Texas looked like a top-20 team for about 65 of 80 minutes this week, notched their first Q1 home win (which was also their first win over a ranked team), and built positive momentum when the season was starting to look like the first two seconds of every video you’ve ever seen of a truck sliding on ice.

An 0-2 week this week heading into the murderous section of their Big 12 schedule would have sent this season careening towards a cliff like a Megabus hitting black ice at 45 MPH on a mountain pass. Instead, Texas went 2-0, (mostly) calmed fans & critics alike, and solidified a tournament resume that was starting to look shaky. It was a good week for Texas men’s basketball.

That was the first half of a top-ten team absolutely choking the life out of a fringe bubble team on the road. Texas took the things TCU did well - offensive rebounding and forcing turnovers - and wrestled both away from them like a big brother stealing his younger brother’s prized toy. The difference in execution level between Texas and TCU was like the difference between Gonzaga and Texas earlier this year, and in both games the final result was known at halftime. The Longhorns played with their food a bit in the second half and TCU had a chance or two to make things interesting, but the game wasn’t really in doubt at any point. I don’t think it’s particularly replicable - almost no D-I team regularly grabs 40%+ of their offensive misses - but it happened against a solid team and is something for Texas to aspire to going forward.

Fran Fraschilla - maybe the second-oldest patron of Cunningham Mountain behind yours truly - had plenty of chances to talk up our large adult son on Tuesday night, as Brock spent 24 minutes doing very Brock things. Cunningham accounted for 1/3 of the team’s offensive rebounds, had more assists than Marcus Carr and Devin Askew combined, and as I type this is probably still digging pieces of the TCU polygon court design out of his quads. I’m half-convinced his attempt to bring jorts back into fashion is less about fashion and more about trying to keep the top three layers of skin on his legs. Maybe the Texas admin can come up with a religious exemption that allows him to play games in burnt orange jorts.

Texas’ early-season rebounding issues have largely gone away as the season progressed; their defensive rebounding percentage is hovering around D-I average (which is an improvement) and the offensive rebounding has become a strength of the team. The big lineup Beard is rolling out for stretches of the game presents some offensive/spacing issues on the first shot in a possession but ameliorates some of that by grabbing more missed shots so they get a second (or third) shot up. This along with their free throw percentage are two of the primary reasons Texas’ offensive efficiency numbers haven’t sagged further than one would expect with the increase in turnovers and generally subpar three-point shooting.

In a pretty hilarious twist, this game was a fitting tribute both to Rick Barnes and why Texas moved on from Rick Barnes. The Mike Finger #HardButton was in full effect for large chunks of the game; both teams took turns abstaining from the generally agreed upon concept of scoring points like they were r/antiwork moderators, occasionally at the same time like some sort of modern art installation. “An Expression of Our Society’s Lack of Patience, 4 Minutes on Hardwood”, the sign read next to the bench.

snaps appreciatively

Beard really is uniting the family by getting us all on the same page about what the late Barnes years were like, and he walked out of the game not only barely combining for 100 points but also with nobody actively rooting for the return of Barnes as Texas head coach. Just a win all around for Beard tonight, he even got his Graphic Design Is My Passion t-shirt printing buddy some extra business.

At least the shirt doesn’t make it look like Barnes died, so it’s progress!

Texas played 33 minutes of stifling defense, albeit against another team as offensively-challenged as the Longhorns. It was pretty evident from the opening tip that both of these teams had each other scouted down to their preferred shorts length, and both teams are brittle enough offensively that a top-15 defense can take away their primary (and sometimes secondary) option. Hence the 26-25 halftime score, and hence the teams combining to barely top 100 points in a regulation game. (Is Penders available for offensive consulting?) Santiago Vescovi went 0-5 from three because pretty much the only threes he got up were off the bounce and/or heavily-contested, and that was by design. Without him scoring, it took superhuman efforts by Zakai Zeigler to get some scoring in the paint. It’s worth noting that if Tennessee’s bigs could hit a shot from 5 feet this game is probably a loss, they whiffed on an ungodly number of up-close shots they got from offensive rebounds. You could be happy that Texas made first shots difficult or you could grouse about a team with size yet again getting second shots on Texas. Whichever side of the coin you choose to look at this situation from is probably fine.

