The Texas Longhorns will not receive votes in the AP or ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll this week. That's not terribly surprising for a team with 10 losses and sitting at .500 in its own conference. But appearances can be deceiving, and, although I'm not necessarily here to advocate that the Longhorns deserve to garner some votes in the national polls, they might be the best team in the country without any.
The Longhorns arrived in their present circumstance the way most teams do. They don't have a lot of quality wins despite being consistently competitive against very good opponents. You could make a case that their best win of the season was a December victory at UCLA. They have home wins against Big 12 opponents Kansas State and Iowa State, which are nice, but, when those are a team's flagship victories, that team is not going to impress the crowd that uses quality wins to judge the strength of a team. But the truth is, Texas might be stronger than it appears and capable of some noteworthy wins in the latter stages of this season.