Texas is 8 games into the season, so we’re starting to get a sense of what Sean Miller is trying to do with this squad. If you’ve watched all 8 games, first of all I’m assuming you don’t have YoutubeTV, because the first handful of terrible non-con opponents happened while Google and Disney were slap-fighting over who gets to turn the screws to the public more. Second of all, what is wrong with you? Nobody needs to watch Fairleigh Dickinson this side of 2023, and nobody needs to watch Texas beat the snot out of Philadelphia, a school named after a city, a program so anonymous that when I said it you didn’t even realize they aren’t actually the city Texas played. It was St. Louis. No it wasn’t, it was Kansas City, but does it matter when Kansas City isn’t even the worst city-named school Texas played in this non-con? (That’s KenPom #345 Lafayette; great job with this home schedule, Texas.)

Thanks to this slate of mostly abysmal teams and Hawaii being 5 hours behind Central Time, I’ve watched about 4 games so far, and one of those (Phila-I mean Kansas City) I was paying as much attention to the game as Texas was. This is me being transparent about my sample size as well as me being transparent about the scorn with which I’ve viewed the Texas schedule to date (currently #326 in strength of schedule out of 365 teams; again, bang up job getting fans interested in the product).

When I saw the finalized roster in the off-season, I didn’t really have questions about who Miller brought in, but I did have questions about fit. The players he brought in had talent; maybe not the sort of talent to contend for a SEC conference title, but given the compressed window in which Miller was recruiting it felt like he grabbed a bunch of guys who did a thing or three well along with a couple of high-upside gambles and figured he’d sort it out later.

My questions about talent intensified a bit when I saw that there were zero Texas players in the top 75 of Evan Miya’s preseason player ratings. (Dailyn Swain was #87 & the only Longhorn in the top 100.) Then KenPom’s initial projections came out and had Texas hovering in the 7-11/8-10 conference record range, which meant they were only going to be on the bubble if they had a strong non-con resume and nope nope nope I’m not beating that drum again already in this thing. Anyway, point being that this team looked bubbly or worse as the basic expectation for me. 8 games into the season, where are they? Well…

If I had written this prior to the NC State game, I would’ve been even less optimistic than this. The Duke matchup showed some signs of positivity - I don’t think anyone else has slowed down Cameron Boozer as much as Texas did in the first half of that game, his 95 ORtg against Texas is easily his lowest thus far this season - but mostly it showed the talent gap between Texas and actual national title contenders. I don’t think there’s anyone on Texas who would be a starter on Duke, Alabama, or Houston; in Miya’s preseason player ranking, Swain would’ve been the 5th-highest ranked player on Florida’s roster. This is a team as presently constituted has a bunch of guys who are solid high-major contributors, but no real stars. This doesn’t mean the team is bad, it just has a pretty well-defined ceiling. Let’s get into it.

One of the selling points of bringing in Sean Miller is that his offenses should generally be competent and flexible for however long he’s at Texas, and so far that has borne fruit within the confines of this roster’s restrictions. The off-ball movement has improved over last season to some degree - it varies by game - and there are more set plays than last season. If the set plays aren’t working out, they flow into a continuity system where perimeter players are free to back cut if they can. It’s decent, and it seems reasonably sustainable against most opponents. That said, they’re currently #37 in KenPom in adjusted offensive efficiency; Rodney Terry was #36 last season. So while I think most of the processes make sense, they’re not light years ahead of last season’s team in relative output. They’re scoring at a higher rate, yes, but if you’re still mostly watching football at this point you may not have noticed that everybody is scoring like crazy this season.

As an aside, for anyone who isn’t already aware: there have been a couple of officiating changes which are enabling more scoring, the most notable is that the NCAA is enacting something similar to the NBA continuation foul call. This means more shooting fouls are ending in and-1 opportunities rather than two free throws, and my hunch is that this is adding a couple points per game. Also, teams are just running more, man, and it’s awesome. Combine that with events like the Players Era NIL tourney and programs like Alabama, Illinois, and UConn stepping up to actually schedule tough opponents and this has been one of the most entertaining early season slates of games I can recall.

Sorry, I swear this is the last time. Where was I? Oh, right.

I’m going to start with what I see as the primary limitation on this team going forward, the point guard position. Jordan Pope is getting most of the run at this position so far, and while he’s been capable, he’s the default option because the other options (Simeon Wilcher, Tramon Mark) are turning the ball over at too high a rate to be able to do it for 25+ minutes a game. In my opinion, this team needs either Wilcher or Mark to step up because the offense would benefit from Pope being Dollar Store Stephen Curry, running off screens and being fed open looks from three. Pope may be mercurial from the perimeter, but he’s a career 37% three-point shooter and it would be advisable for him to get his shots off in catch & shoot opportunities rather than trying to create off the bounce.

Perimeter shooting as a whole is going to be an open question for me for awhile; this team needs the other guards/wings to be a reliable threat to keep defenses from shading over to Camden Heide, the guy who to this point (career 44% from three) profiles as the most prolific shooter on the team. Maybe…..maybe it’s

Okay, sure, his three point shot looks like the Double Dribble guy.

