The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry on the hardwood has been an easy one to predict for the last five-plus years. No matter what path each game took, or how many overtimes it took to reach the final result, the home team always prevailed. While the Longhorns have won the last eight times these two teams have played at the Frank Erwin Center, the Aggies defend their home court nearly as well. In the last five meetings at Reed Arena, A&M has been victorious each time.

A win today is even more important than just breaking a five-year road losing streak. It’s more important than holding the ever-popular “Scoreboard!” retort against your most hated in-state rival. Today’s game is a chance for the Longhorns to finally regain some momentum, a chance to win a third consecutive game for the first time since they started the year 17-0. And even more important than that, the winner of today’s game will have a leg up in what is a four-team battle for the two remaining byes in the conference tournament.

What to watch for

1) Can the Texas frontcourt keep it going? – For the first time since a game in early January against Arkansas, Dexter Pittman was incredibly productive against Oklahoma State on Wednesday night, scoring 16 points in 20 minutes to go with eight rebounds and three blocks. It wasn’t just Big Dex having a field day in the frontcourt, though. Damion James and Gary Johnson combined to shoot 8-for-13 from the field, score 26 points, and grab eleven boards.

It should be noted that the Cowboys are a very small team that was very thin in the frontcourt on Wednesday night, so the Texas big men will certainly face a much tougher task this afternoon. Bryan Davis held Pittman to just four points — all from the free-throw line — in 28 minutes of play. The addition of David Loubeau to the starting lineup gives the Aggies an even bigger presence in the frontcourt, so the battle in the paint this afternoon could be a deciding factor.

2) Will Texas attack Loubeau? – Giving Loubeau more minutes has not only made the Aggies more physical, it aids their sometimes-stagnant offense by adding a versatile big man into the mix. Loubeau can score from the midrange as well as inside, and his scoring threat will often pull opposing bigs out of the paint, opening the lane for the Aggie offense. The downside to Loubeau’s new starting gig is that his defense isn’t always that reliable against bigger, more physical Big 12 forwards and centers. If Texas can make it a point to attack the sophomore and try to draw fouls, it could negate A&M’s new, bigger lineup.

3) Can Texas dictate the tempo? – It’s no secret that the Longhorn offense bogs down in half-court sets, and it’s also not a secret that Mark Turgeon‘s Aggie defense can be downright nasty. If Texas allows this to become a half-court battle with a low score, it will certainly make it tougher to beat a well-coached A&M squad. It goes against convention to push the tempo and force the issue when playing in a tough road environment, but doing just that could give the Longhorns an offensive boost, while forcing an equally-anemic Aggie offense to score even more to secure the win.

Texas slid to sixth in both polls this afternoon following back-to-back losses on the road. The Kentucky Wildcats ascended to the top spot as the nation’s lone undefeated team, while Kansas moved up to second in both rankings.

The K-State Wildcats took a slight dip after a home loss to Oklahoma State, even though they were the first team to knock off Texas with a Big Monday victory earlier in the week. KSU is 11th in the media poll and is ranked 13th by coaches. Baylor is the only other Big 12 representative, checking in at 24th in the Associated Press rankings, although Texas A&M, Missouri, and Oklahoma State all received votes in both polls.

The Longhorns also took a dive in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology, sliding to the 2-seed line in the Salt Lake City regional. In Lunardi’s mock bracket, Texas is paired with 1-seed Syracuse, an absolute nightmare match-up for a Longhorn team that is paralyzed by zone defenses.

The Jayhawks maintained their hold on a 1-seed, but were moved to the Houston regional that the Longhorns vacated. Lunardi awarded five other bids to the Big 12, putting K-State (3-seed), Baylor (5), Missouri (8), A&M (9), and Oklahoma State (11) in the mix.

The trip to Iowa State in the middle of the week has unfortunately put me waaaaay behind on absolutely everything, and as a result, we’ve only got time today for a very abbreviated game preview. Let’s cut right to the keys for tonight’s game…

1) Get Bryan Davis in foul trouble – Yes, we know that senior guard Donald Sloan leads the team with more than 17 points a game. And sure, no other Aggie even averages ten points (except for Derrick Roland, who is out for the year). But Texas A&M is a completely different team without their big senior, and if he’s riding the bench with foul trouble, Texas should be able to coast in this one.

Davis is the easily the team’s best post defender, so without his presence, the Texas frontcourt would have a field day. On the offensive side of the ball, his understudy David Loubeau can certainly score inside, but often doesn’t get in good position for entry passes and as a result the team’s guards will often settle for jumpers they shouldn’t be taking.

2) Keep the Aggies off the line – Texas A&M is the best team in the country when it comes to getting to the foul line, so the Longhorns must force their opponents to earn points from the field. Texas is clearly more talented and much deeper, so giving up free points will only serve to keep the Aggies close enough to start thinking about an upset.

3) Crash the glass – Texas A&M averages a thin +0.8 rebounding margin, but in two of their three losses they were outrebounded by double digits. Texas is a much bigger team and should win this battle on paper, but the last thing the Horns will need is to give the Aggies extra possessions by getting out-hustled on the boards.

It’s a mess of sleet, ice, and snow outside as the Big 12 Championships roll into the second day of action. Although temperatures are expected to be back in the 70’s within a week, Mother Nature decided that folks traveling to OKC for the tournament would just love a three-day visit from some bitterly cold weather. So rather than going out in this last gasp of winter that has gripped the city, we’ll take a look back at all of yesterday’s action from the Ford Center.

