These are weird times. I’m a person who prefers a zero guard on the trimmer when I get my hair cut, but the hair on the sides of my head are well past my fingers because I keep hoping (fruitlessly) that if I hold out a couple more weeks the COVID numbers might abate to the point of (relative) normalcy. Instead I’m starting to look like a Weird Science reboot - I’m definitely the Wyatt, not the Gary in this scenario - and I’m still going to end up getting my hair cut in sub-optimal settings because not enough people in this country will/can stay home. As such, college basketball is happening in sub-optimal conditions around the country. Texas is dealing with COVID; they are not the first, nor the last, but their turn on the world’s worst merry-go-round came up in the last fortnight. They had 3 games get cancelled or postponed on them and in that interim they got hit with their own COVID issues. They did get in one game, so let’s talk about it.

After the game it came out that Texas had been wildly undermanned in the run-up to this game, presumably due to Shaka testing positive and all of the contact tracing that resulted. KT Turner had multiple practices with three(!!) available players, and only got up to 8 the day before the game. Texas had to play without Courtney Ramey, Jericho Sims, and Brock Cunningham though Brock was allowed to sit on the bench for reasons I do not understand and showcased why he might not be the poster child for COVID preparedness.

That was actually better than the first time he was on TV, where he wasn’t wearing a mask at all.

I do not understand how these COVID rules work; if he’s not allowed to play, why is he on the bench? If Cunningham is unavailable because of contact with people who had the disease, sit his ass at home. If he’s not a danger to others, suit his ass up. Either you’re available or not; this middle-ground bullshit makes no sense especially if he’s going to sit there not wearing a goddamn mask. He’s not the only Cunningham who I’ve seen like this, Cade Cunningham has been out for COVID protocol reasons but was still on the OSU bench the last two games I saw.

So yea, Turner got one practice in with 8 players and had to play an Oklahoma team who is on fire right now. Not great, Bob!

I’m fairly pragmatic about refereeing because their job is very difficult and they’re having to track a half-dozen things at a time and call fouls in real time; the percentage of calls they get right is pretty amazing given their workload, and I understand they will miss stuff here and there. There’s also not an easy alternative, it’s not like strike zones being called by robot umps, so we need to accomodate for human error. I’m less interested in refs calling a game tight or loose (within reason), but what I want is consistency. Consistency between halves, consistency on what contact is or isn’t being allowed; consistency of officiating in a game allows players and coaches a framework to do their thing. We got none of that in the Oklahoma game; sometimes contact was allowed, sometimes it wasn’t, sometimes they’d call a charge and sometimes they’d call a block on the same type of play. It varied minute by minute; the first two minutes of the game had 12 fouls called and then there would be plays where three more should’ve been called and none were. It was the most slapdick game of officiating I’ve seen in awhile, exacerbating Texas’ depth issues. Royce Hamm fouling out was easy to predict, but Matt Coleman? Quick question for the crowd, how many times has Matt Coleman fouled out of a game in 115 appearances? Three times, if you include the Oklahoma game. His fifth foul came on the tiniest of contact, an amount of contact that happens in every possession of the game. It was brutal to watch. And that Greg Brown blocking call…

I’m losing count of how many times I see Texas players drive to the paint and take a shot while lifting off of the wrong foot; Kai Jones is the most egregious perpetrator, in part because he’s still like a gangling giraffe and in part because his footwork in traffic is highly variable in quality so he gets into these no-win positions where he has to shoot off the wrong foot. When a defense stonewalls you into a bad angle, it’s okay to pass it back out. I know Kai has a world of ability - he seems to be pretty clearly trying to pattern his game after Giannis - and some of this is the growing pains, but this drives me up a wall because it’s mostly avoidable.

The final play was explained in the post-game with the basic idea of “throw the ball to Kai and either take a shot or pass to an open shooter” which is reasonable, I don’t have much heartburn with the concept. The execution was lacking though; I feel like this was one of those things they worked on when they only had like 5 people available for practice and that’s why they brought in a walk-on cold to try it, because he was probably the inbounds guy in practice. I know he was a QB in high school, but…come on. They subbed out Donovan Williams to bring him in, you don’t think a 6-6 guard with arms longer than a Reddit Gamestop thread could have come in handy in that play execution? Stick Hepa in Nevins’ spot, have him throw it up; it’s not like he would’ve air-mailed the throw worse than Nevins did. Congrats to Blake Nevins on avoiding his 8th entry in the Club Trillion database with that turnover though.