And yes, he started the season a blistering 1-11 from three. But he’s 3-5 since then! I’m willing this into existence. CHENDALL 3VER - THR33VER? - you heard it here first.

But yes, this team needs to hit more threes, if for no other reason than it means teams have to stop climbing on Matas Vokietaitis like he’s a skyscraper in Rampage. (Did I think I was going to make this many Nintendo references in one piece? No. Do I regret it? Not even a little.)

Vokietaitis - who I’m going to call Vokie a lot for obvious typographical reasons - is a really interesting piece on this team, it’s immediately apparent why Sean Miller went after him. Honestly, it’s an enormous upset that a 7 foot European with a soft touch around the rim didn’t end up at Purdue. (IS MATT PAINTER LOSING HIS RECRUITING TOUCH, IN MY COLUMN I WI-) Voki- okay, I can’t use this, either; it’s too infantilizing a name for a guy who could easily be a John Wick 5 villain - Matas has a lot of upside, particularly in the college game. He’s tall as shit, strong as shit, and willing to move other tall & strong dudes around in the paint regardless of whether or not they agree to be moved. He draws a ton of fouls, more than the metric ton he commits, and I think he’s a better free throw shooter than his lifetime 65% mark suggests. This is why I’m so laser-focused on the perimeter shooting, there are maybe ten teams in the country who can cover Matas with a single defender. If the defensive guards can’t shade towards Matas because they have to honor the three-ball and the Texas guards can reliably feed big M, he will feast on a lot of teams. You can see that feeding Matas post entry passes is the top priority of this offense just by watching how often he’s setting up on the low block with some less kaiju-shaped defender flailing on his ass, waiting for the ball to arrive so he can dunk over this (relatively) small human in his orbit.

His primary area of improvement: less telegraphing of his decisions. You can usually see where he wants to go before he goes there, and so can everyone else involved in the game. His foul trouble will lessen substantially if he stops predetermining his moves, and if he can widen the gap in fouls drawn/charged he’s going to become a minutes-managing nightmare for opposing coaches with limited big depth. I like Matas a lot, as much for the silhouette of who he could be compared to the already solid center he is.

So far the defense has been pretty underwhelming; the earlier Cameron Boozer note aside, to date they’re looking like a middle-of-the-pack SEC defense. They’re doing some things well, they limit offensive rebounds and teams shoot a low percentage from two as you might expect from a defense with Matas/Lassina Traore parked in the middle. Other than that, though, their metrics aren’t very good. They don’t turn other teams over much - not really a surprise as Sean Miller teams don’t historically do that, but worth mentioning - and they seem generally susceptible to second and third offensive actions. Maybe the easiest way to illustrate this is that against NC State, Texas scored 102 points because they shot 50% from three (16-32!), 65% from two, 85% from the line, turned the ball over only 7 times…and won by 5. A better defensive team would’ve blown the doors off NC State with those stats. Usually, Sean Miller teams are better than this defensively, so there’s reason to think this could improve somewhat. They better improve quickly though, as the SEC schedule is front-loaded with games against Tennessee, Alabama, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky before the halfway mark.

I don’t know that there’s a ton of daylight between best and worst case for this squad, relative to some years, which begs the question of why I even wrote this section - the answer: I need an editor - but let’s try to hash it out any way.

Simeon Wilcher and Chendall 3ver reliably hit 35% from deep, opening up space for the team to feed Matas down low as he averages 18/10 & single-handedly fouls out 15 opponents over the course of the regular season. Jordan Pope continues to average 3 assists per turnover, Dailyn Swain and Heide take turns posterizing unfortunately-placed guards. Declan Duru teaches the team how to curse in German. Texas finishes above .500 in conference play and lands a 6/7 seed in March Madness.

The median case is roughly what you’ve seen so far: perimeter shooting rises and falls each game with Jordan Pope, Heide goes off every third game or so, and the quality of post feeds vary wildly from contest to contest. The defense stays mediocre and the talent gap to the top 3-4 SEC teams means wins against legitimate tournament teams are infrequent. Texas ends the season with ~7 conference wins & ~17 wins overall and has to rely on a weak bubble for their chance to get a First Four game in Dayton.

Jordan Pope reverts to hero ball, nobody can feed a constantly double-teamed Matas, the offense bogs down and the defense can’t compensate. A disgruntled Declan Duru teaches the wrong German words to the team, leading to a rash of injuries when Sean Miller takes the team to a canine obedience class and all hell breaks loose. An overzealous ICE raid in January kidnaps Matas, who gets deported to Bolivia because nobody in Homeland Security can find Lithuania on a map. Texas loses their prized 2026 recruit because Sean Miller’s staff keeps texting the wrong Goosby brother. The Longhorns win 3 conference games and Sean Miller learns what it’s like to recruit on Rodney Terry’s NIL budget.

Writing tunes provided by Joe Wink