It was announced on Saturday that Austin’s Moody Center had been named a site for first- and second-round games for when the NCAA Tournament begins next week. Texas joins Duke, Iowa, Louisville, LSU, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio State, Oklahoma, South Carolina, TCU, UCLA, UConn, Vanderbilt and West Virginia among the tournament’s 16 hosts.
The NCAA Tournament’s complete bracket will be revealed on Sunday evening.
This will be the fifth straight year in which Texas has provided a venue for first- and second-round games. Texas is 7-1 in NCAA Tournament games it has hosted at Moody Center and the Erwin Center.
For Texas, Saturday’s news was hardly a surprise. The top-16 overall seeds get to host tournament games, and UT has been considered one of the best teams in the country throughout this entire season. Texas (31-3) also hasn’t lost since the NCAA Tournament’s selection committee projected on March 1 that the Longhorns would be the No. 4 overall seed in its postseason competition.
Most expect that Texas will earn one of the NCAA Tournament’s four No. 1 seeds, but where the Longhorns fall within a pecking order that likely includes UConn (34-0), UCLA (31-1) and South Carolina (31-3) won’t be determined until Sunday. The overall seeding will determine if Texas is lined up to potentially play Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games in Fort Worth or Sacramento, Calif.
“I’ll go wherever they send me,” Texas coach Vic Schaefer said after the SEC championship game on March 8. “I’ll take this team to Timbuktu. I don’t care. They’ll go wherever. They don’t care. They’re good enough.”