Injuries and late-season losses have been known to derail college basketball seasons for as long as the games have been played. The 2026 men’s basketball field announced Sunday night was an exercise — for local favorites, anyway — in cutting such teams some slack.
Start with Texas Tech. Ranked 16th in the country a month ago, it lost first-team all-America forward JT Toppin to a torn ACL in his right knee. The Red Raiders fought on for the last few weeks but weren’t quite the same team and definitely looked like a lesser squad when Iowa State pummeled them 75-53 in a Big 12 quarterfinal game Thursday afternoon.
And yet the Red Raiders still landed a No. 5 seed and, for my money, maybe the best one to get. Alabama, seeded fourth in the Midwest and a potential second-round opponent if Tech beats Akron, is not an overly physical team, nor one of the better defensive teams in the Southeastern Conference. That should open up Tech’s 3-point shooting and give coach Grant McCasland a solid shot at the Sweet 16 even after losing his best player.
The same goes for SMU. Committee chairman Keith Gill acknowledged the Mustangs were the last at-large team added to the field, meaning they will have to beat Miami (Ohio) Wednesday in order to reach Philadelphia as an 11-seed and face Tennessee. Gill said the injury to B.J. Edwards, the team’s best defensive guard who is anticipated to return this week, played a major role in the Mustangs losing five of their last six games. With a soft nonconference schedule, that could have kept SMU out of the tournament, but its solid wins against Louisville, North Carolina and Texas A&M when those were healthy and playing their best allowed coach Andy Enfield to end SMU’s nine-year NCAA drought.
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And you can put the Texas Longhorns in this same boat. They were eliminated from the SEC tournament Tuesday afternoon before some of us even recognized that the conference tourneys had begun, losing to Ole Miss, which was a 4-14 team during the regular season. Chris Beard, the former UT coach, guided his team to an unlikely semifinal berth, but the early exit for a Texas squad that never really found its footing this season in going 18-14 had the Longhorns riding the bubble.
Texas head coach Sean Miller,left, Mississippi head coach Chris Beard shake hands ahead of an during an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Sara Diggins / AP
The absence of conference tournament upsets saved Texas just as it did the Mustangs. As one of the last four in, Texas plays North Carolina State Tuesday in hopes of getting to Portland to face sixth-seeded Brigham Young and outstanding freshman AJ Dybantsa on Thursday.
Even the Houston Cougars got a break Sunday. After losing the Big 12 championship to Arizona Saturday night (no shame in that, the Wildcats are the 1-seed in the West region), Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars secured the 2-spot in the South and a date with Idaho in Oklahoma City. That means that if the Cougars can win a pair of games this weekend (10th-seed Texas A&M is a potential second-round opponent), they get to play Sweet 16 and possible Elite Eight games in Houston.
That gives the Cougars an outstanding shot to return to the Final Four. However, the team that caused their heartbreak in last year’s championship game, the Florida Gators, is sitting in the top seed in the South.
This was not a year for major turmoil in March or crazy off-the-wall selections by the committee. The top seeds — Duke, Arizona, Michigan and Florida — could have been written down a week ago and were made simpler by the destruction of UConn by St. John’s Saturday night in Madison Square Garden. Had this even been an average year for conference tournament upheaval, SMU and Texas both would have been studying their NIT opponents this week.
But it’s a tribute to the Mustangs that they did not enough good things before the late-season crash that they were able to qualify as the eighth team chosen from the Atlantic Coast Conference. This might have demonstrated more directly the benefit of having secured a spot in a power conference. Had they remained in a midmajor — and somehow managed to land these same players — a better won-loss record almost certainly would not have earned them a tournament berth.
Consider their opponents. After going a perfect 18-0 in the Mid-American conference, Miami (Ohio) was stunned by 8 seed UMass in the conference tournament, dropping the RedHawks’ record to 31-1. And even with that résumé, they were part of the “Last Four In,’’ necessitating the game with SMU Wednesday night in Dayton, Ohio.
It was conceivable that the Miami (Ohio) loss would bump SMU out of the tournament field. Now it‘s up to SMU to hand the RedHawks a two-game losing streak if Enfield is to get the Mustangs to a weekend game in the NCAA Tournament.
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The Longhorns (31-3) earned the third No. 1 seed after winning the SEC Tournament title.
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