After last year’s disappointing collapse and ignominious exit in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Texas fans were understandably skittish about embracing this year’s team. Even after a torrid 11-0 start to conference play, Longhorn Nation was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. It finally did, in the form of three losses in the team’s last five conference games and a slide to second in the conference standings.

Selection Sunday stung the spurned Longhorn fans even more. Texas dropped from a No. 2 or a No. 3 seed to a No. 4 seed, and drew a terribly tough match-up in an Oakland team that was probably under-seeded with its placement on the 13 line. Despite the tough draw, the Longhorns took a step towards erasing the demons of their past, hanging on to an 85-81 win against a feisty Oakland club on Friday afternoon.

While the win is just one small step in a much larger goal, it came as a relief to those Longhorn fans still skeptical after last year. Arizona will provide yet another tough test on Sunday in the NCAA Third Round, but at least for one day, Texas fans can finally breathe a little easier.

What looked good

The Longhorns did an excellent job forcing Oakland to settle for three-pointers. The Grizzlies averaged just 35% of their shots from behind the arc coming into the game, but took 39% of their attempts from long range on Friday. Texas was able to contest most of those looks, locking down sharpshooter Travis Bader and limiting him to a 2-for-11 performance from long range. Coming into the game, the freshman was drilling nearly 46% of his three-point attempts.

Star senior guard Reggie Hamilton found it just as tough to score from outside. He was just 2-of-9 against the Texas defense, and both of those threes came on stepback shots with a Longhorn defender just inches away from him. Texas couldn’t do anything better to defend those shots, and you simply have to tip your cap to Hamilton for sticking those looks.

Inside, Texas freshman Tristan Thompson did a fantastic job against Oakland’s Keith Benson. Thompson broke the school record for blocks in an NCAA game by swatting seven Oakland attempts, and four of those blocks came against Benson.

Oakland’s big man is a guaranteed NBA player, and might even be a lottery pick in the next NBA draft. Despite that intimidating match-up, Thompson set the tone early by taking it at Benson and forced Oakland to change their defensive approach to protect their star from foul trouble. Tristan finished with a double-double, scoring 17 points to go with 10 boards.

Jordan Hamilton also posted a double-double for Texas by scoring 19 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. He drove the lane consistently against Oakland, eschewing his usual flurry of three-point attempts. Hamilton took only three shots from behind the arc, the fewest attempts he’s had in a game since the team’s win against Kansas in Lawrence on January 22nd.

Against Oakland, Jordan made eight of his 14 attempts from inside the arc, simply because he put the ball on the floor and attacked the seams in the defense. If Hamilton will continue to attack defenses as the Longhorns move forward in the tournament, it will make the offense look much more like the well-oiled machine we saw in January and not the painfully stagnant mess we watched in late February.

Gary Johnson also had a solid game for Texas, which was a relief after how the last few weeks had gone for the senior. Johnson was just 26.7% from the field in the team’s last five games, including a 21.7% mark at the Big 12 tournament which included three missed dunks. Against Oakland, he was 4-of-6 from the field — including a made dunk — and was able to consistently knock down his patented mid-range jumper.

Off the bench, J’Covan Brown provided another solid game. He led the team with 21 points, twelve of them coming at the free throw line, where he was perfect on the day. While he had a tough time scoring inside against the physical Oakland frontcourt, Brown was able to manufacture points for his team by getting to the line. J’Covan also added three assists and six boards, and had an incredible block on a closeout against Bader on a three-point attempt.

It’s also worth noting that the rest of the team did fairly well at the free throw line, too. Hamilton and Cory Joseph were both 3-of-4 at the line, with all of Joseph’s attempts coming in the final minute of the game. Thompson was just 3-of-6 at the stripe, but at this point, 50% from the big man is a minor victory. With his season average sitting at 48.6%, Longhorn fans are simply hoping Thompson can sink one out of every two.

What needed work

Texas had just 10 turnovers in 71 possessions, but when the Longhorns did make mistakes with the basketball, it led to runs for Oakland. With Texas up 12 late in the first half, three straight turnovers and a missed three allowed the Grizzlies to slice the lead to just five points.

At the end of the game, Texas again made some poor decisions with the ball. With just five minutes left, Texas led by 15, but had three turnovers down the stretch to aid a furious Oakland comeback bid. The most egregious mistake was when Gary Johnson tried to single-handedly break the Oakland press, dribbling it three-quarters of the court before having it stolen. Oakland drilled a three on the ensuing possession, and Texas’ lead had shrunk to five.

