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Texas Basketball 2024-25


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3 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

If Johnson can just get a little more consistent on O(Terry needs to figure out getting him at least SOME open looks) and Mark can lift his game to give us more quality "big guard" minutes we will win 5 more.

The back half of our SEC schedule is also a lot easier.

Both Arkansas games, @ LSU, @ South Carolina, Georgia, and OU are all very winnable games. Those 5 teams are a combined 5-25 in the SEC. 

Edited by Rickylovesweed
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10 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

If Johnson can just get a little more consistent on O(Terry needs to figure out getting him at least SOME open looks) and Mark can lift his game to give us more quality "big guard" minutes we will win 5 more.

He gets a lot of open looks off of cuts to the elbow but he seems to like to pound the shit out of the ball to get into rhythm rather than the quick hitters they set him up for at the elbow. 

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Just now, Catdaddyhorn said:

He gets a lot of open looks off of cuts to the elbow but he seems to like to pound the shit out of the ball to get into rhythm rather than the quick hitters they set him up for at the elbow. 

Yeah, I think this is the key to the season moving forward.

Let the ball stay in Larry's hands. Good things tend to happen. Mark, Pope, and Johnson all like to pound the shit out of the ball but they don't really create for others. All 3 still have the talent to score but the flow of our offense is so much better when Larry is creating good shots for those guys. 

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I have to give it to RT credit for the substitutions. I can’t believe we didn’t have Pope in as he’s probably our 3rd best player. But that lineup with him out kept clawing back into into it, and kept getting defensive stops. The formula seemed to be to get our best defenders on the court and let Tre Johnson take over on offense. It worked!

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this Texas team reminds me of our Tom Penders teams, not in terms of style, but in that we will be (i’m guessing) a 7-10 seed that you don’t want to face on the first weekend. if Tre Johnson goes off there’s very few teams we can’t beat, and with the fact that we have legit 3-4 guys who can go off for an efficient 20+ on any given night, we could be a mediocre regular season team that’s a dangerous tourney team.

fwiw i see us as the inverse of tennessee, a very good regular season team that will get a high seed and then potentially lose early if lanier has an off day or if zeigler gets in foul trouble. imagine if we get a rematch with them in a 2 vs 10 (or 7!) game. wow. the drama would be through the roof. i don’t know if my heart could handle it lol. but that would be the exact type of scenario that could see tennessee go home early/Texas go to the S16. 

Edited by Derka
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10 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

This team is all over the place.  Any of those games can be losses as well

Not wrong. Little more margin for error now with the aggy win. Basically any win over Ole Miss, Miss St, Bama or UK offsets a fuckup against the bottom of the conference - OU, Georgia, SoCar, Arky, LSU. 

At this point, it’s TCB and in. 

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8 hours ago, Derka said:

this Texas team reminds me of our Tom Penders teams, not in terms of style, but in that we will be (i’m guessing) a 7-10 seed that you don’t want to face on the first weekend. if Tre Johnson goes off there’s very few teams we can’t beat, and with the fact that we have legit 3-4 guys who can go off for an efficient 20+ on any given night, we could be a mediocre regular season team that’s a dangerous tourney team.

fwiw i see us as the inverse of tennessee, a very good regular season team that will get a high seed and then potentially lose early if lanier has an off day or if zeigler gets in foul trouble. imagine if we get a rematch with them in a 2 vs 10 (or 7!) game. wow. the drama would be through the roof. i don’t know if my heart could handle it lol. but that would be the exact type of scenario that could see tennessee go home early/Texas go to the S16. 

Another year of being a scrappy 7 seed. Yay

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Updated conference probability distribution based on KenPom single game odds:

image.png.01d74aa081f11d23bc17dc4ae9e11819.png

If we assume that 7-11 gives us a 50% shot to get in the tournament, then our tourney odds are about 80%.  And we have better odds of going 10-8 in conference, which would probably be a 6-7 seed, than we do missing the tourney altogether.

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32 in NET this morning, still so much left to play. 

