller task.

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