Four teams from the State of Texas received playoff invites at their respective levels over the weekend.

UT Permian Basin is the lone Division II team in the playoffs from the Lone Star State while Texas Wesleyan snuck in the NAIA tournament thanks to surprising results over the last weekend of the regular season. 

In the Division III ranks, Trinity and Hardin-Simmons will play each other in the second round for the third time in four years while Mary Hardin-Baylor was left out of the playoffs. 

The conference tournaments in the JUCO ranks began over the weekend with Tyler JC advancing to the SWJCFC finals against Northeastern Oklahoma A&M. 

The FCS bracket is released on Nov. 23

Division II 

UT Permian Basin is the lone representative for the Lone Star State in the Division II playoffs, as the Falcons reached the postseason for the second time in program history and the second time in three years. UTPB will face Colorado State University Pueblo in the first round with the two teams matching up at 2 p.m. Central on Saturday in the ThunderBowl in Pueblo, Colo. 

Head coach Kris McCullough’s squad was 9-2 on the season and finished tied for second place in the Lone Star Conference with a 7-2 mark. McCullough now has 26 wins at UTPB, most in Falcons’ history. The only other time the program reached the playoffs was in 2023 and that resulted in a first-round loss to No. 21 Bemidji State University. 

CSU Pueblo is the No. 3 seed in Super Region 4 and were the champions of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. The ThunderWolves were 10-1 overall and 9-0 in conference play. It is the 10th time they’ve reached the DII playoffs and are 9-9 overall in the postseason and 5-4 at home. They won a national championship in 2014. UTPB lost to CSU Pueblo, 40-23, in a regular season matchup last season. 

Division III 

A pair of teams from the Lone Star State – Trinity and Hardin-Simmons – will meet up in the second round of the DIII playoffs. It’ll be the third time in four years that the two programs have met in the playoffs with Trinity winning the previous two matchups. The game takes place on Nov. 29 in San Antonio with the winner likely to face Berry, which earned the auto-bid from the SAA. Berry will play the winner of LaGrange and Framingham State on Nov. 29. 

Trinity was 9-1 overall and 6-1 in SAA play this season, ending the year on a five-game winning streak. The lone loss for the Tigers was by 23 points to Berry on Oct. 11. Hardin-Simmons was also 9-1 on the season. The Cowboys shared the American Southwest Conference title with Mary Hardin-Baylor and received the conference’s auto-bid into the playoffs. Those two teams split this season with HSU winning, 34-7, on Oct. 11 and UMHB emerging victorious in the rematch, 21-17, on Nov. 8. 

Trinity beat Hardin-Simmons in 2022 by seven points and in 2023 by 14 in the two previous postseason matchups. This is the fifth consecutive playoff appearance for Trinity and head coach Jerheme Urban. HSU is 0-11 in the playoffs as a program. 

No other team made the playoffs with Mary Hardin-Baylor just outside the zone to receive an at-large bid. 

NAIA 

Texas Wesleyan was in a three-way tie atop the Sooner Athletic Conference and received the automatic bid into the playoffs because of the points tiebreaker. The Rams were 7-4 in the regular season with a 7-1 mark in conference play. They won three of their last four entering the playoffs and are the No. 20 seed in a 20-team tournament. Texas Wesleyan plays William Penn on the road in Iowa on Nov. 22. 

JUCO 

Tyler JC survived a second half comeback attempt from Cisco while Northeastern Oklahoma A&M knocked off Trinity Valley to set up a showdown in the SWJCFC finals. If Tyler wins, the Apaches will likely receive one of the four spots in the national JUCO playoff. Tyler led 35-0 in the first half against Cisco, but the final score was 35-28. NEO won, 38-31, against Trinity Valley. Tyler and NEO play each other on Nov. 22 at 1 p.m. The Apaches won the regular season contest, 45-29.