Most of this season, Texas has felt like a March Madness 8-seed. Loss to 1-seed UConn? Sure. Overtime home loss to 1-seed Houston? Yep. Sweep definite tournament team Oklahoma? Also yes.
*touches ear
Sweep definite NIT 1-seed Oklahoma? Absolutely.
**touches ear again
Sweep turned-down-the-NIT-because-they’re-unable-to-swallow-the-concept-of-losing-in-a-tournament-Texas-stomped-through-like-a-Burnt-Orange-Godzilla-who-just-wants-these-atomic-bombs-to-shut-up-so-he-can-get-some-goddamn-sleep Oklahoma? You bet your ass.
Anyway, Texas spent basically the entire Disu-available portion of the season as a team that would beat the teams they should - shush, Morgantown - and lose to teams that were national title contenders. So much of this season felt like “right side of the bubble” that the 8-seed of some non-Houston region felt preordained from late January, with the only real outlier some sort of bracket-rules-induced 10-seed because, up until about a week ago, some combination of Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, & TCU were in contention for an 8/9 seed, and wins/losses between these squads felt less like elimination contests - uhh, other than OU/TCU, apparently - than a challenge ladder which could send an otherwise deserving Big 12 team to an unwarranted 10-seed.
(Again, sorry not sorry Oklahoma; it sucks for y’all, but like Rose on that 40-square-foot Titanic door, there’s not enough room for the both of us? We’ll think good thoughts about Porter Moser’s Atlantic grave while we live another 70 years.)
((I have used entirely too many dashes in this post.))
There’s long been a discussion among bubble-adjacent fans of the desire to be a 10-seed instead of an 8/9, and I thought there was a shot Texas could make it to the high side of the 7/10 if they beat Kansas State & Iowa State, but once they were bounced from the Big 12 tourney there seemed no real path to something other than an 8/9. If you looked at the final Bracket Matrix prior to the unveiling, the overwhelming opinion was that Texas would be an 8 seed. It made a lot of sense! TeamRankings.com also had this as the most likely option. Some of this was groupthink, to be sure, but also the metrics & eye test painted a pretty clear view of Texas. After losing in the conference tourney, more Texas fans were concerned with Texas being in the play-in than being a 7-seed. I know the bid stealers were a problem for some - again, hello Sooners! - but generally speaking Texas seemed mostly unaffected by both the bid stealers and the other bubble teams. That’s kinda the point of being in the 8/9 group; you’re good enough to not sweat things, but you’re unlikely to jump up enough while idle to avoid the UConns and the Purdues of the world.
I spent a fair amount of time talking myself into and out of the possibilities of beating UConn & Purdue over the past 10-14 days; Texas would never be the favorite, but I did kinda think they had a puncher’s chance (like winning 2 out of 10 chances) against those two. We can get into why after the tourney, and I wouldn’t have put money on these things happening, but there were at least some paths to victory there. Now all the math has changed because Texas wouldn’t see a 1-seed until the Elite Eight, if it made it that far. That’s an improvement, of sorts. Anyway, let’s talk about the bracket.
Colorado State or Virginia?
Our dog is getting old, and while he’s still full of energy and happy to go on very long walks, he will vomit once or twice a week. We don’t know why he does it, and the vet is similarly flummoxed. Having said that, he will happily eat the vomit. In fact, I’m literally watching him complete the process right now. I did not plan this, nor do I particularly enjoy these impromptu performances; he was sleeping when I started typing this paragraph. Give him five minutes and he’ll clean it up, leaving me with a mild discoloration on that carpet that I can get out with a rag & a touch of OxyClean. It could be worse, at least it’s not coming out of the other end; our carpet is not dark enough to handle that kind of animal-generated evil.
