The Chris Paul State Farm ads are generally terrible, they try to put him in positions where he’s acting when his strength is dictating an offense and punching defenders in the beanbag. They force this bad formula repeatedly despite it not yielding good results, when what they really should be doing is leaning on the most underrated State Farm character in the lineup: Boban. Every Boban ad is fire because they don’t ask him to do more than he’s capable of; the ads work and they’re memorable because they managed to make a giant human be funny. I defy you to watch Boban get mad about people not using coasters on his coffee table and not crack a smile, it’s impossible. Fitting your goals to the talent on hand is a sign of a highly-functional operation. I mention this for no particular reason.

Here’s the thing about no-middle defense: it doesn’t really work well against a properly spaced-out offense with a point guard who can turn the corner off a screen. Kansas State’s rebuttal to Texas going with three bigs was to plant a pair of guards/wings in the corners, turn it into a three-man game, and when the KSU big came up to screen for the point guard the third man cleared out of the paint. That left the paint unguarded with all of the off-ball defenders too far away to help wall off the rim and/or take the charges Chris Beard loves so much. Kansas State guards (mostly Nijel Pack) repeatedly got downhill when Texas committed to the switch and once he blew past the slower big it was wide open runs to the rim. It happened enough Beard eventually started the token 2-3 zone just to stem the tide a little bit; later in the game Texas started cheating off the corner shooters to close that gap, and it helped. (This isn’t always a good idea as a more aware PG will dish out to open shooters when the help commits, but Texas avoided that problem thanks to the depleted KSU roster.) They also stopped letting Nijel Pack get literally wherever he wanted, which is a nice idea when you’re not playing for or coaching Kansas State.

Has he transferred yet? No? I thought that was about to happen.

I’ve been curious to see a game where Texas didn’t decisively win the turnover battle to see how much it would narrow the path to victory. The answer: a lot! Kansas State had 6 turnovers in 60 possessions; if Texas turns them over at their season average of 28%, that’s 6 fewer possessions that end in a shot for Kansas State. If Kansas State has their full roster and only turns it over on 10% of their possessions like they did in this game, this game is probably in doubt almost until the buzzer.

I was riding this morning as part of my normal schedule and was nearly 2 hours into a 2.5 hour ride when suddenly all resistance disappeared from the ride and my progress ground to a halt. I stared at it really hard, even screamed at it to fix itself, none of that worked so I was out of options. It’s amazing how a whole system can break down when one primary part gets snuffed out. I don’t know why I’m talking about this random anecdote that has no relation to Texas basketball, anyway let’s talk about the Oklahoma State game.

Carr was much quieter today, and I went back to watch the first half to see what Oklahoma State was doing on him. The answer is pretty simple: they guarded the hell out of him. More to the point, they almost never switched when he was in a ball-screen; if he went over a screen, the big hedged or played drop coverage long enough for the guard to recover. When he was off the ball, the OSU guard responsible for him - usually either Bryce Williams or Isaac Likekele - wouldn’t sag very far off him and often played the passing lane to discourage the pass back to him in the first place. It’s not terribly complicated and it kept him out of the lane and mostly out of the scoring column, which doesn’t bode well for games against other teams with athletes fast enough to stay in front of Carr. Not that there’s many of them, just *checks notes* Baylor, Kansas, Tech, Oklahoma, and Iowa State. Other than them though, he’ll be able to turn the corner at will!

If you can’t get into the lane and you can’t reliably get your bigs the ball in the low post, you’re not going to get a ton of chances to draw fouls. This is a big chunk of the free throw disparity seen today; I didn’t get the vibe OSU was getting home cooking, in part because the arena was maybe 30% full. Texas wasn’t aggressive enough so they didn’t get calls, that’s pretty much it.

You don’t see that every day, though it might be a bit more regular occurrence now that Texas is playing tougher opponents. I’m not too worried about him though, he played better than most of the team.

Despite the result, it’s always enjoyable having Nessler & Raftery on a call. I have a soft spot for both of them for different reasons; Brad Nessler is the voice of college sports for me because of the ridiculous number of hours I spent playing NCAA Football on the Xbox over the years, and Raftery is maybe my platonic ideal of a color guy. Both of them understand how to talk within the flow of the game; Nessler is great at accentuating the moment without hyperbole and Raftery notices all sorts of little things during the game that add to the enjoyment of the tactics. Games are better when these two are involved.