Games are going to be close for the rest of the season, so the Longhorns must make better decisions in the clutch. The ball simply has to be passed to the best shooters on the floor. Rick Barnes was furious with Hamilton for passing to a poor free-throw shooter in crunch time against Kansas in Lawrence, so you have to be concerned that this could be a deadly trend in March.

Finally, it should be noted that the Longhorns had some major issues shutting down the slashing attack of Oakland inside. While Texas did a great job contesting Oakland’s long-range shots, it was often far too easy for the Grizzlies to score inside. The Longhorns allowed 1.148 points per possession, which was just under Oakland’s season average coming into the game.

A big part of Oakland’s excellent offensive efficiency was the 38 points they scored in the paint. with Benson limited to 12 points from the field, most of those points in the paint came on layups from the slashing guards and wings. If the Longhorns are going to continue to advance in the tournament, they will have to make sure the defense shuts down driving lanes as well as it shuts down the perimeter.

Next up: vs. Arizona (28-7) in Tulsa, OK; 5:10 P.M. CT, Sunday

No time for a full-fledged post-game, as we still have nine hours of interstate ahead of us and want to be somewhere at 5 P.M. where we can catch the Selection Show. The vast wasteland between OKC and Denton really makes that hard to do, so we’ll keep this brief.

We’ve known all season that frontcourt depth was going to be an issue, but last night was certainly an extreme example of it. Tristan Thompson played just 21 minutes thanks to foul trouble, while Gary Johnson was going through his fifth-straight rough game on the offensive end. Johnson was just 1-of-9 from the floor, giving him a 5-for-24 line during the Big 12 Tournament that included three missed dunks. In the team’s last five games, Gary is shooting just 26%.

Thompson’s foul trouble also underscored his importance to the offense even when he isn’t scoring. The team managed to grab just 25.9% of their offensive rebounding opportunities, well off their 37.9% season average. In the first half, the Longhorns only secured 20% of their offensive boards, limiting them to numerous one-and-done possessions while the Jayhawks were building a massive lead on the strength of a ridiculous 58% shooting mark. Texas was able to grab more offensive rebounds when the Morris twins were in second-half foul trouble, and Texas was able to chip away at the lead as a result.

In a tournament where one bad game can end your season, the Longhorns are going to have to hope for a draw with less physical frontcourts than the one the Jayhawks sport. Texas has competed in the past against similar teams, and even beat Kansas in Lawrence. But the chances are good that Thompson could run into the same foul trouble as he did yesterday, and then the Longhorns will likely be sunk.

Texas also made the mistake of making far too many light fouls inside. That wasn’t the difference in this game, as there was simply no beating Kansas on Saturday afternoon. But the Longhorns gave up so many and-one opportunities that it’s a troubling trend going forward. The last time Texas and Kansas played, Matt Hill did a great job making his fouls count and ensuring that the Jayhawks would have to earn both points at the line. Last night, the Longhorns not only allowed the buckets, but compounded the issue by piling up fouls and giving Kansas extra points from the charity stripe.

All the credit in the world has to go to Tyshawn Taylor. He broke down the defense off the dribble, time after time. When he wasn’t finishing at the rack, he was drawing enough defensive attention to get Thomas Robinson or the Brothers Morrii wide open dunks and layups. Taylor played his best game in ages, scoring 20 points while dishing out five dimes.

Kansas executed so well on Saturday afternoon, it’s hard to imagine a team that could have beat them. They broke down the Texas defense, moved the ball extremely well, and shut down the driving lanes on defense. If Penn State does the unthinkable this afternoon and knocks off Ohio State, there’s no question that the Jayhawks are your overall No. 1 seed in the NCAAs. After yesterday’s performance, they still have an argument even if Ohio State does win.

We’ll be checking in again via Twitter during the Selection Show. At this point, Texas is practically assured a first-weekend trip to Tulsa. They are likely a 2-seed, but there is still the chance they could slip down to the top of the 3-seed line. That wouldn’t be a result of losing to Kansas, but rather just upward trends from teams currently slotted behind the Longhorns.

The big question for LRT is where the Longhorns head for the second weekend. Texas is essentially locked out of San Antonio now that Kansas will likely be there, with Pitt in New Orleans. But with Newark being one of the four regional sites this season, we ask that for our sake, you keep all of your fingers crossed that Texas lands in Anaheim or New Orleans.

On Thursday, the Longhorns finished off a three-game sweep of their rivals from Oklahoma. A night later, Texas repeated the feat against their most-hated in-state foes. The Longhorns scrapped their way to a 70-58 win over Texas A&M in last night’s Big 12 semifinal, earning their first three-game sweep of the Aggies since the 1991-92 season, when both schools were still in the Southwest Conference.

