With the basketball season winding down, the Roadrunners find themselves in an eight team battle for the remaining six spots in the Southland Conference Tournament which will be played March 9-12 at the Merrell Center in Katy, Texas.
The Roadrunners find themselves in the thick of the race with a 7-7 record in Southland play. They are one of five teams in the conference with a 7-7 mark.
The five 7-7 teams sit two games back of 9-5 Stephen F. Austin and Northwestern State with two games to play.
McNeese State and Texas State sit atop the standings, Texas State earning a spot in the tournament with their 82-80 victory over the Roadrunners Saturday in San Marcos.
With two games remaining for each team in conference play, two teams have been eliminated from postseason play, the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders and the Central Arkansas Bears.
For the remaining ten teams fighting for eight spots in the Southland Tournament the last two games are important.
For UTSA it is as simple as winning the next two games, Wednesday against Central Arkansas at the Convocation center and Saturday at fellow 7-7 UT-Arlington.
If UTSA should lose one of it’s next two, the road to Katy gets tougher. If it loses to UT-Arlington the tie-breaker will become point differential. That means that UTSA, which beat UT-Arlington 70-62 in San Antonio would have to lose by seven points or less to win the tiebreaker with Arlington.
If UTSA loses to Central Arkansas, it would have to beat UT-Arlington just to have a chance at going to the tournament. Of course that means it would come down to head to head between UTSA and any teams with the same record.
As of February 28, UTSA would win a tiebreaker with UT-Arlington, Northwestern State and Lamar if the teams were tied. Were UTSA tied with Sam Houston State, Nicholls or Southeastern Louisiana, UTSA would lose the head-to-head tiebreaker with each team.
The Roadrunners could finish anywhere from fifth in the conference to tenth, it will depend on how the last two games play out.
The calendar has just turned to March but the Roadrunners are already playing for their tournament lives just like the rest of the conference.
