Second-half cold snap ices Longhorns
0-for-11 stretch, late miscues prove too much to overcome
Few teams as talented as Texas also can make putting the ball in the hoop look as difficult as solving some convoluted quantum mechanics equation.
And during one debilitating stretch in Saturday’s 68-59 loss to No. 18 Texas Tech (15-8, 7-7 Big 12) at United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, it seemed like the 14th-ranked Longhorns might never make a shot again.
Texas (14-7, 8-6) had done well to tie the game just before the half. Senior guard Matt Coleman exploded to the rim for a rare dunk, then buried a step-back 3 before the buzzer to knot the game at 33-33.
But Texas opened the second half by missing its first 11 shots from the field. Able to muster just six points from the free-throw line during that nine-minute nightmare, the Longhorns looked to the scoreboard and saw that the tie had mushroomed into a 13point deficit.
“I thought the whole game we were forcing some shots before we needed to,” Texas coach Shaka Smart said. “We were not in the flow that we needed to be. Obviously, it caught up with us in the second half with the way we shot.”
Meanwhile, Texas stopped pounding it in the paint against the undersized Red Raiders.
Texas big Jericho Sims finished inside with ease in the first half when he got touches, throwing down a pair of dunks and powering through for a layup. Battering ram swingman Brock Cunningham was slashing and drawing fouls. Sophomore Kai Jones used his springs and wings for explosive finishes inside.
Texas shot 50 percent in that first half, with 14 of 24 field goal attempts coming from inside the arc. But in the first nine minutes of the second half, Texas launched seven 3s and attempted only two layups. And Tech turned those misses into scoring opportunities, including a few nasty dunks by sophomore guard Terrence Shannon (11 points).
“I thought throughout the game, when we did look to throw it up to our bigger guys, we had some advantages,” Smart said. “Our guards have really helped us win a lot of big games and made some of those shots (in the past). But I’m sure we will look at the tape, and there’s quite a few that we’ll pull off and say, ‘We didn’t need that shot with 15 seconds on the shot clock.’
“I thought our level of willingness to keep moving and keep attacking was not good enough today.”
But Tech’s own offensive struggles allowed the Longhorns to scrape back in.
Tech went five minutes without a field goal midway through the second half, and Texas finally rediscovered its advantage inside. After Cunningham snapped the cold spell with a corner 3, Sims and Jones started bullying in the paint again
Guard Courtney Ramey set up Sims for a slam, then soared in front of a pass for a steal that set up a 3-pointer from redshirt junior guard Andrew Jones. With 3:22 remaining, Texas was within three points.
It was a familiar position for this team, which on Tuesday overcame a double-digit deficit to defeat No. 17 Kansas in overtime.
“I thought we had such good poise the other night against Kansas, and the
comeback today was good — the guys really battled and fought,” Smart said. “But for parts of the game today, we kind of got out of sorts on the stuff that we needed to do. So that’s something that we need to coach and our guys need to understand it’s who we have to be if we want to win.”
But Andrew Jones’ jumper was the final field goal Texas made.
Tech got a scoring boost
from guard Mac McClung (16 points), who drew a dubious three-shot foul late in the game that burned some of Texas’ newfound momentum. And the Red Raiders hit their free throws down the stretch, finishing 20 for 26 from the line.
The Longhorns blundered their final chances to steal a win.
Ramey was short on a point-blank layup. Coleman lost control of the ball on a drive. Kai Jones bricked a contested 3 early in the shot clock.
In the end, Texas wasn’t as connected as Tech. It wasn’t as desperate. And that’s no recipe for winning a game in Lubbock.
Neither are these offensive numbers: 35 percent from the field and 30 percent from 3-point range. Only Sims (11 points) and Coleman (10) reached double figures.
“They played like a team that truly had the gift of desperation,” Smart said. “Did we have that today? I mean it’s not, it’s on a continuum, so it’s not like you do or you don’t. But I didn’t think we had it well enough today.”