Unlike the first two games between these two teams, this one was never a laugher. There were four ties and ten lead changes, and neither team led by more than seven points until midway through the second half. Even then, the Aggies were able to trim the margin back down to four points with just five minutes to play. A 10-2 run by the Longhorns finally put the game out of reach, with Gary Johnson icing it at the free-throw line in the final two minutes.

Although this game had the exact same number of possessions as the first game in Austin, it felt completely different. A&M’s defense did an excellent job turning back the drivers and trapping Tristan Thompson when he caught the entry pass a few feet off the block. Texas turned it over on 20.9% of its possessions and missed a handful of easy finishes at the rim in the first half. Despite all of that, the Longhorns had one of their most efficient offensive performances of the season.

The key was another strong performance on the glass. On top of an excellent 49% shooting percentage for the game, the Longhorns also grabbed 52.4% of their missed shots. That number was so good, in fact, that it was the team’s third-best performance of the season, behind only their drubbings of Coppin State and Texas State. With the Longhorns making nearly half of their shots and adding 20 second-chance points, Texas A&M’s upset hopes were dashed.

On defense, the Longhorns allowed a respectable 1.01 points per possession. The Aggies managed that level of efficiency largely by drawing fouls and getting to the line. Texas A&M had a free-throw rate of 56.3% — the second-highest allowed by Texas all year — and they converted on 21 of their 27 attempts.

That strategy of manufacturing points obscured the fact that Texas did an excellent job defending in the half-court. After falling behind 14-7 just seven minutes into the game, the Longhorn defense held the Aggies to just one field goal over the next eight minutes, allowing Texas to reclaim the lead. For the game, the Horns limited A&M to just 35.4% from the field and 27.3% behind the arc, just one night after the Aggies had shot 57.8% against Missouri and made 50% of their threes.

Jordan Hamilton had his second-straight solid performance, scoring 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting. After making just 31.4% of his shots in the team’s final six regular season games, Hamilton has a field-goal percentage of 51.6% in the two Big 12 tournament games, including a 40% success rate behind the arc. Having a more-efficient Hamilton was Texas’ number-one concern heading into March. So far, things are looking up, but the true test will come for him today against Kansas.

Once again, Hamilton’s strong effort was matched by freshman Tristan Thompson. The big Canadian posted his third double-double in the team’s last four games, scoring 14 points to go with 13 rebounds. Of those, nine of Thompson’s boards came on the offensive glass. His individual offensive rebounding percentage was a whopping 32.8% for the game.

The biggest concern in the win was questionable play from the other big men. Johnson had a painful game until his six points in the final few minutes. He struggled with foul trouble most of the way, and missed his first six shots from the field, including a dunk attempt. Off the bench, Alexis Wangmene never got into the flow of the game, and only showed up in the box score thanks to his three fouls in six minutes.

Fortunately, J’Covan Brown played well off the bench, scoring 15 points on an efficient 5-of-8 shooting night. He knocked down three triples, including two in a row midway through the second half that helped the Longhorns pull away momentarily. Like Hamilton, Brown’s resurgance is coming at just the right time. He’s shooting 62.5% in the Big 12 tournament after making just 31.3% of his shots in the team’s last eight conference games.

Next up: vs. Kansas (31-2); 5 P.M. CT, Saturday

The Texas Longhorns badly needed a shot in the arm. After storming through conference play with an 11-0 mark and a efficiency differential of greater than 0.20 points per possession, Texas looked nearly unstoppable. But in their final five games of the season, the Longhorn offense stalled out at the exact time that their impenetrable defense began to lose its luster.

After holding 10 of their first 11 conference opponents to less than 0.80 points per possession, the Longhorn defense turned into a sieve during the final three weeks of the season. In losses to Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas State, Texas allowed an average of 1.174 points per defensive possession.

It was a stroke of luck, then, that the Longhorns and Sooners were matched up in last night’s quarterfinal. In the first two meetings between the teams, Texas held Oklahoma to just .797 points per possession and an effective field goal percentage of only 38.3%, while winning by an average of 12.5 points.

It was more of the same last night, as Texas built upon their strong defensive showing in the regular-season finale against Baylor. The Longhorn defense held Oklahoma to just six points in the first 10-plus minutes of the game, and jumped out to another early lead that they would never relinquish. Texas put it on auto-pilot at halftime, coasting to a 74-54 win, their third victory of the season over the Sooners.

