Coleman’s offense sparks much-needed win
22-point outing gets Longhorns back on track
AUSTIN — Matt Coleman got a step on Purdue guard and rivalfor-a-night Carsen Edwards, caught the inbounds pass from teammate Courtney Ramey, and scooped in a layup at the rim.
He grinned at his Boilermaker counterpart and backpedaled toward the defensive end, basking in their fiery game of one-upmanship. Edwards responded by sinking a deep 3-pointer as Coleman hounded him, then turned a steal into a fast-break layup.
Coleman wasn’t smiling anymore. Now he was simmering, determined to win the war after losing a few too many battles.
Edwards erupted for 40 points — 28 in the second half — on 15of-26 shooting, but Coleman was the one who swaggered to his locker room beaming after Texas (6-3) defeated Purdue (6-4), 72-68, Sunday at the Erwin Center.
“We just preached this week, just hoop,” Coleman said after scoring a season-high 22 points on 7-of-11 shooting. “Don’t think about it, don’t be mechanical.
“Trying to play the right way sometimes can cause you to become robotic and you just forget you’re playing the game that you love so you’ve just got to hoop and have fun with it. That’s what we did.”
Texas needed Sunday to go well. After three straight losses, the last two at home to Radford and VCU, it had to course correct before veering past the point of no return.
Coleman’s woes during those distressing defeats were emblematic of the team’s struggles since returning from a Thanksgiving tournament in Las Vegas.
He scored just 16 combined points against Radford and VCU, games Texas lost by a combined four points. Those joyless outings took a toll on Coleman and his teammates.
“It’s huge,” Texas coach Shaka Smart said of Coleman’s performance. “Because he’s a better player than how he’s played. And he’s the first guy to be ex-tremely hard on himself.
“I think early in the season he had some tough games and it kind of snowballed on him a little bit because he was thinking too much. I told him to stop thinking so much, go play and attack and if you have an open shot take it, be aggressive. He did a nice job of that.”
Coleman scored 11 points over the game’s final six minutes, outpacing Edwards’ six points as the rest of the Boilermakers struggled to produce against the Longhorns’ swarming defense.
That was the difference in a tussle that remained within five points over the final eight minutes.
Senior guard Kerwin Roach emerged as the Longhorns’ other offensive catalyst after an abysmal three-game shooting stretch (7of-37).
After Roach ignored or overlooked a few prime driving lanes early in the game, Smart pulled him aside. If Texas was going to snap out of this slump, it needed the best version of Roach, and it didn’t look like the passive imposter who passed up opportunities to attack.
“We had a conversation about seven or eight minutes into the game,” Smart said. “It was about that, but it was about more than that. It was about his whole mentality and the way it had to be. I thought he did a really good job taking in that feedback and go-ing and playing the right way.”
Roach scored 10 points on 2of-6 shooting, but made a larger impact by dishing out five assists and making sure the offense didn’t stagnate.
With about 2 and a half minutes remaining and Texas holding onto a 64-62 lead, Roach cut across the lane and flipped a pass to Coleman in the right corner. His open 3-pointer fell, sucking the air out of a sizeable and rowdy cluster of Purdue fans who made the trip to Austin.
Purdue still had a chance to send Texas to its fourth straight defeat, but Smart was hellbent on making anyone but Edwards deliver that final blow.
On Purdue’s penultimate possession, Texas sent a double team at Edwards and forced him to pass. The ball wound up in the hands of freshman Aaron Wheeler, who promptly lost it out of bounds.
“We knew at some point in the game we wanted to blitz him,” Smart said of Edwards, the third visiting player to score at least 40 in the Erwin Center. “That was a key possession for us and (guard Elijah Mitrou-Long) did a great job because normally when we blitz it’s one of our big guys. They set a screen with his man and he did a great job jumping out and it forced someone else to make a play.”
The Texas that beat Purdue didn’t exactly resemble the version that downed No. 7 North Carolina in Las Vegas, but it at least resembled a team once again enjoying itself. And that’s in large part thanks to Coleman.
“I think when you lose yourself in the moment you just have fun,” Coleman said. “And I forget that sometimes. That’s when I’m at my best, just having fun and smiling and making sure my other guys are good. You can’t forget why you’re here and what you do best.”