This week was a bit anti-climactic thanks to Baylor spooning with ICU patients and having to pause their program activities, presumably so they could spoon with even more ICU patients. Between football and the Baylor game, last weekend was a whole lot of nothing going on for Texas sports. I hope you all got plenty of chores done.

This makes at least four games in Baylor’s schedule that have been postponed/cancelled because the Bears staff doesn’t seem to be able/interested in bubbling up properly. I realize it’s hard to keep a virus out when the country as a whole seems thoroughly disinterested in doing much to slow the spread - read this Texas Monthly piece where they interviewed wedding photographers if you want another data point highlighting just how little this country is handling its shit - but this is the same program where the head coach tested positive and his response was “I’ll send the entire rest of the team to the tournament, they’ll be fine” despite him having been around them extensively in the days leading up to said tournament. It wasn’t until the other programs at the tournament started screaming that Baylor backed out; needless to say, I’m not exactly overwhelmed at the Bears’ understanding of how viruses work. In theory Baylor’s schedule will resume this weekend with a game against Kansas State on Saturday, but I’m not even sure if their team is practicing yet so…

What I find interesting about this - beyond Baylor potentially screwing up their title hopes because they can’t go a week without shoving their fingers in each other’s mouth as a greeting - is if this game gets cancelled altogether and the impact it plays on the conference title race. There is about a week gap between the end of the regular season and the conference tournament which is there to deal with these kinds of postponements; if Baylor can’t keep stop massaging strangers’ tracheas from the inside and have a couple more games missed due to COVID outbreaks, they’re either going to be packing that week full of games or the Big 12 is going to have to start prioritizing which matchups matter most. We’re all seeing the chaos in how football is picking its champion in the Big Ten and PAC-12, basketball will surely deal with something similar. Let’s say Baylor has another outbreak in early January - you know, after the students show up on campus again - and they have to go on pause for a week starting January 10th. That knocks out games against West Virginia, Texas Tech, and potentially Kansas; is the conference going to tell Baylor in March they have to play 4 games in ~9 days against Texas, Tech, Kansas, and WVU before they go into the conference tourney? Or are they going to have to pick two and tell the others tough luck? What if Baylor (or Texas) has another breakout at the end of January and the second Texas/Baylor game also gets postponed? It’s possible Texas and Baylor end up playing zero times in the regular season, which would make things like conference tiebreakers more uneven than normal. Maybe the first tiebreaker should be “played most conference games because we can answer basic virology questions”, then go to head-to-head records as the second tiebreaker.

(Side note: Texas’ last four conference games could end up being WVU, Kansas, at Tech, at Baylor. Thanks for that, Scott Drew.)

I guess what I’m saying here is that Baylor sucks and their ritual of using their mouths to emulate a neti pot on anyone who says they have the flu should probably be paused for the next year or so. Also maybe Scott Drew should shelve his Early March Rudy Gobert cosplay, it’s not helping.

Texas was cruising to a likely 35-point win against an overmatched opponent, up 65-38 and looking like they could dictate the score. What happened over the next 10 minutes and change was some of the ugliest basketball I’ve seen in awhile; dumb turnovers, sloppy play, bad fouls, and lapsing defense. Sam Houston State went on a 16-2 run over a five-minute span and got it down to 67-54, at which point point I went into this Witcher

I would like to think this was them getting it out of their system, but I’ve watched too many seasons of Texas basketball to cast it aside as an aberration. It bears monitoring as Texas faces Oklahoma State this weekend, the ‘easy’ games are mostly over.

I mentioned this in an earlier recap and I’m not going to beleaguer the point, but LHN showed a close-up of one of Brown’s threes in practice and I found it helpful to illustrate what I was talking about with his form. If you watch this a couple of times through, you’ll notice that he’s shooting off to the right of his face as well as the ball has sidespin when it comes out. These are things that need fixing, but probably won’t get fixed until the offseason…by a NBA team.

It’s not terrible, and it’s not the crazy sidespin Brock Cunningham had last year, but it’s not ideal. Brown is 5-17 from three against teams ranked outside the top 100 in KenPom and 2-14 from three against teams ranked in the top 100; there is exactly one Big 12 team ranked outside the top 100 right now. As they go into conference play, the number of threes Brown attempts needs to be curtailed. Open catch & shoot threes are fine, anything else needs to be severely reduced.

Hamm already averages nearly 8 fouls per 40 minutes (nearly 4x Matt Coleman’s 2.1/40) so it’s not like I have to worry about him wearing down from overuse as the season goes on, but he hit a particularly amazing milestone against Sam Houston State where he fouled out in five minutes. That’s a rate of…carry the one, divide by pi…one foul every minute. I scrolled back through the previous years and the only player who played decent minutes and regularly hung near 7.9/40 or higher was Prince “2 fouls in the first 2 minutes of the second half” Ibeh. He’s not quite to the level of Alexis Wangmene’s two-year run of 9.1 & 8.3, but there’s still time! Maybe during Texas A&M-Corpus Christi he can see if he can manage five fouls in three minutes, which would make him

(I haven’t watched that intro in forever and it’s even more amazing than I remember)

This needs to stop. We’re less than 12 months removed from Liddell visibly parsing a series of if/then Turbo Pascal statements on the wing before dribbling for the first time, maybe let’s not try him out as the backup point guard just yet. I know it was happening when the team was up 20 on a subpar opponent, but no. Just, no.