Currently 3-4 in the SEC.  I do see a path to 9 SEC wins - LSU, arky, @SoCar, @arky, Georgia, OU.  All 5 teams below us in the standings.  6-5 finish would finish our regular season at 20-11 (9-9).  We are in safely in the tournament with that resume, which would include, so far, wins over aggy (NET 12) and Mizzou (NET 24) and very close losses to Tennessee (NET 4) and Auburn (NET 1), as well as a win at OU (NET 47). 

@ Ole Miss (22)
LSU (67)
arky (57)
@ vandy (37)
Bama (7)
UK (14)
@ SoCar (90)
@ arky (57)
Georgia (35)
@ MSST (21)
OU (47)

it is a shame our 2 notable non-conf wins ended up being so bad - Syracuse is 127 and NCST is 119.  Turns out our best non-conf win is Saint Joseph's (NET 86). 
 

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Most actual fans have seen the potential in this group all year. I have been saying for a year that this team looks better constructed than last year’s group. But when you have sub-par coaching you get this type of inconsistency.

We could easily miss the tournament. And we could get a favorable matchup and hit 3s and make the Elite 8. That has been the case all year.

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2 hours ago, HookEm said:

Most actual fans have seen the potential in this group all year. I have been saying for a year that this team looks better constructed than last year’s group. But when you have sub-par coaching you get this type of inconsistency.

We could easily miss the tournament. And we could get a favorable matchup and hit 3s and make the Elite 8. That has been the case all year.

I think RT is an avg college coach and above avg recruiter but, considering the balance of our schedule, I don't see any way we don't get 5 more wins and make the tournament.  the aggy mizzou wins basically put him in the tourney assuming those 2 teams don't collapse.  Huge wins for him and us.

I think 5/6 seed is probably the absolute ceiling for RT at Texas, I just hope CDC is looking for better.  The guys obviously don't quit on him and I'm sure they like him but you need more than that to really be a top team.

 

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16 hours ago, HookEm said:

Most actual fans have seen the potential in this group all year. I have been saying for a year that this team looks better constructed than last year’s group. But when you have sub-par coaching you get this type of inconsistency.

We could easily miss the tournament. And we could get a favorable matchup and hit 3s and make the Elite 8. That has been the case all year.

It depends on what you mean when you say better constructed than last year. This year's interior play wouldn't be as big of a drawback if we were still in the big 12 (that league is down in this area as well), but in this year's SEC our interior play is a major deficiency. However, the overall guard/wing play is certainly much better than last year's. 

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I don’t have a good feeling about the Ole Miss game. I think Beard is going to intentionally throw the game to give RT another full year or possibly an extension. Screwing the Longhorn Nation again… Beard is weighing his options of what hurts us more a double digit win or getting beat by his understudy by two points at the buzzer. 

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7 minutes ago, TejasPedro said:

I don’t have a good feeling about the Ole Miss game. I think Beard is going to intentionally throw the game to give RT another full year or possibly an extension. Screwing the Longhorn Nation again… Beard is weighing his options of what hurts us more a double digit win or getting beat by his understudy by two points at the buzzer. 

lolwut?

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4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

lolwut?

 

2 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Silly season.  That is so stupid

The idea that coaches lose intentionally to force a school to keep a bad coach is just regarded.

Right???

Knowing Beard's personality, he'll want to beat Texas by as many points as possible and make us rue the day we fired him.

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16 hours ago, HookEm said:

Most actual fans have seen the potential in this group all year. I have been saying for a year that this team looks better constructed than last year’s group. But when you have sub-par coaching you get this type of inconsistency.

We could easily miss the tournament. And we could get a favorable matchup and hit 3s and make the Elite 8. That has been the case all year.

I think last year’s team and this years were both poorly constructed.  Both needed better big men.  To go into SEC play without better than Shedrick was malpractice.  We get pushed around down low too much and suffer when it comes to rebounding. 

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48 minutes ago, Catdaddyhorn said:

It depends on what you mean when you say better constructed than last year.

I hated the way we were built last year.

