You know what’s fun? Winning tournaments. Texas has now won two of the last three tournaments they have entered, or three of four if you allow for Texas being tied for first in last year’s aborted Big 12 tournament. (I know it doesn’t work like that, let me have this.) This is possibly the biggest; with all due respect to the NIT where Texas is the two - possibly three? - time defending champion, the Maui Asheville Bill Walton Filibuster Invitational was a higher level of opponent for Texas and had a real shot at showcasing if the preseason hype was justified.

Spoiler alert: It maybe kinda is justified? At least a little bit?

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, this wouldn’t be nearly the first time a Texas squad has shown signs of being special in December only to fall apart down the stretch. It’s only three games and teams are still rounding into form due to an abbreviated off-season, so this could end up being the season’s high point. If there’s anything I’ve learned over a lifetime of Texas basketball fandom, it’s that pain is inevitable and if you don’t spend every waking moment guarding your emotional junk a Texas role player will slide under your crotch and hammer your testicles like a Mike Tyson speed bag session. Even if you do spend every waking moment guarding your emotional junk, Julien Lewis will sneak into your house while you sleep and drop an anvil on your groin. So enjoy this moment, but wear a cup until April just to be safe. Also check the locks on your windows, Lewis is sneaky AF.

(Since this isn’t going to be an in-depth recap of every game, I’m tinkering with the format a bit.)

Texas continued its emphasis on attacking the paint and drawing fouls, garnering 24 FTAs. They also committed a lot of fouls which I’m starting to think is a consequence they’re willing to work with (more on this later). The offense was very efficient, scoring 1.24 PPP which is a number Texas has not reached often. That’s a number Texas beat against one of the worst D-I teams in High Point last year (1.27 PPP) and they did it against a team which is going to contend for the A-10 title. Even on possessions that netted no points, the offense just ran better. Players were more active on the weakside, there was less of a delay between primary and secondary actions, guys were doing what they were supposed to.

Matt Coleman, Courtney Ramey, and Andrew Jones were all good with the basketball in their hands, with Coleman putting up 9 assists on three turnovers. This game was a decent amuse bouche for the upcoming Texas Tech tussles, as Davidson runs a motion offense similar to Tech so Texas got to try out some of their defensive ideas. Results were decidedly mixed, and if Tech scores 1.21 PPP like Davidson did then Texas is in trouble.

That was a whoopin’. Indiana is probably a bubble team as currently constituted and Texas shoved them into a trash can. The coaching staff (correctly) surmised that Trace Jackson-Davis was Indiana’s only real offensive threat and they neutralized him early & often. He scored 17 but it was a very difficult 17, and he wasn’t able to get any of his teammates involved. If it weren’t for the refs calling the game incredibly tightly, Texas could have won by 30+; Indiana scored 44 points and 20 of them were from the free throw line, all of Jackson-Davis’ teammates combined for four field goals. FOUR. Texas locked the Hoosiers down the entire game, it was a sight to behold. Texas wasn’t so much a vise grip as they lured Indiana into a saran-wrapped deathtrap, Dexter-style.

(Like season 1, not later when he developed feelings and started logging. This was surgical.)

Brock Cunningham had 11 rebounds, four assists, three steals, and a few hundred more reservations on Cunnigham Mountain. We’re now reservation-only as social distancing is otherwise impossible with all the Longhorns fans trying to claim a spot on this majestic hillside. Matt Coleman called Cunningham “a MFer” in postgame and he hesitated for a half-second deciding if he wanted to actually say “motherfucker” in a postgame press conference. I get it, you’re trying to be respectful and polite, however this blog is a much different place so

BROCK CUNNINGHAM IS A MOTHERFUCKER

You’re welcome, Matt.

