With tonight’s appearance in the Sweet 16 at Houston’s Reliant Stadium, the Texas Longhorns are making their fifth trip to the tournament’s second weekend in the last seven years. The opponent is an interesting one, as the guard-oriented Horns will be tangling with the Stanford Cardinal and their twin towers, the Lopez brothers. This game offers a complete contrast in styles, and it’s tough to predict which one will prevail.

The Cardinal faced a similar guard-oriented team last weekend in its second-round game with Marquette, a nailbiter that went to overtime after the Golden Eagles threw up an ill-advised three-pointer with six seconds left in the game. Stanford showed a lot of zone against Marquette for the first twenty minutes, but abandoned that strategy in the second half when the Golden Eagles started to heat up. Personally, I feel that the Longhorns have much stronger three-point shooters, so it could be a dangerous move for Stanford to try another zone look for very long tonight.

But the problem that Texas presents for Stanford and a man-to-man defense is the long-range shooting ability of big men Damion James and Connor Atchley. Both can knock down the three ball, which will require the Stanford bigs defending them to leave the paint quite often. This is going to open up the driving lane for D.J. Augustin and could also help the Horns with a very tough task on the glass against the Cardinal.

What I’d personally love to see a lot of in tonight’s game is Atchley or James floating out of the lane, drawing a Lopez brother away from the paint. Then, as a guard penetrates and the other Lopez shifts to help, dumping the ball for the dunk to whichever post has stayed behind. Memphis loves to do this with their dribble-drives, and if Stanford shows too much man tonight, it would be a sound strategy.

It seems like the Longhorn offense has a lot of options to attack the Stanford defense, but the prospect of shutting down the Cardinal bigs with the ball seems much more daunting. Trips Right of Barking Carnival has an in-depth look at the game, and does an incredible job breaking down the possible defensive looks.

I’ve mentioned the Lopez twins without really introducing them, because I feel it incredibly unnecessary at this point in the week. With five days of build-up to the game, this thing has been hyped about as much as it can, and the Lopez Bros. have earned a ton of ink. (And rightfully so.) In today’s Statesman, Kirk Bohls looked at how the Horns prepared for the twins, and makes the key observation that casual fans will want to remember tonight — Brook is the scorer, but Robin is a defensive machine.

Time is running short at this point, and I’ve got to hit the road for Houston. Fans stuck in Austin, Dallas, or far-flung corners of the U.S. can tune in to CBS at 6:27 PM CDT for the action. The coverage listings for the game will help those folks not in the Lone Star State, although it appears that CBS doesn’t find the match-up too appealing as they are beaming the game to only 38% of the country.

So, try to focus on your work for next five hours without checking the clock too often. And if you’re heading to the arena, get ready to scream your lungs out. We’ll be back with the post-game tomorrow.