TV: ESPN, 11 AM Central

Texas faces its third SEC opponent of the month on Saturday afternoon as they take on the Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville. Both teams come in on winning streaks, with the Vols claiming a five-game run while the Horns have won their last three. But for Texas to earn an SEC sweep, they’re going to have to survive their first real road test of the year.

Tennessee pulled out a thriller on Monday night against Oklahoma State in Nashville, winning 79-77 on a Dane Bradshaw tip-in with 1.9 seconds left. Two days later, Texas survived a tough battle with the Arkansas Razorbacks despite going ice-cold from the line in the second half.

For this weekend’s game, I’ll try to make the keys reader-friendly for those who decide to tune in and watch Bruce Pearl sweat more than his players.

1. Protect the ball
Tennessee is great with ball pressure, and Texas was a victim of that last December. The Horns turned over the ball 22 times in the 95-78 Vol blowout, but should do much better this time around. Last season, A.J. Abrams was shoved into the point guard role after Daniel Gibson left the game with a concussion. This year, Texas has a true point guard — albeit a freshman point guard — who has run the offense very well and can score at will if the defense overplays.

Texas State ran a lot of presses against the Horns last weekend, and it seemed to frustrate them for much of the contest. But as the game wore on, Texas worked their way through it and eventually pulled away. Tennessee’s intense defense is much more dangerous, as they showed in forcing two huge turnovers late in the Oklahoma State contest. It’s probably unavoidable that Texas will turn over the ball more than usual. The key is to limit the damage.

2. Turn the tables
On the flip side of Tennessee’s pressure defense is their own sloppy ballhandling. The Vols average just over 17 turnovers a game, and that offers a huge opportunity for Texas to create transition baskets and cancel out their own inevitable TOs.

3. Limit Lofton
Chris Lofton is without a doubt the most dangerous player on the floor for Tennessee. He’s hitting threes at a ridiculous 48.9% in the first eleven games, and was able to torch the Longhorns for 21 in last year’s matchup. Texas must protect the perimeter and not allow the abundance of open looks that they gave Gonzaga and Arkansas. If they can’t keep a hand in the face of Lofton, it’s going to be a long, long day.

4. Go forth with alacrity
a·lac·ri·ty – noun
   1. cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness
   2. liveliness; briskness.

While cheerful readiness is always great, I don’t think it matters if Jay Mason is smiling or not. But if I had my Christmas wish and this game were on TBS, alacrity would be a key. And wouldn’t this game be great to watch with Seger and the pubescent, voice-cracking announcer?

While not a key, it will be interesting to see if the improvement from Damion James and Connor Atchley can continue. Along with the increased contributions from those two, we’ve also seen a rise in fouls from our players in the last two games. Keep an eye on the foul trouble for our key players, particularly D.J. Augustin. He tends to rack up quite a few, and with the attention we are going to have to be paying to Lofton — and, to a lesser extent, JaJuan Smith — our guards are going to be vulnerable to picking up fouls away from the basket.

The crowd will also obviously be something new for the Horns to deal with. The “neutral site” game in Phoenix is the closest thing that the Horns have seen to a road environment, with probably 90% of the crowd pulling for Gonzaga. But Bruce Pearl has created a lot of excitement in Knoxville, and there will be much less than 10% of the arena rooting for the Horns. Right now, the weather is absolutely shitty and the game is obviously two days before the holidays. Hopefully those two factors can come together enough to negate some of the huge home-court advantage.

I’m not sure when I’ll get to the post-game, considering it’s another fifteen-hour drive back to Austin. But in the meantime, enjoy the game and have a very merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, killer Kwanzaa… and, of course, a great Festivus.