Coming into this week, I was…pensive. Introspective? Constipated? I was sitting in that pre-COVID realm where you hit an Indian buffet, eat a pound of Naan bread, a gallon of tikka massala, and several things that ended in ‘paneer’, and my stomach was rumbling. Was the ominous warning a sign of Texas basketball underwhelming, or just gas? Should I heed the cultural touchstone of ‘never trust a fart after 40’ or am I just dealing with a microbiome that is adjusting to unexpected yogurt ingestion? TCU gives me pause since Dixon returned to Fort Worth; his defensive issues are there but his offensive acumen is solid and he knows how to identify shooters, so they’re able to punch above their weight enough to concern me. If Farabello was healthy, they probably beat Mizzou and put a scare into Kansas. They’re not scrubs, but even still why am I concerned by a team in the KenPom 100s?

The primary issue is that Texas spent a significant portion of the last month recovering from COVID issues and the stamina/chemistry issues that follow a program dealing with the virus and not, say a team conveniently ducking its best opponents under COVID protocols. If you go back through the last four games you can see a team that is slowly getting its feet under itself. The Baylor loss was in some ways admirable given everything; and the next three games showcased a team sorting out the various issues being ‘connected’. Oklahoma State was a quality defensive effort ruined by terrible offensive issues, Kansas State was basically the opposite but showed signs of breaking out, and the TCU game was an R.J. Nembhard burst away from being a fairly easy win. Maybe Texas is back on track towards the team they showed in December & January. Maybe?

Just kidding.

Texas flirted with their worst loss of the year in the same game where they had one of their best offensive performances of the year for the first 30 minutes of the game. It takes a special kind of performance to make half of 26 threes, get a dominant stretch from Greg Brown, accumulate 16 assists..and scrape by with a three-point win. It’s like Texas heard all the complaints about the offense during Oklahoma State and stick a finger in our collective eye by burying nearly everything they shot, but forgot about the other end of the floor. Some of the shots KSU hit in the first half were tough threes at the end of a 30-second shot clock where they had no other choice, those shots you can live with. But as the game wore on, the Texas defense didn’t tighten up for enough stretches to really put the Wildcats away. The Longhorns came out in the second half and throttled Kansas State for about 10 minutes, hit a lot of shots, and built up a 15-point lead; it was the kind of 10-minute stretch we’ve seen from Texas in a number of games this year, the kind of stretch that reminds us of just how good this team can be. Then they…just kinda stopped? A portion of it is due to Coleman going out with foul trouble (more on that below) but the defensive lapses were rough. Kansas State has a couple of solid players - Mike McGuirl is solid and Nijel Pack is going to be a thorn in the conference’s side for years if he doesn’t transfer when Bruce Weber is fired - but this isn’t murderer’s row. In a game without DaJuan Gordon, Texas should be able to smother them. You know, like they did for 35 minutes in Austin earlier this season.

Texas followed a great defensive & terrible offensive performance with a great offensive & terrible defensive performance. This team feels like it’s still figuring itself out post-COVID, or rather they know what they want to be but haven’t put all the pieces together like they did earlier in the season. Good thing they’ve got months* to figure it all out!

*days, definitely days

At the 10:36 mark of the second half with Texas up 62-51, Matt Coleman picked up his fourth foul and went to the bench. He came back in at the 4:52 mark and the score was 68-62. I would argue that Shaka held him out too long; Kansas State had taken a 16-point deficit and knocked it down to 6, and they were making Texas players nervous. Kansas State had stymied the Texas offense, the Longhorns weren’t getting the shots they had the first 30 minutes, and as much as Courtney Ramey’s enormous balls kept forcing the issue - that was a weird statement that sounds less like a basketball play and more a description by the prosecution, I apologize to the entire Ramey family - the offense was dead in the water. Coleman is the steadying hand of this team, and he probably should have come in a minute or two earlier to keep this game from getting close.

I’m a bit perplexed by Coleman as of late. He’s not driving the ball with nearly the same aggression he did earlier in the season, and he’s not scoring or getting to the line at the same rate. (This game was buoyed by him taking the late free throws, all of his attempts happened in the last two minutes of the game.) He seems to have regressed some in this area, and it’s having an impact on the overall efficiency of the offense. Having said that, he racked up 7 assists (with zero turnovers!), was nails from the free throw line, and his defense was decent-ish. He was a positive contributor overall, but there’s a level he was hitting early in the season that he’s not hitting now. He was an absolute assassin early in the season, playing with the confidence of James Harden at an Atlanta strip club with a strict no-camera policy. He’s not really there; I don’t know if he’s still coming back from COVID - there have been some comments about his wind coming out of the pause, but no official ‘he got the ‘rona’ statements from the team so I’m reading between the lines - or if the pause on its own interrupted his flow. He’s acting like a complementary piece when he needs to be The Guy if Texas is going to go head-hunting in March.

