The Kansas game was a pleasant surprise, how could it not be? Beating Kansas is a rare enough occurrence that Texas should celebrate every win, regardless of how it happens. Storming the court is entirely fine under this circumstance and any other circumstance which qualifies under the “this is fun and we should encourage fun” space that sports should generally live in; anyone who looks disapprovingly at students storming the court is a cop or a boomer or a cop boomer. Let them enjoy things, we have watched a full decade of underachievement and should celebrate the moments when Texas outperforms expectations.

I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE

FOR MONTHS

I WASN’T KIDDING

THAT WAS FUN

GET

THESE

DUDES

IN

SPACE

A lot of people are rightfully discussing Timmy Allen’s offensive contributions, but in my eyes the MVP of that game is Courtney Ramey. If you have the chance to go back and focus on him, his ability to make life hell for Ochai Agbaji is maybe the best anyone has defended the Kansas wing all year. Ramey has the speed to deny passes and the strength to fight through the thousand screens Kansas set to try to get Agbaji free, and he was just the right kind of physical to limit the potential All-American to a tie for his lowest-scoring output of the year. Ramey was remarkable, and props to the Texas staff for making the correct deviation from their normal defense to keep Agbaji at bay.

There was a span of a few years where every NBA team went heavy into analytics and turned into a “all shots need to be threes or dunks” festival, optimizing the expected point totals as much as possible. While that’s still the preferred style, there are a handful of anomalies who defy this algorithm. Kawhi Leonard hits mid-range twos at a rate that makes those shots inherently valuable, and his ability to reliably hit them is a counter to the defenses optimized to take away dunks & threes. While the college game will never fully optimize the way the NBA has - in part because the players generally aren’t good enough shooters to make the expected point values work to that extreme - there are teams like Alabama who are trying to do some form of this pace & space style. A player like Timmy Allen has no place on Alabama, he’s neither quick enough to get to the rim or good enough from deep to warrant letting threes fly in bulk. But he is valuable in a very specific way, as a guy who can hit the mid-range shots other players cannot reliably hit. When he’s not confronted with overwhelming athletes - more on this in a minute - he has the ability to create shots which are sub-optimal for most but work for him. There is a value in finding value where others do not perceive value. Can I use the term value more times in a sentence? Possibly, but we should not tempt the value gods. Anyway, Allen’s ability to get his shot at the free throw line is a tool that can confound defenses geared towards contesting threes and dunks. The throwback element of his game is a wrinkle that a lot of teams can’t really counter; I call Allen’s game a YMCA game and it’s not intended as a back-handed compliment so much as a recognition that he is a Torx bit in a land of Phillips-head screwdrivers, he has a specific use and Kansas was an Asus laptop. Can I make that joke more nerdy? Probably, but let’s move on.

There is a direct correlation between Christian Bishop’s productivity and refs swallowing their whistle; for as many fouls as were called in the Kansas game, there were remarkably few called in the paint. If the officials are going to let that much contact go down low, let Bishop throw some elbows. He’s better when he gets to walk off the court with an ear necklace. I guarantee you he will talk shit to the guy whose ear he’s wearing as a necklace when he goes to the bench after picking up a common foul for tearing off an ear because the Big 12 is where freedom of movement rules go to die.

Texas wasn’t actually that bad today, all things considered; Baylor is just more athletic and more talented across the board. The gap between Texas now and where Beard says he wants to be was on display today; Baylor has up to 5 potential NBA picks on their roster right now, Texas has zero. Texas doesn’t have anyone who resembles Kendall Brown, Texas’ size doesn’t matchup well with Baylor’s bigs, Texas’ guards aren’t as quick as Baylor’s, and so on. Texas is a good college team, Baylor is a title contender. Sometimes it’s useful to have a measuring stick game, even if it means your team gets worked. And Texas definitely got worked, there were maybe 8 minutes out of the 40 where they weren’t being bludgeoned by a superior team.

Early in the second half, Akinjo showed exactly the difference between him and a guy like Marcus Carr, namely the ability to control the flow of the game, break ankles, and get by your defender. The first 7 minutes or so of the second half was a showcase of Akinjo cooking defenders over and over, it was about as close as we’ll get to a Hot Sauce And-1 highlight reel in a Big 12 game.

Texas defenders are going to smell like burnt toast for a week after that.

Here’s the thing about being a Torx bit: when you need a flathead, it’s kinda useless. Allen has his uses, and against a lot of teams he can be a net-positive; but against the best teams, more often than not he’s going to have problems. My co-host Tim mentioned in our podcast that he was surprised Kansas didn’t play Texas straight-up, and I didn’t really notice it at the time but he is correct. Allen was able to feast off of Kansas doing things they didn’t need to defensively, and by the time the last half of the second half rolled around Allen was full of confidence and didn’t really care about what Kansas threw at him. Baylor did not make this same mistake; they played him straight-up with superior athletes and made his life hell. Such is life, c’est la vie, Դա կյանք է, Das ist das Leben, Dik il-ħajja, Ko e moʻui ia.

