1. Hope everyone recovers soon, and that the outbreak stops here.
There was some hope going into yesterday that the outbreak might’ve been contained to the guys who’d missed the Kansas State game, or even just one of them, depending how many of the absences were due to contact tracing. That hope was probably misguided, given Shaka Smart tested positive, but it was there nonetheless.
As it turned out, Brock Cunningham was still unavailable, and while Greg Brown and Kai Jones came back, Jericho Sims and Courtney Ramey were newly absent.
There are a lot of reasons to want health, with health for its own sake being the primary one, especially given Andrew Jones’s cancer history. So for all those reasons, hopefully we’ll see no new absences from here.
2. Some guys looked unprepared.
This isn’t a knock on anyone. Your ninth and tenth options aren’t supposed to play as large of roles as they played, and the general chaos surrounding the program was reason enough for anyone to be off their game for stretches of last night. This was kind of what was seen: It took Kai Jones a half to get himself back to looking like himself. Kamaka Hepa had a disastrous first few stints on the court. Donovan Williams had a few bad plays. In that environment, sloppy instances that would normally go unnoticed ballooned in importance (the basic idea here is that if you have three or four sloppy plays and they don’t come at crucial times, none will seem like a big deal, but if you have thirteen or fourteen sloppy plays, all will seem like a big deal), with the end result being that for fifteen or twenty minutes of gameplay, Texas looked bad bad.
3. The shooting wasn’t there.
Ramey’s been the best shooter, and he was gone, but most of this came from Andrew Jones missing all seven of his attempts. That’s not a knock on him—shooters have off nights. But that’s what happened. Texas was 6-of-25 from beyond the arc. Jones was 0-for-7. The rest of the team’s 6-for-18 effort was comparable to the team’s season average.
4. Matt Coleman’s foul trouble was disastrous.
Royce Hamm’s didn’t help either, but Coleman’s harder to replace than Hamm, especially with Ramey out and Jase Febres still getting back in shape. Williams did alright—in the game’s immediate aftermath, I forgot he had some nice finishes—but this was a game in which Texas needed more than 23 minutes from their leader, and while K.T. Turner could’ve arguably been a bit less cautious with Coleman’s foul situation early, the second-half fouls came at a time when Texas desperately needed Coleman on the floor.
5. And they still only lost by one.
Oklahoma might’ve had guys working back into shape, but their full lineup was out there, and Texas still almost beat ‘em. No, Oklahoma’s not Baylor, but they’re a good team. They’re closing the gap with the behind-Baylor pack (a pack that now arguably includes Texas, deserved or undeserved). Texas dug deep, refused to be put away, and even in a situation in which they were down to five scholarship players by the end of the night, got themselves a decent chance at winning the game.
It was a missed opportunity because of the mid-game collapse. It was an inspired effort nevertheless.
6. The Big 12 title’s probably shot.
It looked bad after the Texas Tech loss, but it looks real gone now. Which is fine. Baylor’s the best team in the conference this year. Texas doesn’t need to win a share of the regular season championship to have had a good year. But it would’ve been nice, especially for our guy Coach Smart.
7. What a shift from last year.
I’m hesitant to break out the measuring stick too often, but it’s worth remembering that last year’s Oklahoma games were 1) a disaster in Austin in which the Horns missed 21 threes and, in at least two instances, struggled to stay on their feet; and 2) the Matt Coleman banks-in-the-winner game on Super Tuesday. That was a poorer Oklahoma team than this one. And Texas almost beat this one without two starters and the seventh man.