  • Our two starting guards were 5'10, and neither was really a true point guard.  We had to keep the ball in Abmas' hands which kept him from really using his strengths off the ball. And bigger guards would abuse them.
  • Horton was a one-dimensional shoot first gunner, who actually wasn't even good at that.  Bro shot 39% from the field. Oof. And he was also a horrible defender and bad FT shooter.
  • Mitchell was a good defender and rebounder, but had zero offensive game outside of dunking in transition. And he was a terrible FT shooter.  
  • Brock Cunningham had no ability to score outside of spot-up 3s. And every other part of his game regressed.
  • Dylan Disu is the focal point of the team, but was extremely soft and constantly drifted out to the perimeter.  He was constantly in foul trouble
  • Shedrick was hurt all year and also soft AF
  • Weaver was a nice surprise, but his game is also pretty poor outside of his transition game.

So bottom line, we were small and soft AF, and the team wasn't constructed in a way to make up for the deficiencies of our star players.  If we had a big, defense first guard that would have helped all of Abmas issues.  And if we would have had a rim protector / rebounder, that would have let Disu float around in and out of the paint, and not get into constant foul trouble.  Imagine how easy it was to defend this lineup:  Abmas + Hunter + Brock + Mitchell + Disu.  

This year, we have a team full of lengthy guards and forwards.  In just about every lineup we use, we have multiple players who can create off the dribble.  Six of our top-7 players shoot over 35% from 3.  Tre Johnson, Kaluma, Pope and Mark can all score over 30 points.  This SHOULD be a much better team defensively. And they should be much harder to stop when we have the ball.

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1 hour ago, TejasPedro said:

I don’t have a good feeling about the Ole Miss game. I think Beard is going to intentionally throw the game to give RT another full year or possibly an extension. Screwing the Longhorn Nation again… Beard is weighing his options of what hurts us more a double digit win or getting beat by his understudy by two points at the buzzer. 

Terry won't be here next year.  

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4 hours ago, HookEm said:

I hated the way we were built last year.

  • Our two starting guards were 5'10, and neither was really a true point guard.  We had to keep the ball in Abmas' hands which kept him from really using his strengths off the ball. And bigger guards would abuse them.
  • Horton was a one-dimensional shoot first gunner, who actually wasn't even good at that.  Bro shot 39% from the field. Oof. And he was also a horrible defender and bad FT shooter.
  • Mitchell was a good defender and rebounder, but had zero offensive game outside of dunking in transition. And he was a terrible FT shooter.  
  • Brock Cunningham had no ability to score outside of spot-up 3s. And every other part of his game regressed.
  • Dylan Disu is the focal point of the team, but was extremely soft and constantly drifted out to the perimeter.  He was constantly in foul trouble
  • Shedrick was hurt all year and also soft AF
  • Weaver was a nice surprise, but his game is also pretty poor outside of his transition game.

So bottom line, we were small and soft AF, and the team wasn't constructed in a way to make up for the deficiencies of our star players.  If we had a big, defense first guard that would have helped all of Abmas issues.  And if we would have had a rim protector / rebounder, that would have let Disu float around in and out of the paint, and not get into constant foul trouble.  Imagine how easy it was to defend this lineup:  Abmas + Hunter + Brock + Mitchell + Disu.  

This year, we have a team full of lengthy guards and forwards.  In just about every lineup we use, we have multiple players who can create off the dribble.  Six of our top-7 players shoot over 35% from 3.  Tre Johnson, Kaluma, Pope and Mark can all score over 30 points.  This SHOULD be a much better team defensively. And they should be much harder to stop when we have the ball.

Well, last year's team was supposed to have a 6'5" pg and a 6'8" wing to play alongside those short guards, but alas they changed their mind late in the process. 

Edited by Catdaddyhorn
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Just took a look at Lunardi’s updated bracketology, and man I get it’s early but WTF. Updated as of this morning: Texas playing UCF in the play-in as a 12 to then play 5 seed Arizona. He’s got Michigan at a 5 seed, which to me Texas with one result flipped (Ohio State) has pretty much the same resume as Michigan. Bullshit.

Lesson learned: don’t peep bracketology until 3rd week of Feb.