Teams have started going zone from time to time on Texas, which I get because in theory it means you’re telling a team who is mediocre from three that they’re going to have to make threes. Having said that, Timmy Allen’s “53-year-old at the YMCA who buries shot after shot from the free throw line” game is basically perfect for busting a zone. He is basically the counterpoint to the pace & space analytics, a guy who is a walking bucket in the areas an optimized roster is never supposed to shoot from. It’s also the ideal game to force a team without NBA length to abandon a standard 2-3 zone and any possession against a zone that doesn’t feature him immediately flashing to the free throw line is a wasted opportunity. Dude just eats at the suboptimal buckets game.

He’s having trouble closing out games at the free throw line, his 1 of 2 result at the end of the Tennessee game follows some missed attempts against Kansas State, and it’s a cause for concern. Which is weird! Because he’s hitting nearly 80% from the line in conference play. He should be close to automatic from the line, but in the last few minutes of a tight game he’s not delivering enough. Beard clearly trusts him and is going to leave him on the floor in high-leverage situations (which I generally agree with) but I have to wonder if this is going to bite Texas again down the road.

Some people have been ragging on Ramey as of late, and while he’s been a bit up and down I maintain that he’s one of the primary reasons this team is 16-5 instead of 13-8 or worse. He was the only consistent offensive threat from deep (4-8 from three on a team who went 7-16 from beyond the arc), he’s the only Texas player who cracked double figures, and he tied for the team lead in defensive rebounding. Oh and he was one of the reasons Kennedy Chandler didn’t spend half the game in the paint.

After the last few years of conference play, I think we’re all pretty familiar with the concept of a few buckets meaning drastic differences in season outcomes. That said, this is a non-conference point which will reverberate for several weeks; Texas finally has both a win over a ranked team (they were the last in the Big 12 to get one) and a Q1 win over a non-conference opponent. I’ve been watching these games unfold with one eye on the NCAA Tournament bubble; not so much that I thought Texas was destined for it but thinking about how Texas - who is solidly in the field right now - could slide into bubble discussions. Losing to Tennessee would have impacted that slide; let’s say Texas completes the collapse (Texas hit 99% on the #LemonBooty scale in the second half) and Barnes walks out with a win. At that point Texas has 0 non-conference wins worth anything and has an upcoming schedule of @ Tech, vs ISU, vs Kansas, & @ Baylor. If Texas loses to Tennessee there’s a real chance they end that stretch 1-4, 6-6 in conference, and getting above .500 in the Big 12 becomes dicey. A 9-9 Big 12 team with no Q1 non-conference wins is pretty much the definition of a bubble team, no? But a 9-9 Big 12 team with a win against a ranked Tennessee team is probably on the right side of the bubble. That’s what that one missed Volunteers three means for March, the difference between a team battling to stay out of the First Four and a team who is in the field with some room to spare.

In our most recent podcast I mentioned the idea of Texas’ remaining schedule being like a golf score; I have my guess on how things will go - you can go back to a previous recap to see them if you want - and coming into the Tennessee game Texas was 1 over par. They’re back to par, and they’re getting to the part of the schedule where they can make up some strokes if they’re truly figuring things out. I have them going 1-3 in the next four games, so 2-2 or better and they might be raising their profile out of being a 7-9 seed in March.

There are these little signs that maybe Askew is starting to molt his non-shooting skin a little bit. His stroke looks good - it kinda always has - and now he only has to pass up two open looks instead of three before firing. Huzzah! Askew has a higher ceiling than I think even he realizes, and if he can continue to improve his shooting decisions then things start to open up for Texas. He’s a capable ball-handler and Texas needs more of those, particularly ones who aren’t afraid to pull the trigger when they’re open. Askew becoming an apex version of himself would make both this and next year’s teams more interesting.

Tuesday, February 1st: at Texas Tech 8:00 PM CT (ESPN2)

Saturday, February 5th: vs Iowa State 1:00 PM CT (LHN)

NOTE: If you’re subscribing to any streaming services solely to catch LHN games, Iowa State is the last men’s basketball game of the season on Longhorn Network.

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

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