Do Not Taunt Balloon Snake

Caution: Balloon Snake may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds

It is easy to become cynical about college sports; with the proliferation of NIL, the transfer portal, and the business side of ‘amateur’ athletics coming to the forefront in ways that used to be whispered as far away from the NCAA’s ears as possible, more of the discourse around college athletics sounds like a cacophony of amateur GMs screaming about their spreadsheets than at any time in the past. There is a commodification of the college sport that turns a lot of us into tech bros pitching our app idea to Kevin Hart on Shark Tank; excitement over the ROI on a small forward from Dayton and how it projects forward to wins. (Yes, I know: physician, heal thyself.) But every once in awhile, something happens that reminds us of the romanticism attached to this stupid game. Which brings me to Balloon Snake.

All Hail Balloon Snake

For those of you who weren’t watching the game live - and given the demographics of my Substack following, a Wednesday 9 PM Central tip probably means most of you understandably went to bed at halftime - there came a point in the second half when Texas was up by 20+ and the Oklahoma fans who hadn’t yet left were looking for something to do that didn’t involve throwing refuse at Porter Moser. The arena had passed out a metric ton of skinny balloons and somebody (it had to be students) thought to themselves “what if we tied them all together”. It probably started with a handful from one section, but pretty quickly it started growing into a multi-section snake and the crowd just kept handing this guy balloons, and this balloon savant/local hero/guy who gets to the second round of America’s Got Talent before being booted because America realized he had just that one talent…just kept tying them together.

Some Heroes Wear Oddly Specific Overalls

His form was impeccable, like a 3rd generation birthday clown who thought he had the night off, but was pressed into duty until the snake reached all the goddamn way around the arena. And I don’t mean the first row, it went all the goddamn way around the goddamn upper deck.

While this was happening, Oklahoma - who up until this point appeared to be more interested in studying for mid-terms than scoring points on a basketball court against their chief rival - woke the hell up. Clearly inspired by Balloon Snake, the Sooners went on a 23-3 run that turned the game from a 53-30 rout to a burnt-orange-butthole-clenching 56-53 contest, all the while their fans were having the time of their lives celebrating what was now a fully-connected Balloon Ouroboros. It was all incredibly stupid, but more importantly it was all incredible.

Look, I always want Oklahoma to lose in every sporting event, but if they had pulled off this comeback they might have had a memory for generations. Their fans might have been plausibly able to type the sentence "our arena-length balloon ouroboros got a rival coach fired" a decade from now and other humans would nod in understanding at every word in that sentence. In 2027, Sam Godwin could tell the story of The Balloon Snake Game as part of the closing pitch to customers looking to buy a used Hyundai at Tulsa Godwin Sedan Emporium. If we can beat Texas thanks to Balloon Snake, I can find you 15% off our tint package. It’s all delightful; how can you not love college sports?

But they broke Balloon Snake and lost their magical talisman, rendering the power of Balloon Snake inert. Jordan Pope might have torn the elastic reptile with his gesticulations while he was single-handedly keeping Texas’ season afloat, we’ll never know for sure. We do know that Texas has won 8 straight against Oklahoma, and that Oklahoma sucks, but we will pour one out for our deflated plastic deity.

No More KD Comps

Maybe ESPN is finally steering away from comparing Tre Johnson to Kevin Durant after Rick Barnes basically told everyone to knock it off, but if there was any lingering doubt then conference play should put that to rest permanently. Tre Johnson is a great player and will be in the NBA shortly - even though he runs with his fists balled up like he’s punching 4-foot tall ghosts in the face up & down the court, I cannot stop noticing this - but KD never put up a pair of clunkers in a row like Johnson did the first two games of SEC play, and KD never got shook up by a defense like Johnson has multiple times this season. (KD also played better defense than Johnson, thanks to his ridiculous wingspan and desire to personally put every opponent 6 feet into the Earth.) Johnson can get sped up and chuck up bad shots by high-level defenses, he just happens to make more of those than most people. There were multiple possessions in that Oklahoma run where Johnson tried to be Superman only to turn the ball over like Clark Kent.

Johnson is not KD, but I don’t really think that’s the interesting point. Yes, Tre Johnson is the most offensively polished freshman Texas has had since Durant, but the interesting part about that is examining who his competition is for that honor.