MATT COLEMAN IS ALSO A MOTHERFUCKER

There’s something about Roy Williams teams which match up well with Texas squads. I have a pet theory that Roy’s willingness to recruit athletes & get out and run jives well with the type of players both Shaka and Rick Barnes brought to Austin; it’s like for once, Texas coaches who play really slow will let their thoroughbreds gallop up and down the court, and Texas is one of the few programs who can match North Carolina athlete for athlete so it’s a more even match than many might expect. A guy like Greg Brown or Kai Jones would fit in well in either place. Roy’s system without seniors running point is starting to feel like a copy of Windows 7; you recognize a lot of the icons but then it tries to funnel most of its halfcourt through the low post and it’s like I just got asked if I wanted to update Flash when I’m pretty sure it’s about to be blocked on most websites? Far be it from me to question a guy who is one of my favorite coaches ever - if you asked me who I wanted to coach at Texas, the answer would be something approximating “young Roy Williams” - and maybe he’s just dealing with his current roster issues how he can, but it’s a bit startling to watch a blue blood try to get post-ups on nearly every possession in 2020.

I’m going to talk about Matt Coleman more in a bit, and as much as I went nuts when he hit the game winner it isn’t my favorite highlight of his. This is my favorite moment of the night involving Matt Coleman:

Tired: yelling at your teammates to get into position

Wired: literally throwing them into the correct play

I would wear this moment on a shirt if they could animate it properly.

Courtney Ramey was up & down, Gerald Liddell picked up four fouls in 8 minutes, Andrew Jones sat for most of the second half for performance reasons, Jericho Sims put up a bagel in the scoring column, and Texas still beat a top-20 opponent. You want a sign this team might be for real? The last 3 years if Sims, AJ, and Ramey give you that combined level of projection, Texas might lose to anybody. Instead, they got enough from enough different people to beat a ranked opponent on a neutral floor. That’s worth celebrating.

I think I saw that something like four of the previous 10 tourney champs won the national title, so clearly it’s time to book your tickets to…uhh, watch the title game from home. I don’t think we’re all getting vaccinated by March, so maybe invest in a nice TV? Use the flight & hotel savings for some top-shelf liquor to enjoy at home.

Texas won the tournament, was 3-0 against two likely tourney teams and another bubble-ish team, and yet…I think they have more in them? None of those games were complete games; the Davidson game was a great offensive performance but the defense could’ve been better, the Indiana game was the opposite, and the UNC game was good but not great out of both. If I’m drawing a picture of the season through four games, I have an outline of what would constitute an A+ performance on both ends of the floor and it’s…it’s frankly kind of staggering. This team could - and I strongly emphasize ‘could’ because I do not know if they’ll ever get there - be a team that blows a ranked team out. If they put together the offensive efficiency of Davidson with the defensive efficiency of Indiana, I honestly do not know a team that could beat them in this apex form. I say this knowing full well that this theoretical team is unlikely to show up more than at best once or twice in an entire season; college basketball even at the best levels is an uneven affair, and outside of a handful of squads over the last half-century this is not a reasonable projection of what a baseline should be. I’m just saying it’s out there, maybe as a white whale we will never catch. But it’s out there.

Is there a guard in the Big 12 playing better than Coleman right now? There might be somebody like MaCio Teague who I haven’t gotten to see much of yet, but I can’t imagine there’s someone who is clearly better than Coleman right now. He’s evolved into his final form, the guy Shaka Smart saw in 8th grade and who Coach K wanted as a HS senior. He’s hitting threes, he’s probing the paint, he’s directing teammates (sometimes forcefully, see above hilarious tweet), and he’s hitting big shot after big shot. He makes the right call at nearly every juncture and does not shrink from the moment. College teams generally go as far as their point guard can take them, and Coleman is radiating confidence right now. His assist rate, free throw %, two-point %, eFG%, true shooting % are all at career highs right now. Moreover, he has yet to catch COVID despite dragging balls the size of Fiat coupes all over the court. I’m getting Keenan Evans vibes off Coleman right now, and that dude dragged not-quite-peak Tech to an Elite Eight. Somebody told me there were people on Orangebloods saying they didn’t think Coleman should start. Those people are morons, I’m hiring a crew to take a pickaxe to their home fiber connections as we speak.

