The Longhorns return to the Erwin Center as victors, having withstood a late charge from Texas Tech to secure a narrow 71-67 win on Saturday. But while the victory was huge, it was a loss for Texas that loomed even larger. Dogus Balbay went down early in the first half with an ACL tear that has sidelined him for the rest of the year. Coupled with the November injury to Varez Ward, the once-deep Longhorn backcourt is now in total disarray.

Texas managed to beat Oklahoma State in their first meeting, but a huge reason for the win was the defensive performance of Balbay against OSU superstar James Anderson. After scoring 22 of his team’s 34 first-half points, Anderson was held to just four points in the second half. Without Balbay on the court tonight, Anderson could have a career game.

If you need a refresher on OSU’s style of basketball or their key players, click here for the preview from the first match-up. If you don’t, let’s dive right into our keys for tonight’s game……

Keys to the game

First and foremost, Texas will have to find a way to shut down James Anderson. We hate to belabor a point, but without Balbay, the Longhorns are going to have to find a way to keep the Cowboy guard from going off for 30-plus points. At 6’6″, he’s a tough match-up for Texas, especially when you consider that the best defenders Rick Barnes has on his roster are a pair of 6’2″ guards in Avery Bradley and Justin Mason. While Jordan Hamilton is a better match-up physically for Anderson, his defense consists mostly of watching people blow past him and then compounding the mistake with fouls from behind.

While Anderson is much taller than the Texas backcourt, the Cowboys are actually much smaller across the board than Texas. The Longhorns must control the defensive glass in order to limit the number of Oklahoma State possessions. The Pokes don’t turn the ball over that often, so giving them second and third chances will only serve to keep OSU in the game and wear out an already thin Texas lineup.

In the same vein, the Longhorns also need to take advantage of their size inside. Whether that means Dexter Pittman needs to step up and have the kind of game we haven’t seen from him since Fayetteville, or if it means that Gary Johnson has a second-straight career game by hustling down low, the fact remains that Texas must make its easy looks. The first time these teams met, the Longhorns missed a lot of shots just a few feet from the basket. Had Jordan Hamilton not had a magical game, Texas would have ended up on the losing end.

The biggest thing we will be looking at tonight is how J’Covan Brown handles point guard duties. As we wrote yesterday, failing to play him at this point amounts to giving up on the season. There will certainly be hiccups along the way, but now this is undoubtedly J’Covan’s team to run, and we are very interested in seeing how he handles the pressure.

Texas hasn’t won two games in a row in over a month, a stretch in which the team has lost six out of ten. Tonight provides the Longhorns an opportunity to finally string a pair of wins together, and to position itself for quite a battle in the league standings during this last week and a half.

The five teams in places three through seven are separated by just one game, and with only four more games on each team’s schedule, there is little room for error. A Texas win tonight means that there is quite a bit on the line this Saturday in College Station. A loss likely means that this former No. 1 team won’t even earn a bye in its conference tournament.