Kevin Durant scored 32 against the Wildcats

On Saturday afternoon, the Texas Longhorns lost at the Frank Erwin Center for the first time since December of 2005, falling to the Kansas State Wildcats, 73-72. The loss snapped a 22-game home winning streak and dropped the Longhorns into a three-way tie for second in the conference with the Wildcats and Kansas.

A home loss to a team playing without its biggest star is a tough pill to swallow. And Texas certainly should have won this game. Unfortunately, that means that the good things the Horns did are going to be overshadowed by the final score. I’ll get to what they did well, but first let’s get the depressing stuff out of the way.

Kansas State came into the game shooting 31% from behind the arc. The three-point shot was such a small part of their overall success, I didn’t even touch on it in the game preview. But the Wildcats got absolutely scorching hot from three-point range in this game, and it made all the difference in the world. K-State hit 51.9% of the threes they took, and those treys made up a whopping 42 of their 73 points. Unreal.

While you don’t want to take anything away from a team that is shooting that well, some attention has to be paid to the atrocious defense Texas displayed against the outside shooters. For much of the game, the Horns were married to a zone defense. Typically, when a team shoots well from outside, it will cause the opponent to switch to a man scheme in order to cut down on the open looks. But thanks to the foul trouble plaguing point guard D.J. Augustin, Coach Barnes had to stick with the zone for longer than was probably prudent.

Of course, the threes that K-State was knocking down in the final minutes of the game were coming against a man defense, so it may have been “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for the Texas D on Saturday. But there were still a ton of wide open looks that allowed really hot shooters to take all day when launching the threes. That’s a recipe for disaster, and the Horns will need to flash out on shooters much faster in the future if they want to avoid the same kind of problem.

A.J. Abrams had another rough game, going 2-for-16 from the field. One of those buckets was a three-pointer, and the other was a floater over the K-State bigs. But among those fourteen misses were a ton of other floaters, including one airball on the next-to-last possession that Kevin Durant was fortunate enough to see fall into his lap.

The guys over at Burnt Orange Nation addressed the “A.J. problem” last week in a painfully accurate entry. Abrams is great when he comes off of curls and takes a quick shot. When he’s hitting those threes, he’s content to stay in that role. But when he’s not getting those looks, or the shots aren’t falling — look out. He’ll dribble back from high screens or trying to take ridiculous floaters against guys a foot and a half taller than him, and that’s hurting the offense.

Abrams is a 90% free throw shooter on the year, so I have no problem with him driving to the basket — if he’s going to draw the foul and get to the line. But tossing up a running floater over a big guy is not exactly a high-percentage look. And as long as he’s taking shots like that, there is absolutely no reason that he should be playing more minutes than Kevin Durant. You read that correctly — Mr. 2-for-16 Abrams played more than 13-for-21, Player-of-the-Year candidate, future lottery pick Kevin Durant. I just threw up in my mouth a little.

As always, KD was a bright spot for the Horns. Sure, he was the reason that K-State had an open look for the go-ahead three. But without his 32 points, Texas isn’t even in the game with the lights-out Wildcat shooters. Durant just missed his fourteenth double-double on the year, falling one rebound short with nine. And in one insane series midway through the second half, he blocked three shots on the same possession.

The best story of the conference season has to be Connor Atchley. On Saturday, he turned in his third-straight solid game for Barnes, securing eight rebounds and blocking five shots. Yes, this is the same Connor Atchley we’ve had on our bench this season, but now he is a key role player for this team. His defense is miles beyond where it was last season and even in the earliest games of this year. He is getting better position on rebounds, and he’s still setting great screens to get the offense going. Combining Atchley’s surge with the problems A.J. has been facing, I would not mind seeing a bigger lineup on the floor for Texas a little more often in order to get Connor some more minutes.

Honestly, I’d rather not dig any further into this loss than that. The Horns took on a team that was playing absolutely out of their minds and still only lost by a point. If Kansas State shoots only 40% from three-point range — still a full 9% above their season average — Texas wins by ten. And honestly, by season’s end Kansas State could easily be one of the teams earning a first-round bye in the conference tournament. They enjoy the same “north” scheduling as Kansas, which means two games each against Colorado, Iowa State, and Nebraska. While it’s a frustrating loss to be sure, it might not look quite as bad by Selection Sunday.

Now the Longhorns must quickly put this one in the rearview mirror, as they certainly have their work cut out for them less than 24 hours from now in College Station. Maintaining focus is key; a 20-win season and a ninth consecutive NCAA berth are still well within reach.