Following up on last night's Longhorns Bracketology post, let's take a look at Tuesday night's significant games involving teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble. All in all, it was quite a good night for Texas, with several of its at-large bubble competitors dropping important games.
Xavier dropped to 18-11 overall, 9-6 in the A-10, and missed an opportunity to pick up a win that could have helped differentiate itself, as the Muskateers fell 70-59 at the A-10's second best team St. Louis (23-6, 11-4). Meanwhile over in Conference USA action, Central Florida (20-9, 9-6) not only missed out on a signature win in its game at Memphis (22-8, 12-3) tonight, the Knights were blown out of the FedEx Center 84-55, suffering the kind of late-season rout to Tournament-caliber competition that lost bids are made of.
Turning to the Big East, West Virginia (18-12, 8-9) snapped a two-game losing streak with a 92-75 must-have home win over lowly DePaul, putting them in solid shape to secure some breathing room if they can close out the regular season with a road win at South Florida. Things did not go so well for UConn (17-12, 7-10) up in Providence, however, as the Huskies suffered a troubling setback in a 72-70 loss to the Friars (15-15, 4-13). The Huskies have continued to rate well with the computers (RPI of No. 30 coming in to tonight), but they can't afford to close out the regular season with a home loss to Pitt, which would drop their conference record to 7-11, a real stretch for an at-large bid without a big-time run in Madison Square Garden.
And finally, in the only Big 12 action tonight, Kansas State (20-9, 9-8) really wasn't on the bubble, but they left no room for doubt by taking care of Texas A&M on the road 76-70, and Texas certainly won't mind if the Wildcats and Cyclones both finish the season strong, bolstering the profile of the Longhorns' two best conference wins.
The most important thing remaining for Texas is still its own performance, but we're talking about relative evaluations here, and Tuesday night was a good one to the Longhorns.