1. That was a weird game for Davidson. That may have been Texas’s plan.
The point here is that Davidson got to the hoop easily today. But there’s a corollary to that, and that’s that Davidson did not shoot well from deep. Are the two really correlated? Probably, but I don’t know enough about basketball to know if this was a gameplan thing from Texas. It did look like Texas was intentionally not playing much help defense and not double-teaming inside, instead opting to guard shooters off the ball, but maybe I’m giving Shaka Smart too much credit. At the very least, it’s not certain that this was a bug in Texas’s approach. It may have been a feature.
2. Greg Brown is a kid, and that’s awesome.
Greg Brown is a blast. He plays hard, he gets excited, he’s at least pretending to really like his teammates. He also hurt his hand in warmups dunking. This feels like it’s going to be the Greg Brown experience, and it should be enjoyed (hopefully that hand’s ok, though—and was he limping down the stretch?).
3. Jericho Sims.
He wasn’t the only one today, but I couldn’t find video of the one where the ball bounced way back beyond the baseline—I think it came from Kai Jones? Texas loves to dunk. Texas loves to dunk with two hands. I love how much Texas loves to dunk with two hands.
But yes.
Jericho Sims:
4. Brock Cunningham has a role on this team.
Cunningham played twenty minutes and kept three possessions alive on the offensive glass in what turned out to be a one-possession game (I don’t think we always realize how valuable offensive rebounds are—that’s a whole extra possession). Fouls necessitated some of his run, but he’s rather clearly in the trust tree, which is a big step up in role for him from last year (prior to all the injuries, of course).
5. It wasn’t quite this close.
Texas kind of held them at arm’s reach, and while it did get dicey in the last couple minutes, there wasn’t a moment in which Davidson was the favorite.
Still, a bit disappointing. Would’ve been nice to wipe them out more neatly.
6. Fouls and missed threes might just be part of the deal.
They happen a lot. They happened a lot last year. It does seem there are better offensive options for Texas than the three-ball, but the effectiveness of those would, of course, be limited if Texas were to stop shooting so many threes. Similarly, it’s hard to say where the balance lies with fouls. At some point, there are too many, but on the other side, they’re part of what you get alongside the benefits of aggressive defense.
