Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly column on the Texas Longhorns.
For the first time since…well, it’s actually the first time since the 2019-20 Empire 2K Classic, when Texas whooped Cal a day after losing to a Mac McClung-led Georgetown in a heavy dose of foreshadowing, but basically for the first time since the 2019 NIT, Texas is back at Madison Square Garden. And they’re playing Bret Bielema. Or something like that.
It gives me mild trepidation to report that Texas is off to a strong start. They’re second in the country on KenPom. They’ve walloped Gonzaga and survived Creighton. The new arena is apparently as dope as advertised. People in this town care about basketball to the degree that last Thursday, a guy in line behind me at the post office (yes, I wormholed into 2004) was telling a friend on the phone that he was going to the game that evening, and he sounded excited about it. The vibe has changed, and I don’t know how to feel. Has this town paid this much attention to basketball since Kevin Durant was here?
It’s with this backdrop that Texas gets back to the Garden, playing their only game outside of the state of Texas between now and New Year’s Eve (and their only game outside of the states of Texas and Junior Texas until mid-January). The opponent? Illinois. The task? Prove that this team can win in the shadow of the 2019 greats.
At the moment, Shaka Smart still clearly has the better Texas tenure than Chris Beard. The guy won a national championship, after all, and he’s the only head coach in history, in any sport, to win a Maui Invitational in the Eastern Time Zone. Beating Illinois in the Jimmy V Classic wouldn’t match Smart’s title, but it’d be a win in Madison Square Garden, and those count more (this is why Patrick Ewing, notable winner of four Big East Tournament games in 2021, still has not been fired).
Are the nuts scared? Yes. But not in the way where the monster is breaking down the door. More in the way where the monster has landed and might be about to terrorize a family in a small cottage in the woods. It’s bad, but we don’t have to fight him just yet.
On the football side, for a moment:
Getting to play an overranked Pac-12 team in the Alamo Bowl is the ideal recipe for generating 2023 hype. If Quinn Ewers doesn’t throw for 400 yards, it will only be because Bijan Robinson ran for 500.
On the volleyball side, for a moment:
The Nuts are aware of the volleyball. It is rad and it is lit and it would be imposturous for us to hop on the bandwagon now. We were told about this years ago. Our neighbors in the duplex used to watch so much Longhorn volleyball. We really missed the boat, but Hook ‘Em. We can only stomach supporting Marquette in one sport, anyway.