Sims is not himself and it looks like Texas is using the games against lesser foes to try to kickstart something within him. They got him the ball on the low block a handful of times and his efforts at scoring were haphazard in execution; one dunk he traveled on, others he’s getting the ball stripped, there’s not quite the conviction we saw in these moves last year. It’s not really working, he’s regressed and I’m not seeing signs that make me think he’ll turn it around. I fear benching him might make things even worse for him mentally, and Texas needs him to be at least something close to himself as they deal with the interior size of West Virginia, Kansas, et al. It’s not an easy answer, or rather it’s not one without some potentially sizable consequences for Texas’ season trajectory.

Hitting nearly 50% of your threes is unsustainable, but I’ll take this over the epic cold streak Ramey started last season on. His drives into the paint could still use some refining, but I like his decisiveness and the strength he deploys when he goes to the hole. As much as I talk up Coleman, Ramey’s progression has been just as important.

He’s the cooler. When things started really going sideways in the Sam Houston State game, Shaka sent Coleman in and the turnovers dropped off dramatically. Everybody started doing what they were supposed to, the shenanigans died down. Thank god for senior point guards.

As conference play finally kicks in, it’s probably worth having a brief update on how things look compared to preseason.

Still probably the best team in the conference when they’re not deep-throating doorknobs at South Dakota assisted living centers. I don’t know that they’re as good as Gonzaga, but their #2 ranking is well-earned to date.

They had a run against Richmond reminiscent of the time they dunked Texas halfway down a coal mine, and when they play like that nobody will beat them. I don’t think it’s easily replicable and any team that can keep Derek Culver at bay will probably beat them 9 times out of 10. Miles McBride is providing some perimeter help and if Taz Sherman can stay hot it makes Culver’s job significantly easier.

Their offense is rough with stretches of competence, and their defense is about as stout as you’d expect. McClung hasn’t really gotten rolling and it makes everything more difficult for them offensively, but he’s showing signs. They’ve only played one team worth a damn and were getting boatraced until the refs got involved. That 11-point loss to Houston should’ve been 20 & Abilene Christian (#123 in KenPom at the time) played them close the whole game. Still, the defense will keep them in most every game, but there’s some question as to how good they really are right now. They’re playing Kansas tonight so we’ll learn more.

Still a work in progress, but even in this unfinished form they’re at worst the fourth-best team in the Big 12. The Creighton win was solid and Jalen Wilson is showing up about a season ahead of schedule, so they might yet challenge for the Big 12 title. David McCormack needs to step up, or more to the point jump straight up. When he shoots falling away, the ball rarely goes in.

Truck Stop Larry Bird is lighting it up this year, and limiting him is the priority for any opponent which is easier said than done. Austin Reaves is starting to channel his Wichita State form and De’Vion Harmon is coming along, plus they got a transfer eligible in Umoja Gibson which will make their offense even more potent. The other end of the floor is where their issues lie, and will likely be their downfall. They’re looking like they could be a top-half of the conference team if their defense gets even reasonably better.

You’re going to be stunned to know this team goes as Cade Cunningham goes. Losing to TCU at home doesn’t instill confidence, but the real issue is as follows:

Cade Cunningham from 3: 10/24 (41.7%)

The highest-volume 3 teammates from 3: 23/84 (27.4%)

The rest of the team from 3: 13/42 (30.1%)

Until that gets cleaned up, the spectrum of outcomes for them in any individual game is more bad than good. Cunningham will pop somebody good in the Big 12 on his own though, he is the real deal.

TCU is answering more of my preseason questions in the affirmative than the negative, so their profile is rising slightly in my eyes. I still don’t see them finishing higher than 7th at this point, but that’s much more likely than 10th. Kevin Samuel has been really good and will test most Big 12 interiors, and freshman Mike Miles has been a pleasant surprise. I don’t yet think this is a NCAA tournament team, but they can at least enter the bubble discussion if they keep this up.

It’s not even Xmas and some of their fans are discussing Prohm’s buyout - which is roughly $5.1mil - so things are going great! The Cyclones lost to a Kansas State team which - as the kids say - is ass, my dude. They’re 1-3 with a likely WVU whoopin’ upcoming, and if they drop either/both of the following games against Jackson State or Chicago State they might sell the Field of Dreams lot to finance that buyout. Rasir Bolton might be all that’s keeping this team from the conference cellar.

It’s December and Iowa State fans would rather talk about their football team, that probably says everything.

The Wildcats lost to a D-II team who can’t even count the win in their record books because it was technically an exhibition to them. I cannot tell you how much joy that sentence brings me. Actually, hang on, I think I can.

Nailed it.

Kansas State isn’t good, and if Mike McGuirl isn’t performing everything goes to hell pretty quickly. Nijel Pack is doing some things, but again McGuirl is where everything lives or dies.

I don’t know that my pick of Texas at fourth has changed much, or maybe it’s better to say that I think their likely landing spot has shrunk a bit from 2nd-6th to 2nd-5th. I can make an easy argument for 3rd, less so for 2nd but it’s definitely reachable at this point. Baylor would have been a good measuring stick game, alas Scott Drew’s team felt it more important to line up as a replacement sneeze guard for the campus Subway franchise than to play actual games. Maybe Baylor keeps dropping in and out of practice and the subsequent dip in quality allows first place to become an item of discussion, but I’m not there yet.

Sunday, Dec 20: Oklahoma State 1PM CT (LHN)

Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football, the next episode will probably be online Saturday. Also, I have a Patreon if you want to help defer the ever-mounting tequila costs over here. I understand if you forgot it exists, I did too.

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