A lot of sportswriters have a tough time admitting when they're wrong.

Not me.

I'll be honest - I gave Texas a chance. I really did.

I have my reasons, though.

It started last year in late November, when I first watched D.J. Augustin and the Longhorns smoke Tennessee in the Legends Classic championship game in Newark, N.J., with a 19-point beat down.

Less than a week later, I saw the same team travel across the country, come into Pauley Pavilion and pick apart then-No. 2 UCLA, stunning the Bruins with a last-second alley-oop pass to Damion James off a broken play.

And through the season, the Longhorns continued to prove their worth to me, contending with eventual national champ Kansas all the way down to the end of the regular season and finishing with a share of the Big 12 title.

With that in mind and knowing that a potential Elite Eight game with Memphis would be played in Houston (roughly three hours from Austin) that March, I picked them to stun Memphis in the South Regional final and reach San Antonio to play a rematch with the Bruins in the Final Four.

I, of course, should have known better.

I, once again, should have known that Memphis' defense would be too much for Augustin and the Longhorns to handle.

So come early November when the preseason hype started to sizzle for the upcoming campaign, I had my eyes set on Rick Barnes' team as the favorite to win the Big 12 and a team that had more experience and talent than No. 2 Oklahoma.

Boy was I wrong to think that, too.

Barnes, after all, had his entire starting lineup returning besides Augustin, and I figured with a powerful and dynamic frontcourt in Damion James, Gary Johnson, Connor Atchley and Dexter Pittman along side veteran guards in A.J. Abrams and Justin Mason, Texas had just as good a shot as last year to reach the Final Four in April.

The Longhorns, however, are quickly making that look like a far-fetched conclusion to this season, and there's no way to defend them right now.

Not when you lose two straight home games to Kansas State and Missouri, and not when you fail to beat middle-of-the-road Big 12 teams like Nebraska, even if it is on the road.

Since when have the Cornhuskers been a basketball power?

The boys from Lincoln haven't been to the NCAA tournament in a decade, and it's not likely to think that will change this season, either.

Better yet, you have to go way back in the history books to even find when Nebraska (15-7 overall, 5-4 Big 12) last won a conference championship.

For those of you who don't know, it's 1950.

Yet somehow, a team with as much talent as Barnes' managed to lose to a team that was basically praying for an upset.

That's at least what it sounded like from Nebraska coach Doc Sadler.

"I think our guys, as they have every game, find a way to overachieve and stay in there," he said following the 58-55 win Saturday. "This time, at least, we got some good luck."

That's certainly what Nebraska got thanks to Ade Dagunduro's three-point prayer, although the Cornhuskers' defense wasn't too shabby as well.

I mean, there is something to be said when you hold Texas (15-7, 4-4) to 38.8 percent shooting from the field and 35 percent from three.

Abrams, on that same front, was limited in 40 minutes to just 11 points on 3-of-7 shooting from three, while James and Johnson were non-factors on the offensive end, finishing with only six and seven points, respectively.

For Barnes on the other hand, the heartbreak that comes with a loss like that is something that he's had to cope with all season, along with the fact that the Longhorns have dropped out of the top 25 this week for the first time in a long time.

"We've lost five or six games by one or two possessions," he said. "We are what we are, and that's the bottom line. We haven't won those games, and we've lost some games on the last possessions where teams make plays on us, and you have to give them credit for it."

You can give the opponent credit or you can find fault in yourself.

There's always two ways to think about it.

But if Barnes and the Longhorns don't figure out what's caused their recent downward spiral, they could be kissing their tourney hopes goodbye in no time.