My dog is the Virginia offense in animal form. If you haven’t see the Cavaliers attempt to score, first of all, congratulations, and second of all, no seriously, I envy you. It is an offense in theory rather than reality, it seems less like a team trying to score than a team trying to drain the clock so they can get back to being on defense. Tony Bennett reacts to players running with a basketball like he’s watching the snuff film from ‘8 MM’; everything I hated about the pace of Beard’s offenses is distilled into a reduction sauce and poured over an overflowing plate of pig anuses by Tony Bennett. Tony Bennett is the type of dude to install speed bumps in his own driveway; he installed a stoplight in his bedroom to look at when he has trouble finishing. Just absolutely brutal stuff; banners hang forever and all that, but I imagine being a post-championship Virginia basketball fan watching this team score is like having to talk yourself into the perks of driving a 2001 Ford Fiesta. The brakes are great! You never have to lock the doors! It fits inside most Lincoln SUVs!
Personally, I would rather Texas face Colorado State, and not solely for Sus domesticus anus-related aesthetic reasons. Virginia’s offense is putrid, but their defense is as thorough as my dog is at cleaning up its mistakes and Tony Bennett will happily drag Rodney Terry into trench warfare where each possession takes outsized importance. Colorado State feels like (relatively) a better matchup for Texas; they are an older team who doesn’t shoot the three (or defend the three) particularly well and they don’t hit the offensive glass at all. They make their bones hitting assisted twos and have done it against better teams than Texas - the Rams popped Creighton by 21 in noncon play during Creighton’s now-annual “what the fuck happened to us” stretch of inexplicable losses to clearly inferior opponents - but they aren’t a particularly big team and they don’t have much of an answer for Disu or Shedrick in a vacuum. (Or in oxygenated space, I guess. I need to stop spending so much time trying to suffocate basketball players.) Ryan Kalkbrenner is a better big than either Disu or Shedrick and he made hay against the Rams; they beat Creighton because the Bluejays couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from three. If Abmas, Hunter, & Horton have an off night from deep, it could be a short tourney trip for Texas.
Oh, Tennessee
I’m going to be upfront here: should Texas make it to the second round, the Volunteers will justifiably be significant favorites. Rick Barnes has put together a great squad, and in one of his rarer achievements he’s found an offensive threat that transcends the game enough that he can’t bench the guy for his mediocre defense. Dalton Knecht is the truth, and he can get buckets against very good defensive teams.
However.
I have visions in my head of Dalton Knecht against athletes of his caliber, and Knecht gets slightly more pedestrian. He’s still great, but he’s not KD, and when Knecht has to put up 25 shots to get 30 points, Tennessee gets beatable. Rick Barnes still has the patented Hard Button in his repertoire, and it feels like the last few weeks their offense has been less a fully-fledged system than “get the ball to Dalton” which, to be fair, usually works. When it doesn’t work though, the rest of the team is less adept at picking up the slack. I think if Mitchell, Brock, and/or Weaver can make life inefficient for Knecht, and if Hunter, Abmas, and/or Weaver can keep Zakai Zeigler in front of them, Tennessee turns mortal. Texas would happily take their chances on Santiago Vescovi beating them than Knecht and/or Ziegler, and if I’m Rodney Terry that’s my basic gameplan. Throw athletes at Knecht - (imagine three incredibly whiny paragraphs here on how Ron Holland could have shut him down) - and switch on Ziegler while your bigs play drop coverage to keep him out of the lane, and if the threes fall then you tip your cap.
Would I put a single dollar of my retirement fund on this upset happening? Absolutely not. Tennessee’s defense is stifling & they have the size to make Shedrick a non-factor & the paint mostly off-limits for Texas’ smaller guards, so even if Texas’ defense puts the clamps on Knecht it’s going to take an All-American effort from Disu & Abmas getting white-hot to generate buckets. That said, as much as I like this Tennessee team, I would much rather Texas go toe to toe with the Volunteers than any of the 1-seeds.