As an aside, I feel like this game is a data point in favor of “Shaka Smart is not as bad a coach as some people think” because the decisions made by Turner showcased a guy who wasn’t quite ready for prime time. Smart would have burned a timeout in the first half when Oklahoma got cooking and his final play would have been better executed than the one we saw.

At the end of the day, Texas played 8 scholarship players through heinous foul trouble against a team that just beat Alabama for its fourth top-ten win in January and lost by one point. It sucks to lose to your rival, but in a way it’s kind of heartening to know that even without two of their five most vital players and the other three having subpar outings they can still hang with a ranked opponent. I don’t want to call it a moral victory because when you’re a top-ten team, moral victories are kinda horseshit, but it is a bit of perspective on where Texas is as a program right now.

The toughest remaining game on Texas’ schedule is on Tuesday when Baylor (undefeated at the time I type this) comes to Austin. Texas will have a full week off between Oklahoma and Baylor, and they should at least have Brock “Avante Garde Mask Influencer” Cunningham back in the fold. It’s possible Sims and Ramey will be back - I’ve heard some things but nothing confirmed - but Shaka having tested positive seems less likely. Texas will need them all if they want to knock off the Bears, and I can guarantee you the Bears know this is probably their biggest test left in their quest to go undefeated. That’s not to say they’re one game from being in the clear, in fact they have a four-game stretch in 8 days where they play at OU, vs Tech, then a pair against WVU (away/home) so it still seems unlikely the Bears will make it out unscathed.

In the bigger picture: this is Texas’ last, best chance to keep the conference title within sight and to make an argument for a 1-seed. Losing to Baylor means Texas would have to go on a big run and for Baylor to stumble at least three times in their final seven games. It means a lot for conference tie-breakers and for Texas to gun for one of the non-Gonzaga 1-seed slots. I don’t think the Big 12 ends up with two 1-seeds, but the idea is to keep the window open as long as possible. A home win against the Bears would help prop the window open.

Texas is in a fairly enviable position right now; they have played enough games to qualify for the NCAA Tournament and their resume to this point has them a lock to be a high seed. They have several opportunities left to bolster their argument for consideration as one of the top teams in the NCAA Tournament. Consider that every game Texas wins in March Madness will net the Big 12 in the ballpark of $280,000. Also consider that the NCAA Tournament requires seven days of zero positive tests from both players and coaches before they’re even allowed to set foot in their Indiana hotel, and that 7-day span overlaps with a large chunk of the Big 12 tournament. I say all of this as a preface to make the following argument:

Texas should opt-out of the Big 12 tournament, and the Big 12 should support that decision.

In fact, I think they should cancel the conference tournament altogether; the risk of the Big 12 losing a team like Baylor, Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and/or Texas Tech to COVID positives is too great a financial risk. Imagine a scenario where Baylor and Texas both get hit with positives and are forced to miss March Madness; if Baylor was headed for a title game loss to Gonzaga and Texas made an Elite Eight run, that’s $2.8mil in lost revenue for the conference because they insisted on making these two programs - who were already locks for the tourney - play in the conference tournament. If the Big 12 wants to talk about the monetary value of the tournament games, offer up that they can use the days between the end of the regular season and the conference tournament to make up postponed games. That helps them absorb the cost of losing the conference tournament revenue, and can keep the teams ready while minimizing the risk of positive tests. End the Big 12 season on March 8th, give the teams a few days buffer before they have to start posting negative test results.

There aren’t really any bubble teams for the Big 12 this year, Oklahoma State is the closest thing and they’re currently in 74 of the 78 brackets on Bracket Matrix. The conference tournament is less meaningful for teams than most years and the downside of playing the games is higher than the rewards. Cancel the tournament, award the automatic bid to the regular season champ…and if they don’t, then the top half of the conference should opt-out.

(I also feel like the conference should up the minimum number of eligible players to play a game for similar reasons, but that’s for another day.)

Tuesday, February 2nd: Baylor 6 PM CT (ESPN) - 32% KenPom win probability

Saturday, February 6th: at Oklahoma State 2 PM CT (ABC) - 57% KenPom win probability

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 OSU game. Also, I have a Patreon if you want to tip me for shoehorning in yet another Witcher reference.

Writing tunes provided by Tyler Johnston.