A night after the Oklahoma offense had run roughshod over Baylor, Texas completely shut down the Sooner attack. Oklahoma shot 50% from behind the arc against Baylor in the first round game, but were just 0-5 from long range in the first half against Texas. While OU did manage to knock down half of their two-point attempts in the first half, their inability to reclaim any of the misses doomed them to failure.

Texas held the Sooners to just three offensive rebounds in the entire game, with two of them coming in the final 62 seconds. The absolute clinic on the glass gave the Longhorns a defensive rebounding percentage of 89.5%, their best mark of the season by far. The only game that saw Texas come anywhere close to that level of dominance was the season opener against Navy, in which the Horns grabbed 84.3% of the Midshipmen’s misses.

On offense, the Longhorns looked more crisp than they had in weeks. J’Covan Brown and Jordan Hamilton drove baseline from the wings time and again, resulting in layups and wide-open interior passes for the bigs. Brown had a season-high five assists, while Hamilton added a pair of his own. The unselfish play was a team-wide attitude, as Texas logged 18 assists on 29 baskets.

The biggest surprise of the day came from Jai Lucas, who gave 20 minutes off the bench and gave the Longhorns an early spark with his eight points. Lucas had a very tough outing against Oklahoma in the home game on January 15th, playing just six minutes thanks to poor defense against OU’s Carl Blair. In this one, he kept the speedy guard in front of him, knocked down both of his three-point attempts, and logged three assists.

While Lucas is not going to be playing that many minutes against better opponents, the key takeaway from this one is that it appears his confidence has improved dramatically. In the last three games, Lucas shot 57% from the field, 3-of-4 behind the arc, and logged four steals. In the first 29 games of the year, he was 33.6% from the field, 20.5% from three-point range, and had three total steals.

Where Lucas was once just a spot-up shooter, he now has the confidence to drive for pull-up jumpers, and he finally seems capable on the defensive end. If Texas can just get at least 10 minutes of quality bench play from Lucas in tournament games, the team’s depth issues become less of a factor.

Inside, Tristan Thompson abused the Sooner frontcourt. He posted his eighth double-double of the season, grabbing 11 rebounds to go with his 13 points. In his last five games, Thompson is averaging 18.2 points, 11.2 boards, and 2.4 blocks per game. Without a doubt, the freshman has chosen the best time of the year to become an unstoppable force.

The most reassuring thing about the victory was the resurgence of sophomore star Jordan Hamilton. After shooting just 31.4% from the field over the team’s final five regular season games, Hamilton played a fantastic game against the Sooners. He was 9-of-18 from the field, with three of those misses coming on one particularly physical sequence inside. Hamilton seemed more willing to attack inside, wasn’t primarily focused on shooting, and used his teammates screens to come open for mid-range jumpers. If this is the Hamilton that shows up against better teams — instead of the one that dribbled the air out of the ball in recent weeks — Texas is once again a scary team.

Next up: vs. Texas A&M (24-7); Friday, 8:30 P.M. CT

It was far from pretty. But after losing three of their last four games, the Longhorns were willing to take any win they could get.

Texas finally ended its road woes last night, winning in Waco for the team’s first victory away from the Erwin Center since beating Oklahoma in Norman on February 9th. The Horns overcame 35% shooting from the field, capitalizing on an excellent rebounding performance to gut out a 60-54 win over Baylor.

The loss was much bigger for the Bears than the win was for the Longhorns. Texas was already locked into the Big 12’s second seed in the upcoming conference tournament, while the Bears entered the game as one of Joe Lunardi’s projected “First Four Out” of the NCAA field. Following the defeat, Baylor was still entrenched in that dreaded group, as other bubble teams failed to secure convincing wins.

Fortunately for the Bears, they can get another crack at Texas. Thanks to a late season win against Nebraska, Baylor owned the tiebreaker over the Cornhuskers and earned the league’s 7th seed in the conference tournament. Now they only have to beat 10th-seeded Oklahoma in order to face Texas in the tournament quarterfinals on Thursday night. At just 7-9 in league play, with just a pair of victories over Texas A&M to hang their hat on, even a win in that game might not be enough for the Bears.

What looked good

In a game that had just 45 combined points in the first half, there wasn’t much that looked exceptionally good. Much of the ugliness on the court was caused by the long-awaited return of Texas’ stifling defense. The Longhorns limited Baylor to just 0.915 points per possession, only the second time in the last five games that Texas was able to keep an opponent under one point per trip. The other came against the league’s cellar-dweller, Iowa State, who managed only 0.767 points per possession in Austin last week.