Texas’ Ceiling
I think this squad should be slightly favored to win its first game, then give them a semi-decent chance to spring the upset on Tennessee - I would guess KenPom would give Texas something like a 35% win probability on a neutral floor - but if they face Creighton in the Sweet Sixteen it’s probably a wrap. On the off chance they squeeze past Creighton, the Fightin’ Edeys probably await and that’s a 7’4” mountain I think Texas is highly unlikely to climb. (As I’m typing this, Ze’Rik Onyema already has three fouls & Purdue is in the bonus.) Given how things started in the offseason with Holland and AJ Johnson decommitting in the spring months after the portal had been dredged by every D-I school with a pulse, a season that ends with a tournament bid & 1+ wins is probably about the best anyone could’ve reasonably hoped for.
Other Big 12 Bracket Thoughts
I’ve punched Oklahoma in the testicles repeatedly in this brief piece, but I’m honestly surprised they got left out. You cannot tell me with a straight face that Virginia has been better than Oklahoma this season, as an example. Even as the bracket was revealed, I kept waiting to see them somewhere in the 10/11 range. The selection committee made some very odd choices around the cut line, and it appears they used analytics sites like KenPom less than previous years. I’m guessing the Sooners got penalized for their noncon strength of schedule as it was rated 321st in D-I, otherwise their NET team sheet looked decent enough. I’m fine with this, every high-major team that schedules like they’re afraid of their own shadow should get docked for it come tournament time. *stares directly at Rodney Terry*
Iowa State looks primed for a deep run. Their offensive efficiency isn’t good enough compared to other national championship contenders, historically, but they’ve got dudes who rise to the moment and their defense is suffocating. Plus, they are absolutely rolling right now.
Healthy or not, Kansas looks like a 4-seed that can be had early; this is tied for the lowest seed under Bill Self and that year they were bounced in the second round. That said, if they get past a possibly fiesty Samford team then they’re facing a talented but flawed Gonzaga squad so they might make it to the second weekend anyway?
As good as they have been and as much as analytics love Houston, I still do not entirely trust them. Understanding that Iowa State is absolutely rolling right now, Houston put up a real clunker of a game against them & I don’t trust Houston to string together 6 games in a row against high-level competition with zero clunkers. They could definitely make the Final Four, but their insistence on slowing down the tempo despite having a talent advantage in most games means other teams who might get run off the court in a faster game have a chance to hang around. I feel like that could burn them in the second weekend.
TCU getting put in the Purdue bracket means their fans probably shouldn’t be booking any Sweet Sixteen hotel rooms. I like Jamie Dixon’s offensive approach generally, but it doesn’t yet seem to translate to success in March at TCU.
BYU and Baylor are probably my favorite ‘dark horse’ Big 12 candidates for a deep tourney run, though Baylor is getting mentioned enough by others they might as well just be a ‘horse’ at this point.
Right now I have 6 Big 12 teams in the Sweet 16 in my bracket, and I know there’s no way this actually happens. I’d set the over/under on Big 12 teams making the Sweet 16 at maybe 3.5? Iowa State & Houston seem like pretty easy calls & (deep, disgruntled sigh) Baylor’s not far off, but the rest of the Big 12 is pretty mortal and I’m probably wishcasting this sort of overall performance. What say you?
I agree with the non-zero hope of beating Tennessee, should they win on Thursday night.
One of the more amazing games I watched this season was South Carolina at Tennessee, seeing that South Carolina had a lead early in the second half and *never gave it up.* Knowing the quality of Barnes teams generally, I have pondered that result off and on since. It's not like the Gamecocks are a quality metric squad -- Texas has a much better offense and a similar defense -- yet here we are and the 'Cocks are 49th in KenPom, 47th in Torvik and *56th* in BPI (and yet have a six seed -- no reason to get into that). But they were able to frustrate the Vols on a day when they couldn't get shots to fall, didn't make free throws and didn't win on the boards.
That's pretty much what they need.
Missed your writing very much. So good.