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There’s a resurgence occurring in the halls of the Erwin Center in Austin, and it’s not just Shaka Smart’s hair follicles working overtime.
The Longhorns were a loss to No. 12 Villanova away from a 4-0 week that would have featured two wins against ranked opponents, but they’ll have to settle for a 3-1 showing and the highly coveted Titus & Tate Maui bump.
When the AP Poll comes out on Monday, the Longhorns will surely climb from last week’s No. 17 ranking towards the top 10. While it’s still early in the season, there’s reason to believe that Shaka might have his best team yet. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Texas was on the wrong side of the bubble before the last season’s abrupt end, which would have been the second straight year that the Longhorns missed out on the NCAA Tournament and the third time in Smart’s short five-year stint. That makes for a steep drop off for a program that missed the tournament only once (2013) under Rick Barnes. So it’s not unreasonable to say that Shaka’s seat wasn’t necessarily hot, but the burner was certainly on and simmering at low heat. After all, a 94-79 (54.3%) overall record and 40-50 (44.4%) is not up to par with the expectations at a job like Texas.
So what changed?
For one, Shaka finally has a cohesive roster that brought back a lot of its key pieces. According to KenPom, Texas’s roster continuity of 73.9% ranks 12th in the nation, and it’s the highest mark in that metric that Smart has had during his six seasons. The healthy mix of upperclassmen and young, developing blue-chip talent gives the Longhorns a deep roster that has a chance to be among the Big 12’s best.
The most striking thing about how good Texas has looked early on is just how suffocating they are on the defensive side of the ball. It’s not the famous Havoc defense that Smart utilized at VCU, but a flurry of long, athletic defenders that can pressure opponents anywhere on the court has made it a nightmare to score on.
Through Sunday, Texas has the No. 2 defense on KenPom, second only to Chris Beard’s Texas Tech squad. Their ability to virtually take away the three-point line has given opponents fits so far this season. Matt Coleman and Courtney Ramey gave Indiana’s guards fits in their Maui Invitational matchup, holding the Hoosiers to just 2-10 shooting from deep that ultimately led to the lowest point total of Archie Miller’s tenure. Against North Carolina, the Longhorns only allowed UNC to go 1-9 from deep, and even Villanova struggled with a 6-19 showing on Sunday. Overall, Texas has limited its opponents to just 23.1% shooting from behind the arc, which ranks 25th nationally.
But let’s go ahead and just ignore the numbers for a second and talk about the Eye Test (which is going to keep popping up as a significant piece of the NCAA Tournament selection process).
Texas looks damn good!
Matt Coleman is playing exactly like what a coach looks for in his senior point guard. He sets the tone on both ends and clearly has the cajones to take matters into his own hands when it matters most.
Texas’s gaggle of lanky armed forwards look like they’re trying to take someone’s head off every time they go to the hoop. Jericho Sims, Kai Jones, and Greg Brown are all threats to put someone on a poster the second they set foot in the paint. Courtney Ramey has been a great running mate alongside Coleman so far, and Andrew Jones remains one of the best stories in the sport as he continues his career after his bout with leukemia last year.
There’s just this in-your-face swagger that the Longhorns have that’s allowed them to set the tone and dictate the game to be played on their terms.
The Big 12 is going to be a gauntlet this year, and it’s not out of the question that Texas can simultaneously be both a top 10 team nationally and the 4th best team in the conference. As long as the season ends in an NCAA Tournament birth that gets out of the First Round at minimum, Shaka should be safe.
Texas is a GREAT job — one of the best, actually — for a coach to win big at. Few places can match the resources, talent pool, and manageable expectations at a football like Texas. With Tom Herman seeming like he’s soon to be out as Texas’s head football coach, Shaka has a prime opportunity to seize the moment and re-establish himself as The Guy in Austin.
All he has to do is win, and this rendition of the Longhorns should be able to do just that.
Texas — much like Shaka’s hair — is very much back.
Espresso Shots
Choose your fighter: Russian Oil Oligarch Frank Martin or Malcolm Gladwell cosplayer Shaka Smart.
Howard’s Makur Maker has been shut down indefinitely with a groin injury. Carron Philips wrote an interesting piece on why Maker’s experience at Howard was doomed from the start. It’s worth a read.
Nothing works college basketball fans into a tizzy like Bill Walton Discourse, especially during Maui* week. There’s no room for nuance or in-between stances when it comes to the discussion around Walton’s antics and approach to broadcasting. You either appreciate the insanity of Walton’s diatribes and find his approach to calling a game as a nice change of pace from the traditional format of a color commentator, or you want him imprisoned for 25 to life for failing to meet the standard of commentary of other They Just Gotta Make Shots analysts. It’s just sports. Live a little.
Luka Garza outscored Western Illinois in the first half of Thursday’s game, 30-26. It’s the second time that Garza has outscored Iowa’s opponent in the opening 20 after outscoring Southern 36-35 on November 27. Through three games, Garza is putting up 34.0 PPG, 9.7 RPG, 2.7 BPG on 76.0/62.5/80.8 percent shooting splits in just 26.0 MPG. Not bad, but I don’t think we can consider him the National Player of the Year frontrunner until his field goal percentage hits 77 percent.
Technical fouls that are called after a player “hangs” on the rim after a dunk remain one of the lamest things in the sport. Especially when it’s after a dunk like Christian Braun’s against Kentucky. I mean COME ON.
And this one on Stanford’s Zaire Williams is a classic from TV Teddy.
Let the kids play.
Kentucky is 1-3 for the first time since 2000-01. The Wildcats can’t shoot, they can’t stop turning the ball over, and there are just too many young pieces that haven’t found their footing, especially after a disjointed offseason that is showing its impact early on all over college basketball. It’s still too early to smash the panic button just yet given Cal’s track record of having his teams improve over the course of the season, but the early returns are not promising.
Every game that gets canceled due to Covid obviously sucks, but ESPECIALLY when it’s a game that was supposed to feature the top two teams in the country like Saturday’s Gonzaga-Baylor tilt was supposed to. As Rob Dauster wrote in his newsletter, it was the right thing to do, as painful as it is. Gonzaga has since shut down its program until December 14, but Iowa is still on the docket on December 19. Is anyone opposed to Gonzaga and Baylor setting something up for the week of Christmas if it can be pulled off safely?
Is your favorite team’s offense sputtering? Consider getting Greenville, a D-III school in Illinois, on the schedule.
Purdue’s 7’4” freshman Zach Edey is still the dunk leader through two weeks, having flushed on 12-14 so far this year. Western Kentucky’s Charles Bassey is hot on his heels though with 11. Five players, including the aforementioned Kai Jones of Texas, have nine dunks.
One interesting thing to watch as conference play rolls around is how teams adjust when facing an opponent multiple times in one weekend. Take Southern Utah and Montana for example. Southern Utah hit a last-second free throw on Thursday to give the Thunderbirds the win, and on Saturday, Montana failed to rectify that issue and lost in the same manner. Fix the scouting report!
The most exciting finish of the weekend came after Marquette’s Justin Lewis tipped in a missed free throw at the horn to topple in-state rival Wisconsin.
The best part? Marquette might have gotten a liiiiiiiiiitle bit of home cooking.
A good recipe for winning a college basketball game is to not allow a 40-0 run. Ohio did just that against Cleveland State, which set a D-I record for the most lopsided run between D-I opponents.
See you next Monday. Enjoy the hoops.
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