[11] Texas Tech 88, [6] Texas A&M 83

The best game of the day was certainly the last one, although it seemed like the nightcap between Texas A&M and Texas Tech was well on its way to being the worst of the four first-round match-ups. In fact, when we finally threw in the towel at halftime and hit the exits, the Aggies led by 19 points, and there were no more than 1,500 hardy fans remaining in the seats. But those who stuck around were treated to the single most-impressive performance in the history of the Big 12 tourney.

Mike Singletary — a forward whose role all season long was simply that of an effective sixth man — scored 35 points in the second half, including 29 straight for Texas Tech, and led the Red Raiders back from a 22-point deficit to steal the win. Oddly enough, we were joking midway through the first half that Singletary was Tech’s entire offense. At the time, his four points were all that Tech had mustered in the first seven minutes of the game. Who knew how accurate our wisecracks would actually be?

[9] Baylor 65, [8] Nebraska 49

While Nebraska’s four-guard sets have sometimes made it difficult to rebound against bigger teams, it seemed that a match-up with the similarly guard-oriented Baylor Bears might hide that weakness for Coach Doc Sadler and the Cornhuskers. That was anything but true in this one, as the Bears outrebounded Nebraska by a ridiculous 43-18 margin. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that Kevin Rogers grabbed more boards than Nebraska all by himself. Rogers posted a double-double with 20 rebounds and ten points.

It’s also notable that this game started the day off with three technical fouls. There were three more in later action, and an additional warning on the Oklahoma State bench even after they had already been tagged with a T. Despite the temperatures outside, it was quite heated inside the Ford Center.

[7] Oklahoma State 81, [10] Iowa State 67

Perhaps the most heated of all the action came in the prime-time game, featuring the Cowboys from OSU. The Pokes hail from Stillwater, just 66 miles NNE of the Ford Center, and the arena was packed to the gills with folks wearing road-cone orange. Craig Brackins took charge early for Iowa State, as he often does, and drew not only tons of whistles from the refs, but the ire of the OSU faithful as well. The fans grew more and more restless as the fouls piled up for Oklahoma State, while the Cyclones stayed foul-free.

With seven minutes left in the first half, the Pokes had seven team fouls to the zero for Iowa State, and some additional commentary from the OSU bench heading into the media timeout resulted in a technical foul. The irate crowd absolutely ate up the tactical maneuver from Coach Travis Ford, and when the Cyclones were finally whistled for their first infraction with only three minutes left in the first half, mock cheers rained down on the court and Ford slapped the scorers table so hard it could be heard from across the arena.

Interestingly enough, foul calls in the second half were much more even until Iowa State was forced to intentionally hack at the Pokes in the final minutes. It’s tough to tell if this was a result of Ford’s lobbying or of OSU’s newfound commitment to pounding the ball down to Marshall Moses in the paint, but the newfound whistle equity allowed the Cowboys to cruise to a first-round win.

While the Longhorns have struggled through a recent stretch that included a three-game losing streak, it was easy to make reasonable excuses for their play. Players were in foul trouble, or the style the opponent played was a bad match-up for Texas. A player was having a career night, or the other team just got hot at the wrong time. The list of reasons was seemingly endless. But in Monday night’s drubbing of Texas, there was absolutely no excuses for the heaping pile of crap they put out on the floor. Texas was flat outplayed, and didn’t even look like they belonged on the same court with a team that is likely headed to the NIT.

Defensively, the Longhorns let the Aggies do whatever they pleased. Gary Johnson, Damion James, and Dexter Pittman defended the post with the will of the French army in World War II. A baseline spin move was apparently a new and amazing thing that completely baffled the Longhorn front court, as Bryan Davis and Junior Elonu each easily dropped 15 points on Texas. When the Aggies weren’t busy attacking the paint and racking up the fouls on Texas, it was open season on the three point line. The Longhorns felt it reasonable to leave deadly three-point shooters like Josh Carter and B.J. Holmes absolutely wide open time and again.

Even when the Longhorns showed a little bit of heart in the second half and trimmed the Aggie lead to just four with eight minutes to play, they gave up the most frustrating possible baskets as A&M pulled away once again. The Longhorns would make defensive stops and allow the Aggies what seemed like unlimited second chances, killing any chance of a comeback. In the final eight minutes of the game, Texas allowed A&M to grab four offensive rebounds, while they grabbed only one defensive rebound over that stretch. Not even the best defense in the NCAA could overcome that kind of shoddy work on the glass.

Granted, a huge part of the reason Texas fell behind in this one was a result of Dogus Balbay struggling with fouls and only seeing the court for 25 minutes. In fact, early in the second half the A&M lead ballooned from just five to an insurmountable twelve as the point guard spent three minutes on the bench following his third foul. It’s been perfectly clear over the last week and a half that this team grinds to a halt without Balbay, but the team must at least keep things within reach by playing defense when he leaves the game.

I could spend another five paragraphs recounting every single thing that went wrong in this trainwreck, but it’s just not worth the effort. All told, this was a gut-punch of a loss. The chances were good that Texas A&M was going to defend their home court. This rivalry is a very even one, and the Aggies are much better than their 4-7 conference record would indicate. But there is absolutely no reason that Texas should have folded the way they did in this one.

Things get no easier with the juggernaut known as OU heading to Austin this weekend. The Longhorns must crack down in practice during this long week, or else they’ll be sitting squarely at .500 in league play with only four games to play.