We’re just hours away from the final home game for Texas seniors Damion James, Dexter Pittman, and Justin Mason. And although every senior night is a bittersweet experience, this year will be especially conflicting for me.

When I started this journey four years ago, it was just a crazy idea to follow the team around the country for one season and see how they grew. Now four years later, I still haven’t found a way to quit what has become an undeniable addiction. But after watching these three players compete 145 times, in far-flung locales such as Spokane and Greensboro, it feels like perhaps a chapter of my own life is coming to a close.

It’s all a bit heavy to get into when I should be writing a brief game preview that reacquaints you with the Oklahoma Sooners. I’m sure that in a few weeks, once the season is again at its end, I’ll sit down and pound out a few thousand words about all of the conflicting emotions that comes with this bizarre and monumental journey I chose to take. But for now, I’ll try to cram those feelings into just one sentence: I hope that the fans of Texas basketball, no matter how disappointed they feel, show up en masse at 7:45 tonight to give these players the respect and the ovation that they truly deserve.

But back to the actual basketball game……

If you missed the preview from the first match-up in Norman, you’ll want to check that out for more information on the Oklahoma players and style. And if you happened to miss the game itself, you can read the game wrap to learn about the disappointing fashion in which Texas lost.

Tonight, we’ll be keeping our eyes on a few things as the team heads into the final week of the regular season…

1) Can the Longhorns defend the perimeter? – The first time Texas played OU, 20 minutes of poor perimeter defense put the Horns in a hole they could never dig out of. To be fair, a huge reason why the Sooners fared so well from behind the arc was steady shooting from Tommy Mason-Griffin. Even when Texas did manage to get a hand in the face of the diminutive gunner, he still calmly buried the shot. If TMG has that kind of night again at the Erwin Center, the Horns will have a tough time avenging their previous loss. But if TMG is hitting those shots and the rest of the Sooners are again having a field day, Senior Night could be a total disaster.

2) What will J’Covan Brown provide? – The freshman guard is back in the lineup for tonight’s game after suffering a very scary injury on Saturday in College Station, but it’s reasonable to think his role will be very limited. Unfortunately, J’Covan did not look good in the 79 minutes of basketball prior to his injury, struggling against both Oklahoma State and the Aggies. Will the injury inspire Brown to be more competitive and produce at a higher level, or will it make him a more tentative player prone to mistakes? We likely won’t know the complete answers to these questions if he plays just a few minutes, but it’s definitely something we will pay very close attention to when he’s on the court.

3)Will the real Texas frontcourt please stand up? – Once it was Jordan Hamilton who was the most wildly inconsistent player on the Texas roster. Now, it’s an entire personnel group. Gary Johnson followed up huge games against Tech and Oklahoma State by getting pushed around and intimidated by the Aggie big men. After struggling for the better part of two months, Dexter Pittman showed some life against the smaller Cowboys and even had a few flashes of brilliance in the midst of a very disappointing A&M game. Damion James, meanwhile, had no rebounds in the entire first half against the Aggies. Are all of the Texas big men ever going to put it together at the same time for any significant stretch of the season? There’s very little time left for them to do so, but there also isn’t any better time to peak than in March…

Another look at the standings

Thanks to Oklahoma State’s shocking upset of Kansas on Saturday, the Longhorns now could potentially fall all the way to 7th in the final standings if the Cowboys post a better record than Texas in these final two games. The Pokes close with a road game at A&M and a home date with Nebraska. OSU should certainly earn at least one win, so the Longhorns must get a leg up with their own victory tonight.

But while the Horns are now tied with Oklahoma State, they are still just a game back of Baylor, Mizzou, and A&M, who are all tied for third in the league. So with two games left on the slate, Texas could finish as high as third or as low as seventh. That’s a heck of a lot of uncertainty. (And a hell of a headache when it comes to planning your travel to the conference tournament.)

Saturday’s season finale is a very tough road game against a sound Baylor team that stands between Texas and a first-round bye in the league tournament. A win tonight is absolutely critical if the Horns have any designs on one of those two remaining byes. A win would also guarantee that they finish above .500 in league play. A loss in this final home game, and our next preview will be talking about what the Longhorns have to do to stay out of 7th place.