Horns flex defensive muscles
Aggressiveness helps make up for 7-minute scoring drought in 2nd half
Earlier this week, Texas senior forward Timmy Allen, one of the program’s seven ballyhooed offseason transfers, admitted the 17th-ranked Longhorns hadn’t played anywhere near their potential this season.
That remains true even after Texas (8-2) throttled Stanford’s offense Sunday in a 60-53 win in the inaugural Pac-12 Coast-to-Coast Challenge at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“Victory is gonna normally favor the more aggressive team, and we were the more aggressive team, I think, for most of the game,” Texas coach Chris Beard told Longhorn IMG Radio Network’s Craig Way afterward. “The other side of that coin though, victory is gonna favor the team that makes the fewest mistakes. And we continue to be a team that makes a lot of mistakes. So we’re a work in progress.
“But guys were dialed in, played extremely hard. Our defense carried us today.”
This game’s energy stood in stark contrast to the frenetic, intoxicating pace of the Sin City strip the 5-year-old arena occupies.
Texas shot 42.9 percent from the field and 4-for-16 from deep, and the Longhorns went almost seven full minutes late in the second half without scoring. Stanford (6-4) shot 41.7 percent, committed 22 turnovers, and endured several meandering scoreless stretches of its own.
The Longhorns’ defense did in fact lift them to victory, their first over a major opponent this season after road losses to No. 1 Gonzaga and No. 23 Seton Hall. The addition of junior forward Dylan Disu helped tremendously in that regard, especially in the paint.
Texas’ Achilles heel coming into this game was no secret. Seton Hall pummeled Texas inside with its array of bigs. And Gonzaga forward Drew Timme tormented the Longhorns in the post by dipping into a bag deeper than Kris Kringle’s.
And if Stanford was going to beat Texas, it was going to hit the glass hard and try to feast in the post. That strategy worked at first as the Cardinal built a 12-6 rebounding edge, creating second chances for itself with determined offensive glass-cleaning.
But Texas hardened after those opening 10 minutes, outrebounding Stanford 23-21 over the game’s final 30 minutes. The 6-foot-9 Disu grabbed four boards (two offensive) to go along with 11 points on 5-of-7 shooting in just 16 minutes.
“Whenever I’m playing, I really don’t think about my knee — like I’m not thinking about it at all,” said Disu, who remained on a minutes restriction in his second game back after offseason knee surgery. “I feel comfortable with the work I’ve done so far this summer and during the season in getting back to this point. It’s just about just getting my wind and getting more comfortable on the court and getting a rhythm.”
Disu was also one of three Longhorns in double figures, joining sixth-year guard Andrew Jones (13 points) and Allen (11). Those three also grabbed 13 of
Texas’ 29 rebounds and accounted for six of its eight steals.
All those steals and deflections are becoming a trend for Texas, which is now tied with LSU for the best scoring defense in Division I. The Longhorns are holding opposing teams to 53.5 points per game, and Stanford on Sunday became the eighth opponent that failed to register at least 60 points against the Longhorns’ array of rangy
and relentless defenders.
But Texas’ offense remains messy and unpredictable.
The Longhorns surged to an 18-point lead in the second half thanks to a 13-0 run built on slick feeds, strong interior finishes and quality outlet passes. Then the well dried up — Texas went scoreless from the 10:25 mark to the 3:29 mark as Stanford whittled its deficit to eight.
“We got to make some shots at some point,” Beard said. “I think from where I’m sitting, we’re always looking at shot selection. But I would say today with my naked eye, before we watch the film, we took 16 3-point shots today, and I thought 11 or 12 were the exact shots that we want to take. So we’ll just stay the course. We got some good shooters; I believe in these guys. We’ll just have to keep working.”
Texas played well enough to escape Vegas with a quality win. But as Beard and Allen can attest, the Longhorns haven’t come close to scratching their ceiling yet.