Yea, he earned that one. Gotta read the room, man.

Royce was upset about not playing, to which I say: me too, buddy. I want to see the 5-in-5, and I believe you can do it. I’m a Belieber in BeHamm BeFouling in BeRecord time.

You know all that stuff I said above? Today was the answer to that; it’s almost as if he took it down as a checklist of things to do. He spent more time at the basket in this game than the three before it. He was driving baseline constantly, hitting shots and hitting the open man in equal measure. His defense was decent -though some of R.J. Nembhard’s early points (obligatory “that guy is going to be trouble next year” nod to Nembhard) were on Coleman’s watch - his connectedness (I don’t think that’s a word, but roll with it) to the rest of the team was on point, and if it wasn’t for a pair of turnovers on consecutive possessions in the second half his stat sheet would be nearly perfect. This was the first post-COVID game where I felt like Coleman was ‘back’.

As an aside - not that every recap doesn’t have a dozen asides - the LHN broadcast of the TCU game did a deep dive on Coleman that focused on the three free throws he missed against Tech his freshman year. Those three free throws are also seared into my brain forever, and it is one of the smallish metrics of how I think he’s progressed that those are a distant memory and he’s now nearly automatic from the line. It’s been a big deal to him, and he’s fixed it in the clutchest of clutch situations. Like, I don’t know, that Kansas State game earlier.

Andrew Jones went 0-fer from three but was so dominant in getting to the rim that it didn’t really matter. Texas has a guy on their team who can always get his shot, and that’s a major ingredient in any postseason run; Jones is playing on such a level that every opponent has to start their defensive tactics with him. He’s been so good on both ends of the floor - this is the first game since Oklahoma without a steal - and it’s fun to watch him cook. The only reason he didn’t crack 20 was due to foul trouble; Lance Blanks said the only person who can stop AJ is himself and that’s absolutely correct.

How many times did you hear Kevin Samuel’s name in this game? Maybe six, and half of them were prefaced with “a quiet night from”. Jericho Sims’ dunks will get the highlights - and deservedly so, a couple of them were monsters - but going into this game I was worried about Samuel causing problems and the reason three points & three rebounds is due to Sims smothering him for large chunks of the game. I like Samuel’s game, he’s a poor man’s Udoka, and Sims made him a poor man’s nobody. My podcast co-host Will Baizer has a relative who thinks Sims is a scrub, but I’m pretty sure the last few weeks have helped dissuade him of that notion. Sims is a screwdriver; maybe he’s not always useful, but the toolbox is invariably better when he’s in it.

More of these, please. They seem nice, albeit more exuberant than most hugs I receive. I’ve been hugged like that and I am never ready for it, but those of you who have been here for awhile are probably not surprised that I’m awkward when it comes to human interaction.

If anybody is curious why this recap is coming out late on a Saturday night and/or Sunday morning, there are two reasons; the first is I had to work tonight, and the second is because even if I didn’t have to work I would have had to wait until the 8 PM replay of the game to watch the first half because Sling doesn’t seem to understand why it exists on my fire sticks. I have you for exactly one reason: recording Texas basketball games on LHN. Yet over and over you do not do this, because you are Dollar Store Playstation Vue. I am happy to be rid of you for another 8 months, and if LHN ever becomes available on Youtube TV I will take your app out into a field and give it the Office Space Printer treatment.

One of the perks of having a deep team is that it allows players to come back from injury at their own pace and contribute as they are able. A roster with less seniority might mean Febres would have been rushed back faster and had to give a lot of minute from the jump, but he’s been able to be deployed a bit more strategically. (Well, other than Oklahoma State.) Febres has taken to his role as the ninth guy in the rotation and he’s using his minutes to try to contribute wherever he can; he’s snagging rebounds, going for steals, etc. It’s nice to see a guy who was supposed to be the microwave offense in previous seasons try to pick up the slack where he can. I don’t want to get all “look at the culture Shaka has built” but can you imagine Sheldon McClellan giving his full effort defensively? His shot isn’t falling yet and it may not this year (maybe next year???) but he’s also not throwing it up a ton as a reserve so it’s not like he’s shooting Texas out of games.

