Friday at 3:30pm on TBS, six-seed Texas takes on arguably the hottest team in college basketball in the 11-seed Virginia Tech Hokies, who are fresh off of an ACC-championship run, where they nearly lost to 10-seed Clemson before rattling off three more wins in a row: 87-80 over two-seed Notre Dame, 72-59 over three-seed North Carolina, and then a dominant 82-67 beatdown of top-ACC seed Duke in the conference championship game.

According to several sources I've read on the subject, Virginia Tech is the most under-seeded team in the tournament this year, and should be closer to an eight-seed. This metric in @Matteise's Tournament Binder, which I highly recommend, suggests Virginia Tech should have been ranked 33rd, but were instead ranked 46th, meaning they are 13 spots lower than what should be their seed. The Hokies have won 13 of their last 15 games, albeit in a weak ACC.

As far as play style, Virginia Tech isn't that different from Texas. They don't run in transition much – in fact, of all active tournament teams, they're last in shots taken in transition at just 15.9% of total attempts. Texas is not far above them at just 18.5% of attempts being in transition. For reference, the top team in transition is Gonzaga, who averages 32.4% of their attempts this way. Texas is also near the top in rate of opponents' percentage of shots in transition at 18.9%, compared to the NCAA average of 22.4%.

The Hokies are near-last in free-throw attempt rate at just 23.7%, compared to the top team, Montana State, at 40.5%. But defensively, VT is elite, like Texas. They rank seventh in tournament teams in points per game allowed at 62.3, where Texas ranks second at 59.6. However, the Hokies are near the bottom in opponents' effective field-goal percentage in transition, where opponents are shooting 56.2%, but given Texas' lacking proclivity to run in transition this probably won't be a factor.

Here's Virginia Tech's starting rotation.

Keve Aluma is the big matchup problem here for Texas. At 6'9, he's a three-level scorer who can also distribute. Against Duke's bigs, he dominated, scoring 19 points and racking up 10 rebounds and seven assists. If Texas has any hope of winning this game, they're going to need to keep him contained.

Another problem for Texas is Hunter Cattoor, who has been on an absolute tear from three recently, hitting seven of nine shots from deep against Duke for 31 points. Likely, he will be the player that, if necessary, will get the Ochai Agbaji treatment with Courtney Ramey's face-guarding him. If you'll remember the most recent Kansas game, Ramey held Agbaji without a field goal until overtime.

Here's what Texas needs to do to win this game:

• Keep Aluma from a repeat performance against Duke.

This is going to be a lot easier said than done, as Duke actually has size inside with Mark Williams (and Paolo Banchero), both of whom Aluma dominated in the game on Saturday. This is going to require an A+ game from Bishop defensively, as well as needing some quality run from Dylan Disu. They're also going to need their bigs to stay out of foul trouble. If they can't get these performances from Bishop and Disu, or have them on the court for long stretches, it's going to be a long day for Texas basketball.

• Keep Cattoor from going nuts from three.

If they allow 31 points from Cattoor, this will be a loss. Though Duke doesn't play the same level of defense that Texas does, they have better athletes. Again, the key here may be Courtney Ramey and his impressive individual defense. Hopefully for the Longhorns, Cattoor won't be this lights out and require this much attention. But if he does, Texas should be ready.

• Keep the game low-scoring and slow.

This shouldn't be a challenge for either team as they both play this way anyway. They can't allow Virginia Tech to score 82 points like they did against Duke, because Texas doesn't have the capability to score 82 points against the Hokies' defense. They need to keep this as much of a rock fight as they can, but this is something they've done all year. The closer to the under of 123.5 it gets, the better.

Prediction:

Despite all of the preseason hype for this team, hype I bought into, Texas does not have the guns to hang here, and I believe they will lose this first-round matchup to Virginia Tech on Friday afternoon. I don't see their ability to stop Aluma down low, which is where VT is going to pound the ball all game. The fact that a 6/11 matchup is essentially a pick-em should tell you what you need to know about Vegas' opinion of this game.