Micro Level, West Virginia (L, 84-82)
Yep
It does kinda feel like a larger lesson in Ball Don’t Lie Theory that West Virginia won this game after Texas won in Morgantown.
Jericho Sims
The first six minutes of the game featured Sims murdering West Virginia just about every time down the court. He was getting rebounds and dunking, he was getting fed on cuts and dunking, he was a walking bucket until he picked up his second foul. If he had avoided that second foul, he’s probably scoring 15-18 points in the half. He wasn’t as much of a factor in the second half, primarily due to foul trouble, and Texas missed him terribly. When he was out in the second half and Texas had to rely on Kai Jones & Royce Hamm to get rebounds against the zone, things fell apart.
Zone Offense
I think one of the things Shaka Smart correctly identified before the season is that this team is best when it gets out and runs regardless of if the other team made or missed their shot. Getting down the court fast helps initiate the offense before the defense is truly set, and Texas scored a lot of points by pushing the ball and essentially creating transition opportunities where there would not have been many if they played at a slower tempo. I bring this up because I think part of the effectiveness of West Virginia’s zone is due to Texas slowing down in the second half. I don’t have stats on this, but I would guess the number of points in transition dropped off a cliff in the second half. I don’t know if it was fatigue or hesitance at facing an aggressive half-court zone, but Texas didn’t push the ball nearly as much and that exacerbated the issues against the zone.
Having said that, West Virginia was doing something interesting with their zone. One of the ways Texas responded to the zone was by running actions to get Sims a low post seal; any time Sims would get the feed, they’d immediately stunt and/or send help to trap him. They were also roaming the passing lanes, having been burned multiple times by Texas getting into the paint and kicking it out. Texas turned the ball over a few times due to West Virginia anticipating the kick-out, including when Sims had the ball in the post. He still acquitted himself pretty well, the offense against the zone was generating better looks with him in the game than with him out.
I’ve been rewatching the games while writing and I don’t think the offense against the zone was as stagnant as people (myself included) thought at the time; they were running actions and reacting to wrinkles. The aggressive help on Sims I mentioned? A couple minutes later they started flashing guards to the paint to give him another option. They were getting into the paint against the zone fairly regularly as well, the issue came with what they did when they were there. (Like the turnovers due to WVU roaming the passing lanes.) It’s a different issue than they had earlier the season - and they need to keep working on it - but I can see adjustments they’ve made. I mean, Texas scored 82 points against West Virginia on 54% from three and 55% from two, and 78 of the points came from made buckets; that’s not a bad offensive day.
I don’t think this was the biggest problem in the game. What was?
Defense
Most people are going to focus on the zone offense because most people focus on offense in general, watching the ball go through the hoop is the goal of the game. I have a bigger beef with the defensive side of the ball; Texas was switching situationally, mostly the guards. That’s fine in theory, but it requires a level of communication that just wasn’t there today. Guys weren’t pointing out their assignments as much as normal, they were letting opposing guards roam more than normal, and they were playing further off their assignments than they should against a team with multiple legitimate perimeter threats. A fair number of the fouls they were called for were due to having to recover on a Mountaineer who got open without having to work too hard for it. Personally, I think this was a bigger reason for the loss than the zone offense.
Courtney Ramey
Ramey was an apex predator on offense today, and if he stays out of foul trouble he probably goes for 35+ instead of 28. When Texas was teetering towards the end, Ramey hit two straight threes and was probably good for a couple more if he was in the game.
The Ramey/AJ1 Thing
You know how Shaka has said every season since Ramey came to town that he’s the most competitive guy on the team and that when it’s pointed in the right direction it’s a positive force on the team? This is basically what he’s been talking about; Ramey was upset that Jones let a three-point shooter get wide open - and he absolutely did, McNeil might as well have setup camp in that corner before anyone else closed out - and he started going after AJ about it. Words were said, they got separated, this stuff happens. It usually happens in practice and we never see it, but this is fairly normal among a bunch of super-competitive guys. Ramey should probably have taken it down a notch because this is likely his team next year and he needs to know how to lead without burning bridges, but it’s also worth noting he wasn’t freezing Jones out later in the game when he was open and there was a point with just under 7 minutes left when Greg Brown was visibly upset about not getting fed when he thought he was open on the baseline & Ramey was the one talking him down. It was a momentary flare-up, one that Ramey tends to be involved in regularly. I’m not really concerned about it, and in post-game comments Matt Coleman didn’t seem worried about it either.
For reference, here are the two moments:
The Last Two Plays
Texas got open looks on both plays, they just didn’t go in. One of the things I think Shaka is very underrated at is drawing up end of half/end of game plays. Pay attention to this when you can, they get good looks more often than not in these situations.
The Refs
Yes, they sucked. The free throw disparity was impressive, and Courtney Ramey fouled out despite only committing at best three fouls. Jericho Sims should have been at the line after being fouled on that last-second tip, or Greg Brown for getting form tackled on the same play.
*Stephen A. Smith-sized HOWEVER*
Do any of us think Jericho Sims or Greg Brown would have hit two free throws in a row? Does Texas get to bitch all that much when they only hit 4 of their 10 attempts? Does any of this matter as much as letting a guy who is hitting 44% of his threes get open repeatedly in the second half? Texas got a tough draw on the fouls, but they also generated many of the opportunities to foul and the refereeing was at best the third-biggest reason they lost.
Things I Want to Get Into But Don’t Have Time
Matt Coleman was a boss for most of the game.
Kai Jones…was not.
Ditto for Greg Brown.
Texas gave up 37 free throw attempts and Royce Hamm somehow wasn’t a foul magnet.
Macro Level
This Section Feels Weird
When I initially planned out this format of a weekly recap, the macro thing made more sense because there were 2-3 games per week that would provide a larger view of things; now I’m back to one game and it’s sort of sitting here like an unwanted dog, staring at me when I have no food for it. That analogy may or may not be inspired by a hungry dog staring at me from two feet away right now even though it knows meal time isn’t for another 30 minutes. You’ve already eaten once today, you’re not starving. Quit looking at me like that. (Why did I pick an adorable dog? I could have had a litany of ugly ones.)
(editor’s note: he did in fact win this battle and get fed)
Conference Goals
Second place in the conference is probably toast; Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kansas (don’t look now but they’ve started figuring things out) have a better track to that than Texas. Maybe Texas gets a game or two rescheduled and the math changes, but we’ll deal with that if/when it happens.
Postponed Games
(Theoretically) Upcoming Games:
Tuesday, February 23rd: vs Kansas 8 PM CT (ESPN2) - 58% KenPom win probability
Saturday, February 27th: at Texas Tech 11 AM CT (CBS) - 42% KenPom win probability
Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football - we skipped a week on account of Ted Cruz taking our state’s power to Cancun - and/or our Twitter account. My next recap will come out after the Texas Tech game. Also, I have a Patreon if you want to tip me for voluntarily watching this game twice and learning how to encode video that Twitter accepts.
Writing tunes provided by Cristoph.
But Ace is sooooo cute! No one could ignore the adorableness.
From previous games I would have classified Kai as relatively sure handed. His 2 unforced bobbles were an unpleasant surprise.