Ramey’s offense has been mercurial for the last few games, likely because teams understand what they have to take away from him (he really likes driving right) and because of Coleman’s issues. He has found ways to contribute though; against Oklahoma State he was 8-8 from the line, against Kansas State he was getting to the paint, and in three of the last four games he’s tallied at least 5 assists. He’s likely the primary point guard next season, and while I think that means there will be a step down from Coleman, it might not be a significant one. It will be less DJ and more J’Covan, with a number of the pros & cons that implies.

Texas has five games in 11 days starting with the TCU game. A team with this sort of depth should be able to weather the storm, but it’s entirely possible a team coming back from COVID and hitting this sort of load throws down a clunker along the way. (I’m looking at you, Iowa State road game before a WVU/Kansas/Tech run.) There are a grand total of 7 games left in the regular season at this time, and five happen in pretty quick succession. It will be incumbent upon the S&C staff to keep the players as fresh as possible, because they’re going to run into situations like West Virginia having a week off before they come to Austin. Guys like Coleman, Ramey, and AJ are going to have to perform on tired legs if this team wants to sniff a 2-seed.

While there are technically only two teams (Iowa State & Kansas State) who are eliminated from winning the conference, I think pretty much everybody has ceded the crown to Baylor unless they come out of the latest COVID pause looking really rusty. TCU is 4-6 with a Tech home & away series coming up, so they’re probably the 8th-seed. Two through seven in the standings are all up for grabs, with every team currently between 6 and 9 wins and variable losses due to postponements. Oklahoma is currently projected to finish 2nd with a 11-6 (.647) record, West Virginia is projected to finish 3rd at 9-5 (.643), and Texas is looking to finish 4th at 10-6 (.625). (I should mention I’m assuming the conference goes by winning percentages to determine the standings, since the Big 10 is talking about doing it that way and Kansas is on track to have 18 games, Texas 16, West Virginia 14, etc., but the conference hasn’t said they’ll do it to my knowledge.) Texas could really use the conference adding a Baylor/WVU matchup as they haven’t played this year, that might be the difference between 3rd & 4th. Oklahoma dropping a game or two to their rival at the end of the season would open the door to second place, but I guess the point here is that Texas doesn’t totally control their own destiny in this regard. Beating Tech in Lubbock would help keep the Red Raiders from entering this conversation, and beating WVU & Kansas at home would solidify Texas’ standing among the crowd. Kansas is also lurking, but does anybody expect them to win more than one of their final three (v Tech, at Texas, v Baylor)?

I’m meandering a bit, but I guess I’d say that Texas seems likely to finish between 3rd & 5th and the difference between them probably comes down to the WVU/Kansas games. If they can pop Oklahoma on the road on Tuesday, then we can discuss the chances they snag second place.

Texas has five losses, and here are the current projected NCAA seeds of the teams Texas has lost to: 2, 4, 3, 1, & 7. Texas currently sits as a 3 or 4-seed in most brackets - they were a 4 in the NCAA’s mock bracket release prior to the TCU game - and they have upcoming games against 3, 3, 5, & 4-seeds plus whatever happens with rescheduled games and/or a conference tournament. A 1-seed is probably off the table for Texas barring a massive run, but a 2-seed is still an attainable goal if they can stack wins against other tournament-level teams and avoid bad losses, of which there is only one left on the schedule (at Iowa State). If the away game vs TCU gets rescheduled, that would be another. Pomeroy shows Texas ending the season 10-6 in conference play, and if that’s how it goes then Texas ending up as a 3-seed is probably the most likely outcome. That’s only a disappointment relative to a month ago; when the PWF team discussed the season the median hope was ‘Sweet 16’ which generally means a top-4 seed and playing to that seed. Things are still on track with some upside left in the last month.

Tuesday, February 16th: at Oklahoma 8 PM CT (ESPN) - 44% KenPom win probability

Thursday, February 18th: at Iowa State 6 PM CT (ESPN+) - 85% KenPom win probability

Saturday, February 20th: vs West Virginia 2 PM CT (ABC) - 58% KenPom win probability

(Side note for people paying for a service solely to get access to games: Iowa State should be the last ESPN+ game of the year?)

Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football; our next show will come out by…Tuesday? Also we have a Twitter account now, which may be useful for those of you who want only my/our sports opinions. My next recap will come out after the West Virginia game. Also, I have a Patreon if you want to tip me for mean-tweeting Sling.

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