TV: Fox Sports Southwest (TX only), 7 PM
Internet radio: SportsJuice.com

At Christmas, you find yourself eating a lot of food that you really know you shouldn’t be. You’re already beyond full, stuffed with turkey or ham and that delicious green bean casserole. You know there’s no possible enjoyment or benefit coming from trying to squeeze in just one more fudge square. But it’s just sitting there on the plate, and you find that you can’t stop grazing while Uncle Ernie is telling another story about seeing Wayne Newton live in Las Vegas.

And unforunately, that uncomfortably-full mindless gorging reminds me a lot of the game tonight between Texas and Centenary. There’s no lasting benefit that comes out of it — besides the brief moment where it tastes ohsogood — and it’s seems that it’s only there to give us a brief distraction from our annoying relatives. (Sorry, Uncle Ernie.)

Tonight’s game against Centenary isn’t going to provide much in the way of drama or intrigue, but it will give Rick Barnes a fairly strong chance at his 200th victory with the University of Texas. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that by the end of the night, Barnes will have reached the double-century mark. I’m a risk taker, I know.

The Centenary Gentlemen (5-7) are from a private school in Shreveport and play in the Mid-Continent Conference, where they face such challenging opponents as Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis — that’s IUPUI for you acronym-lovers — and Oral Roberts. Their RPI is currently 237 according to Ken Pomeroy’s RPI approximations so we will certainly see a slide in our SOS. Of course, when we play Alcorn State to start the year, everybody else looks tougher by association.

It appears that the Gents run pretty deep on their bench, with eight players seeing significant minutes and freshman forward Jeff Montague chipping in another eleven a game. Their leading scorer is guard Tyrone Hamilton, who is averaging just over 15 points per game. Centenary also looks like a pretty small team on paper, so I can only assume that we are going to see a strong rebounding advantage for the Horns.

Centenary, like Texas State, has already surpassed their win total for the 2005-06 season. The Gents only have five wins, but that still is an improvement over their 4-23 mark of a year ago. Coincidentally enough, Centenary and Texas State will play on Saturday in a rematch of the 91-85 Gents win back in November.

Honestly, this game is going to be pretty boring. But hopefully the two hours in the Erwin Center will give me enough time to figure out how in the hell to pronounce the name. Is it CEN-te-nary? Or perhaps cen-TEN-ary? These are the great philosophical questions that keep me up late at night.

For the Horns, it’s really just a chance to see how the team is looking heading into the new year and conference play. Is D.J. Augustin back at 100% after gutting through second-half cramps in Tennessee on Saturday? Will J.D. Lewis see increased playing time after his strong showing in Knoxville? And can Dexter Pittman get a double-double in less than 10 minutes of playing time?

I’d like to see Damion James take it to the rack a lot more tonight, so we can get a look at whether or not his inside touch is back. He’s thrown down his share of dunks lately, but his layups and pull-up jumpers are still a bit off. And what better time to work on a punishing inside game than against a team with the pushover nickname of “Gents”?

If you’re in town, swing by the FEC and fill in the abundance of empty seats we’ll have downstairs. Otherwise, you can catch the game in Texas on FSN, on the Longhorn Radio Network, or through the Centenary broadcast online at SportsJuice.com.