It took him four games but he finally missed a shot, and it was a dunk of all things. KJ has been impressive as hell so far, he’s basically what Texas fans were hoping Greg Brown would be which helps everything as it takes some pressure off the freshman to be a difference maker right away. Jones is active on defense, goes after rebounds, and he will hit a jab step three in your face if you don’t guard him properly. I know it won’t hold up, but his eFG% is almost exactly double his freshman year right now. The difference in his coordination & anticipation from freshman to sophomore year is impressive and it’s one of the reasons Texas is undefeated right now.

I find their defense interesting. Christ, that sentence was pompous; “I find their defense interesting”, who am I trying to impress with that pseudo-academic passive voice? Let’s start over.

The Texas defense is aggressive; not in a Press Virginia sort of way, and not in a Texas Tech extreme-no-middle way, but in an opportunistic way. They do some of the things Smart’s VCU teams did, put their chest on you and force you to go around them, go for deflections and steals when the opportunity presents itself and maybe a few times when it doesn’t. It’s an active defense; it’s not a gimmick, it isn’t a trapping press - they’ve shown a smattering of the fist press but they’re not closing down on the ballhandler nearly as hard as Press Virginia - but a hard-nosed, denying you the action you want, if they foul you in the process well better that than passivity. It is not a decision without consequences, there are six players who are currently getting charged north of 6 fouls per 40 minutes. But it is a consequence a team with this level of depth can bear; there were four players with 4+ fouls in the UNC game (Brown, Cunningham, Hamm, & Liddell) and it didn’t materially affect their defensive strategy. While this team may not push tempo on the offensive end as much as I’d like, they’re doing something like the defensive version of what I wanted: taking advantage of significant depth to play a style not many teams can. It will probably bite them in the ass a couple games if they can’t dial it down a notch - Shaka has said he’s looking for similar aggressiveness with less fouling - but they’re willing to live with the trade-off. So far, it’s worked out pretty well for them. They currently have the second most efficient defense in D-I behind only Virginia, allowing 85.3 points per 100 possessions. That’s not historically good, but it’s more than good enough to get Texas where it wants to go.

It says something about the ability of someone like Andrea Hudy and her staff that they could sit through a global pandemic and still help their players build legitimate strength. Kai Jones is finishing through plays that would’ve ended with him on the floor, Brock Cunningham is pushing post players 30lb bigger than him out of the paint, Andrew Jones - ANDREW JONES - is toting the rock through traffic like a running back and finishing with a dunk like a triple jumper, the examples are growing into legion early this season of players showcasing a strength that wasn’t quite there in previous years. Is there a single non-freshman on this team who doesn’t look like they’re made of rebar?

I’m waiting to see if this is a small sample size situation, but Texas seems significantly more invested in getting offensive boards than any Smart squad. Their OR% is 32.6 which is good for 66th in D-I, the best Smart squad prior to this was 137th and featured a bunch of Barnes players. It may be as simple as Texas having guys like Brock Cunningham running around the floor rather than some amazing strategic change, but it’s a welcome change and can help in games where Texas isn’t hitting shots.

If you have watched any of these games, there is one guy on the bench you likely noticed over and over: Hepa. He is as energized and into the game as anyone, which speaks to his buy-in with the team. He always talked on defense, now he’s doing it from the bench; I would not be surprised if he ends up coaching after his career is done, he’s all in. Kudos to him for not phoning it in when he knows he’s not seeing the floor.

STILL FULL, RESERVATIONS ACCEPTED

Texas gets a couple of days off before the Mohegan Sun transplants Villanova Wildcats come to Austin in what should be a really entertaining game. Texas is fourth in KenPom, Villanova is third. Both teams are very efficient on both ends of the floor and both play at a slow tempo, so a low scoring affair may be in order. I think the more Texas can get out in transition, the better their odds. After that is a home game against Texas State, a decent team breaking in a new coach after their old coach was caught using the N-word more times than he should. (The answer for how many times he was allowed is zero. It’s zero. It’s always zero.) I’ll have the next recap up sometime after the Texas State game.

Also, please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football. We’re recording the next episode shortly, will probably be online Friday.

Writing tunes provided by Maceo Plex.