Texas tries to regroup against Iowa State after a 35-point loss at West Virginia.
AUSTIN — Imagine yourself as a first-grader settling in for math class.
Simple fractions are about as far as the teacher has taken you so far. But today, out of nowhere, the instructor drops an absurdly thick trigonometry book on your classroom chair-and-desk combo, causing everything — including you — to rattle for a few seconds.
After much effort, you finally flick through to page 300 as instructed. Might as well be an indecipherable alien language. These problems, you consider, are impossible.
Now imagine Texas as the student and offense as that dense book. That illustrates how difficult things have been for the Longhorns at times this season.
Capable for stretches
It has become common for coach Shaka Smart’s team to forget how to play offense for an extended stretch, transforming the game’s tenor. It is like clockwork, only the doomsday dials are turning toward UT’s demise.
Saturday’s 86-51 meltdown against sixth-ranked West Virginia was just the latest instance. The outline looked familiar. And inevitable.
Texas (12-7, 3-4 Big 12) handled the dogged Mountaineers press well initially and staked a 20-17 lead about 12 minutes in. Then the freeze set in.
West Virginia closed the half on a 15-2 run, while UT missed nine consecutive shots from the field and lost battle after battle under the rim. Freshman point guard Matt Coleman — his performance is typically a good gauge of the Longhorns’ overall offensive output — was outplayed and outmuscled by senior Jevon Carter, who finished with 22 points and eight assists to Coleman’s four and one.
In the second half, the Mountaineers shot 66 percent from the field and 78 percent from deep; UT shot 34 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Smart’s bunch endured similar stretches in losses to Baylor and Oklahoma State.
“I thought West Virginia’s spirit and fight and energy was just far superior,” Smart said after the 35-point loss — the most lopsided of his career. “Just not enough toughness to take away what they wanted to do. We knew they were going to be extremely motivated and aggressive coming off their last couple games and we didn’t stand up to them.”
The good news: Texas plays Monday night at the Erwin Center, where it recently defeated No. 16 TCU and No. 8 Texas Tech. The bad news: The Longhorns’ oppponent is Iowa State (11-7, 2-5), which is coming off a confidence-boosting shellacking of the Raiders.
Here’s the ugly: Texas ranks last among Big 12 teams in scoring average, free-throw percentage, 3-point percentage and assists. It is the only conference school that averages more turnovers than assists.
The Longhorns don’t need to transform into Kansas to be successful. Their defense is potent enough that even a league-average offense would situate them as a group to avoid come March. That’s not the case, and the road ahead is formidable.
Rugged conference
Texas required overtime in Ames on Jan. 1 to overcome Iowa State. At the time, it looked like the Cyclones would be relegated to the bottom of what is arguably the nation’s most unforgiving conference. But as each of these 10 teams have displayed, there is no weak link.
As this season trudges on, UT is in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament in consecutive years for the first time since a nine-year drought from 1980-88.
For Smart and the Horns, there’s only one way to avoid that: solve the problem.