Photo by Luismi Sánchez on Unsplash

Texas has had numerous draft-worthy freshmen roll through in the years since KD, but they’re invariably of the “raw but can jump out of the gym” or the “will be amazing when they’re 23” variety. Jarrett Allen or Jordan Hamilton might be Johnson’s closest competition, otherwise it’s a mostly Bambas & Hayeses and Thompsons. Why Texas doesn’t seem to land the Trae Youngs of the world is the more interesting thing to investigate. Maybe that changes a bit now that Klutch Sports isn’t personally outfitting Kentucky, we’ll see.

Jordan Pope

I haven’t been terribly kind to Pope so far this season, in part because it felt like he was stuffing stats against terrible teams instead of impacting the games against Quad 1 opponents. Well, it turns out that he just hadn’t found his place yet; Pope is the reason Texas won in Norman, and he’s a primary reason Texas had a chance to upset both Auburn and Tennessee. He seems unlikely to ever rack up a lot of assists, but that doesn’t really seem to be how he’s being deployed or more to the point how best to deploy him. Pope gets buckets, albeit in volume rather than efficiency, and he’s one of the only players on the team who seems like they can get a paint touch on their own. He’s also hitting 91% from the free throw line in conference play, so when Texas needs somebody to salt away a game from the line he’s showing his abilities there as well. When Tre spent 10 minutes of the 2nd half in Norman thinking the fans were handling a live anaconda & played like he was running from the albino reptile, Pope was the dude who took over. Texas now has three guys who can take over a game in Johnson, Pope, and Kaluma, and if two of them are hitting on a given night this team can hang with anybody.

Shedrick Is Their Best Option, Unfortunately

I don’t pretend to know all that goes on in recruiting & transfer portal circles so somebody can fill in the gaps in the comments if they desire, but it seems to me that the biggest issue on this team is that they have to depend on a replacement-level center as their best option at the 5 instead of landing a better big in the portal. Shedrick isn’t bad, he’s just also not great. He’s the best offensive rebounder on the team (derogatory), he’s the leading shot blocker (derogatory), but they can’t run plays for him against most of the SEC and he gets shoved off his spot by other quality bigs enough that the team is really feeling the absence on the glass of a 6’3” guard. Roll the last part of that sentence around in your head for a minute. Did you frown? I bet you frowned. We all frowned. Fortunately for Shedrick, every once in awhile Terry gives Ze’Rik Onyema some run and we all get reminded that things could be worse. Shedrick is better about the soft hedge & retreat that’s central to the PnR defense Texas is running than Onyema but that is a pretty low bar to clear. (Another low bar to clear: Shedrick fouls less often than Onyema, who is accumulating fouls at roughly 70% the rate of our dearly departed Patron Saint of Foul Attrition, Royce Hamm.) Shedrick is trying his ass off, and he has moments, but he just is who he is and Texas doesn’t have a better option. Florida’s bigs might ride Shedrick around the arena like a Shetland Pony, especially that 7’6” freshman of theirs.

I mentioned in the last post that starting 0-5 in SEC play was a real possibility, thankfully that’s going to be avoided. 1-4 is pretty likely though, as Florida is the hardest game left on the schedule with a 16% win probability on KenPom. That’s not to say the schedule gets easy, it’s just less insane after Florida. Texas currently has a conference strength of schedule - which is teams they’ve played so far - of +26.48 EM on KenPom; not only is that the hardest schedule in the entirety of D-I to date, it’s saying that basically the average team Texas has played in conference play is Alabama (+26.63, #10 in KenPom). Vanderbilt has the lowest conference SoS in the SEC at +15.96, that’s like they’ve played their first 4 games against Arkansas (#46 in KenPom). Oh, to be Houston, whose current conference SoS is +9.47 (Washington State, +9.45, #85 in KenPom). Imagine the luxury, are they even sweating yet? The SEC frontloaded Texas’ schedule something fierce. Right now Texas is projected to finish 8-10 in conference play or 10th place; if you plopped them into the Big 12 this year and their 20-game schedule they’d probably be 11-9 & 7th place. I mention that because, like learning a second language, I find myself sometimes translating from SEC to Big 12 in my head. That will stop sometime in…let’s say 2028.