While the Texas defense was finally making its reappearance, the offense was struggling. Tristan Thompson managed to keep Texas afloat in the first half, however, dominating the offensive glass and piling up second chance points. Thompson finished the game with 19 points and 13 rebounds, with eight of those boards coming on the offensive end.

Thompson’s rebounding percentage on the offensive glass was an insane 22.8%, the first time he had even cracked the 15% mark since beating Missouri in early January. As a point of reference, the nation’s best offensive rebounder — Morehead State’s Kenneth Faried — is averaging a 20.1% success rate on offensive rebounding opportunities against his overmatched Ohio Valley foes.

Thompson wasn’t the only one dominating the rebounding battle. As a team, the Longhorns grabbed more than 51% of their missed shots, which resulted in quite a few boards thanks to their 38 missed shots on the night. In the first half, Texas reclaimed 44% of their offensive rebounding opportunities, and did an even better job out-muscling the Bears in the second half. The Longhorns secured 12 offensive boards in the final twenty minutes, while Baylor grabbed just eight defensive rebounds.

A big part of Texas’ late-game success was clutch play from Alexis Wangmene. He played only 11 minutes in the game, but grabbed five offensive boards, including three in the final three minutes. He earned four attempts at the line, and sunk all of them, a huge feat for any Longhorn. The team made just 59.3% of their free throw attempts on the night, and just 52.2% if you take Wangmene’s makes out of the equation.

With the game still in doubt and less than a minute on the clock, Wangmene managed to grab his most important rebound off a missed jumper by Cory Joseph. The Horns kicked it out to the sure-shooting J’Covan Brown, who essentially iced the game with a pair of free throws. Although Alexis doesn’t get credit on the stat sheet for those points, the much-maligned reserve was instrumental in preserving the win.

The other player who must be singled out for an impressive performance is Gary Johnson. Playing in his final regular season game, Johnson did it all on both ends of the court. In addition to eight big rebounds, Johnson also had a pair of clutch jumpers that kept Texas in the game early in the second half when it looked like Baylor was going to run away with it. Most important, however, was his surprising defense on Baylor’s LaceDarius Dunn, who was becoming a one-man wrecking crew coming out of halftime.

Early in the second half, Dunn drilled a three-pointer with Balbay in his face. Texas responded on the next possession, as Joseph left A.J. Walton to double Dunn. The extra attention backfired, as it allowed Walton to get an easy putback on a weakside rebound. Two possessions later, Anthony Jones had a wide-open three because Joseph again elected to double Dunn instead of sticking with Walton, and Baylor’s quick ball reversal around the perimeter led to the easy triple. LaceDarius followed all of that with another bucket on the ensuing possession, and the Bears were suddenly up by nine.

Coming out of the under-16 media timeout, Rick Barnes gave Gary Johnson the difficult task of sticking with Baylor’s superstar. Where Dunn could once pop ridiculous shots with Balbay in his face, he now had to deal with a 6’6″ defender. Beyond just the height advantage, Johnson also showed incredible athleticism and hustle in sticking with Dunn through screen after screen, limiting his ability to find the space to shoot. With Johnson defending him, Dunn had a scoreless stretch of more than seven minutes, and went just 2-for-9 the rest of the game.

What needed work

Unfortunately for the Longhorns, a big part of their early struggles was the continued difficulty for Jordan Hamilton on the offensive end. He was just 1-for-7 from the field in the first half, with his only basket coming on a dunk. Two of his misses were on ugly, forced shots, and he passed up open looks inside by trying to make unnecessary interior passes to the blocks.

Those extra passes inside were indicative of a larger problem for Texas, namely that the team looked incredibly tight in the first half. The Longhorns had a few early possessions where they actually penetrated the zone or made the pass into the soft middle. But instead of being assertive with the basketball and taking the shot or making the quick pass, the players seemed to be too concerned with not making mistakes. That indecision let Baylor recover, and Texas was forced into long, ugly possessions that typically ended in bad looks.

As always, free throws were an albatross for the Longhorns. As previously mentioned, the team shot below 60% at the line, the 11th time they have been below that watermark in their 31 games. Add in the fact that Texas missed the front end on three different one-and-one attempts, and that’s a ton of potential points the team left on the line.

While it’s a known fact that Thompson is going to struggle from the line — and that he gets to the line more frequently than the rest of the team — the troubling thing is that J’Covan Brown and Cory Joseph were the culprits on two of those wasted one-and-ones. When even the guards are struggling at the line, Texas is going to have some major issues with offensive efficiency.

Up next: Big 12 Tournament Quarterfinal vs. Baylor or Oklahoma (in Kansas City); Thursday, 6 P.M. CT