Let’s take care of business boys. We pull off an upset tomorrow night and we’re looking at 3 straight wins against quad 1 ranked opponents, and 2 relatively easy games afterward that could put us at 6-4 in conference looking at not just making the tournament, but with a strong finish, 6 seed. 

Here’s hoping Kaluma’s knee better ASAP. 

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2 minutes ago, I Plead Da Fif said:

Just took a look at Lunardi’s updated bracketology, and man I get it’s early but WTF. Updated as of this morning: Texas playing UCF in the play-in as a 12 to then play 5 seed Arizona. He’s got Michigan at a 5 seed, which to me Texas with one result flipped (Ohio State) has pretty much the same resume as Michigan. Bullshit.

 

Michigan's NET ranking is 11 spots higher than us (20 vs 31).   OOC win over Xavier (NET 55) is way better than our best non-conf win (NET 86 St. Joseph's).  NET also likes their road wins @ Wisconsin (NET 18) and @ UCLA (NET 33).  We do not really have comparable road wins at the moment.

They scheduled much harder than us and are being rewarded for it (SOS 14, per Massey, compared to 44 for us). 

We can start turning that resume around tomorrow by winning some road games, i.e., @ Ole Miss (NET 22) and later @ MSST (NET 21). Our 2 highest NET games left are at home - Alabama (NET 7) and UK (NET 16). 

Also unless you are a time traveler, they haven't played Ohio State yet (2/16). 

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3 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Also unless you are a time traveler, they haven't played Ohio State yet (2/16). 

Was talking about our loss to Ohio State.

They also have a bad loss recently to Minnesota in conference. Texas’s bad losses are Ohio State (first game of the year) and UF blowout. UM similarly was blown out by Purdue.

You state a great case as to why Michigan should be rated higher than us. My point was that if we don’t lose to Ohio State who has proven to be a very average team, we’re not that different in resume and the 7 seed difference is not deserved. The 2 away wins they have in conference for teams that aren’t shit are definitely something we’re lacking in at this point. No dispute there.

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i honestly neither worry about nor care about seeding* in general. for me it’s all about two things: 1)are you legit, and 2)how are you playing down the stretch.

1)if you’re not a legit team (legit meaning you have an identity as a team, a formula for winning games, and a track record of beating good teams), which this year’s Texas team is not, then you’re just hoping for a good matchup and a good shooting day, and that’s as much as you can hope for. it can get you 2-3 wins, but likely no more.

2)we’ve seen more and more recently that teams that finish their conference season strong are tending to be the teams that go the furthest, even if their overall resume or rankings aren’t off the charts.

these things matter so much more to me than seeding does, so i just don’t even follow any of the projections. seeding for me mostly only matters when getting a high seed can get you a couple of tourney games close to home. other than that it doesn’t matter much imo.

 

 

*2011 Texas being the exception. i will never get over that tournament. one of the biggest gut punches of my sports-following life. Texas finishes the regular season #4 in kenpom and gets a 4 seed. like how? not only that, we draw oakland, a basketball school that had the #7 offense in kenpom and was coming into the tourney 19-1 in their last 20 (Texas was a popular upset pick), followed by Derrick Williams’s Zona team in the round of 32. and of course we all know what happened after that. that shit was a crime. like i said, im still not over it. never will be.

Edited by Derka
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1 minute ago, Derka said:

2)we’ve seen more and more recently that teams that finish their conference season strong are tending to be the teams that go the furthest, even if their overall resume or rankings isn’t off the charts.

 

Sadly, we have a soft end of season schedule where we should win 4 of our last 5, all against the worst teams in the SEC.  Which is preceded by ranked Vandy, Alabama, UK lol 

It will definitely be an illusion when/if we finish by winning 4 of our last 5, with how bad those teams are. It is not a sign of strength headed into the SEC/NCAA tournaments. 

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21 minutes ago, Derka said:

i honestly neither worry about nor care about seeding* (in general). for me it’s all about two things: 1)are you legit, and 2)how are you playing down the stretch.