Beard is hyper-aware of optics; aka him bringing out Carr a couple games ago and hugging him as he left the presser as a way to combat the transfer rumormongering. I don’t get why he’d do something like this; it’s bush league, especially on a team full of upperclassmen who are used to answering questions. Somebody can correct me on this, but I don’t recall Shaka or Barnes ever pulling this kind of thing in the past decade or so. Any Texas coach (or coach at most schools) needs to have a healthy relationship with the media for when things get rocky. Barnes knew this, Shaka (eventually) knew this, Mack Brown was the king of this for most of his tenure. Beard has the right to do this, but it’s not doing him any favors. It’s not a huge thing, just another one of those little head winds Beard creates for himself along the way.

Tim has said on our podcast multiple times that this is not an athletic team by conference standards, and he’s correct. Other than Dylan Disu, nobody on the roster is likely to spend much time in the NBA; it’s not the end of the world, teams can put together solid campaigns with a roster full of smart, refined basketball players if the offense and defense are adjusted to suit their strengths. The defense seems to be, but the offense, well…

I’ve spoken about my concerns as it relates to Beard’s motion offense enough that I’m not going to rehash it here, but I think it’s a pretty big warning sign that the recent offensive resurgence was stymied by Oklahoma State basically just deciding to stay in front of Marcus Carr. If this offense is going to be tossed in a tar pit by a middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team playing straight-up on the primary ball-handler, how is Texas going to beat a team vying for a top-3 conference position? Texas needs to combat the disparity in athleticism by scheming their players into better shots, and so far their ability to do that has been, let’s say “mixed”.

If your team is hoping to crack 11 wins in conference play, you have to sweep some teams. Ostensibly this entails racking up wins against the lower third of the conference, which coming into today was probably TCU, Kansas State, and Oklahoma State if you go by KenPom rankings. An Oklahoma State sweep is off the board now, so Texas has to sweep somebody higher in the rankings to make up for it. How confident are you right now about Texas sweeping Oklahoma, Iowa State, or going into Morgantown against a healthy WVU team and pulling a win? Any of these outcomes are plausible, but I sure rather would have had those as a luxury instead of a necessity. It’s also worth reminding everyone that Texas’ March Madness seeding hopes are entirely reliant upon conference wins, so losses like this aren’t helping their situation. Texas is 0-3 in Q1 right now, every one of these opportunities that slips through their hands drops their best-case seed projections a little further.

As an aside, Texas is now 1-3 on the road this season, which is still a small sample size but not a great start. Anything less than a winning road record in conference play bodes poorly for doing much in March, both from a seeding and performance standpoint.

Texas was turning over teams in nonconference play at a nearly 29% clip; in three conference games it’s sitting at 18.5%. Gonzaga turned the ball over on 10.5% of their possessions, Seton Hall turned the ball over on 14.5% of their possessions; it’s still early but if Texas continues to only force turnovers at a rate closer to the D-I average than they did against Southwestern Nursing School (Goliad Campus) this defense isn’t going to be good enough to cover up for the offensive issues we’ve seen. Right now the defensive efficiency is fourth-best in the Big 12, and Texas needs to be a couple spots higher if they have visions of contention still dancing in their heads.

Timmy Allen is becoming the king of garbage stats, and I mean this in the best possible way. He’s out there cleaning up the boards, grabbing loose balls, taking late-clock shots that nobody else seems to be interested in taking, all without being a focus of the offense at all. He had 10 points, 6 rebounds, and three steals against Oklahoma State after putting up a 17/14 line on the Wildcats. Texas needs more of this from the tertiary players because the team needs off-schedule buckets and boards like crazy.

Tuesday, January 11th: vs Oklahoma 7:30 PM CT (LHN)

Saturday, January 15th: at Iowa State 1:00 PM CT (ESPN+)

Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football and/or our Twitter account. My next recap will come out after the Iowa State game. I have a Patreon if you want to tip me for delaying naps just so I can watch Andrew Jones get another layup erased.

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