Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly-ish column on the Texas Longhorns.
Texas always beats Kansas. Those are the rules. That is the order upon which our society is constructed. We drive on the right side of the road. We draw the line at fifteen for the ten-item-or-less checkout aisles. When the Jayhawks and the Longhorns tip off, the Longhorns win.
It’s worth remembering when this started, on a wonderful Saturday in 2021 in Lawrence. The stars that day—Matt Coleman, Jericho Sims, Kai Jones—have moved on to greener climes. The mastermind behind that day has moved on to grayer climes. But here are this year’s Longhorns, Chris Beard and Timmy Allen and Brock Cunningham until Chris Beard realizes it isn’t that kind of party, good stewards of tradition, beating Kansas on the hardwood.
Of course, if Texas ever doesn’t beat Kansas now, it’s a disrespectful gesture to all that is holy. But let’s not dwell on that.
Courtney Ramey got a lot of love last night for his work shutting down Ochai Agbaji, and he deserves even more credit, probably. Courtney Ramey always deserves more credit. Courtney Ramey shot 41% from deep last year. Did you remember that? No. Because you don’t give Courtney Ramey enough credit. Somehow he shot 36% inside the arc, but we don’t dwell on that. We don’t dwell on all the hero-ball the 2021 Texas Longhorns played. They didn’t play hero-ball against Kansas. We’re here to talk about what they did against Kansas.
Allen got a lot of love last night, and he also deserved that love. That was a good shot. Terrible shot, value-wise, but take-what-you-can-get moment and also it looked sweet. That’s the thing about the midrange that nerds don’t understand. It looks really cool. Turns the vibes all the way up. Dirk Nowitzki made a career on the midrange, sure, but really it was on the vibes that midrange game created. We would’ve lost in Iraq way earlier had Dirk not been hitting those J’s and keeping Dallas feeling good about itself. The fall of the United States military started when we started doubting the midrange. And yes, I’m talking about Vietnam. The three-point line entered the world, the Soviet Union dissolved, we kicked ass in Desert Storm, the midrange was cool again. People with brains figured out shooting closer to the hoop is better if you’re getting the same number of points, we immediately lost two wars, and specifically wars in which we were fighting unopposed. Hard to lose a war you’re fighting against no one.
To bring this back down I-35 from Fallujah, though, vibes are great right now for the Horns. Allen brought back the midrange. Ramey brought back the defense. Beard finally figured out he could both start Brock Cunningham, returning to his Avery Benson roots as a coach, and play a competent brand of basketball, doing the kind of thing that you have to do to win in Austin because the grit just is not here like it is in Lubbock. The Horns are rolling. The Big 12 better look out. Nothing can bring this team down.
(Smash cut to 4-seed/5-seed Marquette/Texas matchup in Buffalo in March.)