Coming into this week there was a remote chance Texas could still end up on the bubble if they faltered. It wasn’t a likely scenario, but Texas still hadn’t reached ‘lock’ status in my eyes. It wasn’t just me, places like The Athletic, Heat Check, and others were also holding off on saying Texas had sewn up a spot in the tourney. The win against Kansas pretty much sealed a NCAA Tournament appearance; there isn’t a Q3 or Q4 game left on the schedule, so there aren’t any chances for Texas to really screw up their shot at playing in March. I suppose if Texas loses out and gets bounced in the first Big 12 conference tournament game they might be close to the bubble, but that seems unlikely to happen and unlikely to drop them out of the field. Now Texas is working for seeding; a 1-3 seed seems out of reach to my eyes, but it’s possible they could play their way into a 4 or 5 if they end the regular season beating both Baylor and Kansas. I kinda feel like Texas ends up a 6 or 7 when all is said and done, but they have the opportunity to surpass that.

I understand the outsized importance March Madness plays in what basketball fanbases view as a successful season - I’m probably not helping with my annual rankings - but one of several reasons I don’t place as much importance on it as many others is because I know the luck that’s involved in making deep runs (and the inherit sample size flaws in single-elimination formats). Take Baylor; they won a title last year, they started 15-0 but they’ve lost 4 of their last 10 games, are they considerably worse this year than last? Not really, they’ve just been hit harder with injuries. LJ Cryer has missed 6 games and counting, James Akinjo and Adam Flagler have both missed time recently are are just now getting back to form, and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua looks like he might be done for the year after his knee bent in a direction I haven’t seen since watching the aliens from The Arrival.

(This isn’t a picture of Tchamwa Tchatchoua. Probably.)

When they’re at full-strength they’re undefeated, they simply haven’t been full-strength for a month now. As a result, instead of being a clear 1-seed they may end up being a 2 or 3-seed in the tournament and their path to another title is that much more difficult. If they make it to the Elite Eight instead of the title game because they run into Arizona or Auburn a couple of rounds earlier than they otherwise might, does that mean they’re that much worse this season? Not really. This is part of the reason I place as much emphasis on conference finishes as I do, it’s a better indicator of overall program strength than tourney results.

There are a couple ways to look at this week, both have valid points and I’ll leave it to you to decide where you fall.

The Kansas win was an unexpected win, and a positive step towards a potential tournament run. The Longhorns will have to beat teams with the talent of the Jayhawks no later than the Sweet Sixteen and they’ve shown they can hang with that level of opponent at least once. In a single-elimination tournament, taking advantage of opponents not closing the door is a vital part of making a run and Texas did it against Kansas. Plus, Texas was able to put up points right along with Kansas, which is not nothing! Baylor is a bad matchup for Texas, but there are very few Baylors out there and Texas can still have a successful March before running into a Baylor-level opponent.

Kansas basically gave that game away; they were up 76-72 and would have shut the door with their 80% free throw shooter making his FTAs. It took an ungodly banked three from previously 0-5 Tre’ Mitchell to even force the issue, and even still it took Agbaji tossing a lob to McCormack and hitting the rim & Dajuan Harris straight losing control of the ball to prevent a David McCormack dunk from sealing the win. Texas then got throttled by the better Baylor team for a win, and is still likely the fourth-best team in the Big 12 behind Kansas, Baylor, and Texas Tech. Kansas and Baylor both scored well over 70 points and 1.1 PPP, which is an offensive output Texas can’t reliably match given their general offensive brittleness. Their ceiling isn’t appreciably better than a week ago because their fluke-ish win over Kansas came at home and they’ve been objectively bad away from Austin, which is checks notes where all post-season games happen.

Do you want to guess which was easier for me to come up with, or can we be honest with each other? I think you have collectively been around long enough to know which one I’m predisposed to side with, but there is still time for me to change my view.

Also, happy Valentine’s Day. Maybe get your partner a card or some flowers or don’t throw up on the carpet at whatever Super Bowl party you’re attending. Romance means something different to everyone; for us it means going to an IMAX screening of Free Solo so I spend 2 hours sweating as much as Matthew Stafford running from Aaron Donald, but you might have your own idea of what this day means. PRO TIP: get flowers delivered 2 days ahead of the day. They get a chance to bloom for V-Day and you save $15 on delivery costs. You’re welcome.

Tuesday, February 15th: at Oklahoma 6:00 PM CT (ESPN2)

Saturday, February 19th: vs Texas Tech 11:30 AM CT (ABC)

Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football and/or our Twitter account. My next recap will come out after Texas Tech. I have a Patreon if you want to tip me.

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