*2011 Texas being the exception. i will never get over that tournament. one of the biggest gut punches of my sports following life. Texas finishes the regular season #4 in kenpom and gets a 4 seed. not only that, we draw oakland, a basketball school that had the #7 offense in kenpom and was coming into the tourney 19-1 in their last 20 (Texas was a popular upset pick), followed by Derrick Williams’s Zona team in the round of 32. and of course we all know what happened after that. that shit was a crime. like i said, im still not over it. never will be.

Completely agree with points 1 and 2, but your take is also seeding doesn’t matter until it does. So seeding matters, just not as much as how well your team is playing down the stretch. Our identity is a collection of scorers who don’t really play cohesively well and has started to play good d, but can’t rebound. 

Will be very interesting to see how we finish. As JS alluded to, down the stretch schedule is much easier than first 4 games in conference, but we need to beat Vandy or Miss St away and upset one of Bama or UK and win the games we’re supposed to win to gain momentum heading into the SEC tournament. 2 wins in the SEC tournament with a strong finish in conference should put us in that 5-7 range with some confidence of being a second weekend team.

Will we be better with Chendall Weaver back on the floor? We need the rebounding help and he’s a beast on that front and our best defender, but whose minutes will he take? Kent’s? Larry has been looking good lately as a distributor and on ball defender. I don’t think we sacrifice Pope’s minutes much either with his scoring potential. 

Excited to see if RT can earn his money and get the most out of our iso ball team. Kaluma, Pope, Mark, and Johnson are as good of a set of scorers as we’ve had since our elite 8 underachieving run in RT’s roster inheriting year, and all are experienced, Johnson excepted.

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1 hour ago, Derka said:

*2011 Texas being the exception. i will never get over that tournament. one of the biggest gut punches of my sports-following life. Texas finishes the regular season #4 in kenpom and gets a 4 seed. like how? not only that, we draw oakland, a basketball school that had the #7 offense in kenpom and was coming into the tourney 19-1 in their last 20 (Texas was a popular upset pick), followed by Derrick Williams’s Zona team in the round of 32. and of course we all know what happened after that. that shit was a crime. like i said, im still not over it. never will be.

That shit fucking gutted me, dude. It's up there with '08 Tech for me. That may have been the best team Barnes had and they lost a game they probably win 8 times out of 10. 

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yep, 2008 tech is always what i equate that loss to as well. the 2006 OT loss to LSU in the E8 which he win 95/100 times doesn’t even come close. from the seeding to being robbed of an incredible comeback win and all time tourney performance by JB, that was the worst Texas Basketball loss of my life. 

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Just now, Derka said:

yep, 2008 tech is always what i equate that loss to as well. the 2006 OT loss to LSU in the E8 which he win 95/100 times doesn’t even come close. from the seeding to being robbed of an incredible comeback win and all time tourney performance by JB, that was the worst Texas Basketball loss of my life. 

'06 was too close to the FF run. No one was worried about it - and we had just won a fucking national title in football. We thought Barnes would run it forever.

Then we went to the EE again in '08 and didn't make it, then had the 2 football tragedies, then FINALLY got back in '11 and that shit happened.

Very "sum of its parts" loss.

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My ranking of painful losses, all in the NCAA tourney:

  • 2021 - ACU - Absolutely horrendous loss as a 3 seed. F this loss. F Shaka.  Still pissed.
  • 2011 - Arizona - We were a legit title contender and got absolutely robbed
  • 2023 - Miami - FT margin of 32-15. Cost us a shot at a Final Four in Houston
  • 2008 - Memphis - Blowout loss in the Elite 8 to #1 Memphis showed how far we were from being elite
  • 2006 - LSU - Overtime loss in the Elite 8 as a 2-seed to 4-seed LSU cost us a Final Four
  • 2022 - Purdue - They mauled us while the FT margin was 46-12. Holy hell.
  • 2016 - Northern Iowa - Half court buzzer beater they showed over and over
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3 minutes ago, HookEm said:

2023 - Miami - FT margin of 32-15. Cost us a shot at a Final Four in Houston

That team deserved so much better than a Disu tournament injury, Carr hobbled mid-game and then Brock’s box out foul 

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