Home and in one piece. After sleeping approximately 731.9 hours, though, it’s time to rush out the door. We’ll be back with some post-game thoughts in the last few hours before the BCS National Championship Game.

After a disappointing performance against an average Southland Conference team, the Longhorns look to bounce back quickly in a road test against Arkansas tonight. Last year, the Longhorns fell victim to an upset at this same arena, losing to a young Razorback team, 67-61. While this season’s Arkansas team isn’t as young, it’s possibly just as inexperienced, thanks to a handful of suspensions and dismissals.

Five different Razorbacks were suspended by Coach John Pelphrey at the start of the season, and while a few have rejoined the team, starting point guard Courtney Fortson is still missing in action. The coach is still tight-lipped about the suspension, refusing to say when — if ever — the sophomore will reclaim his duties as the team’s floor leader. Without Fortson in the mix, freshman point guard Julysses Nobles has been thrust into the role, where he has had his share of growing pains.

By the numbers

The Razorbacks are sitting at a perfect .500 record, having knocked off a handful of small schools like Delaware State and Alcorn State, while losing to a diverse group of teams including Louisville, Baylor, and Morgan State.

For Arkansas, the biggest problem is their lack of size, and it manifests itself in the rebounding battle. The Razorbacks grab just 30% of their offensive rebounding opportunities, placing the team firmly in the bottom third of the nation. On defense, they allow their opponents to snag 33% of their offensive board chances, which is a respectable number on the surface. But when you look closer at the stats, it’s clear that the numbers are skewed by the cupcakes on Arkansas’ schedule.

In the seven losses that the Razorbacks have suffered, they have not held an opponent to less than a 47.2% offensive rebounding mark. In six of those losses, Arkansas gave up more than 51% of the opportunities, with East Tennessee State recovering a ridiculous 69.4% of their chances. Against a much bigger and deeper Texas team, the Razorbacks are going to have their hands full keeping the Longhorns from cleaning up the offensive glass.

For the second-straight game, Texas will also be facing an opponent who mirrors their struggles from the line. While the Longhorns are hitting just 62.8% of their free throws, the Razorbacks are making 65% of their attempts. If tonight’s game turns into a physical foul-fest, both teams could leave a ton of points on the stripe.

Meet the Razorbacks

The key player for Arkansas is sophomore sharpshooter Rotnei Clarke. In his season debut, Clarke set a school record by scoring 51, knocking down 13 three-pointers on the night. He has a quick release and elevates well to get shots over taller defenders despite his 6-foot frame. Clarke is deceptively quick off the dribble, and worked hard on his runners in the off-season to make his game even more dangerous.

The Razorbacks spend a lot of their time setting screens off the ball for Clarke, and as a result, their offense can often bog down if the defense is successfully shutting down the long-range gunner. But when Clarke’s shot is falling, it opens things up inside for a pair of big men who can score in bunches.

Michael Washington is the center who benefits the most from the outside-in attack of the Razorbacks. But the 6’9” senior isn’t just a lump in the paint — he actually has three-point range, and will often try one or two trifectas per game. He’s very active on the glass and has a fairly consistent midrange jumper. This year, he’s third on the team in scoring and second in rebounding, providing 13.2 points and 5.6 boards per game.

The other man reaping the benefits when defenses key on Clarke is freshman forward Marshawn Powell. Like Washington, he has a nice midrange jumper and hustles for the rebounds against bigger, stronger opponents. Powell still needs to add some muscle to his 6’7” frame, but he’s playing very well for a freshman and is actually tops on the team with 6.6 boards per game. His 14.9 points are second on the team behind only Clarke.

Jermal Farmer is the other main scorer for Arkansas, making a quick impact after transferring from Cloud County College in Kansas. In his Razorback debut, Farmer scored 28 points, but was overshadowed by Clarke’s 51-point outburst. A 6’5” swingman, the Juco transfer is an incredibly athletic player, and one of the few on the Arkansas roster who can create his own shot.

As mentioned earlier, Nobles is a freshman guard who has been thrust into the starting role at the point thanks to Fortson’s suspension. He’s logged 60 dimes in his first fourteen games, but has posted an assist-to-TO ratio of just 1.54-to-1. Nobles hasn’t yet shown consistency from the floor this season, but his three-point percentage (36.8%) is actually second on the team behind Clarke’s astronomically-high 51% mark.

Marcus Britt and Stef Welsh are the only men off the bench who play more than 20 minutes a game, and they combine for 12.5 points per contest. Britt is a junior guard who has a steady hand with the ball and helps Nobles with distribution duties. Welsh is a senior who has locked down the sixth-man role and is best known for his stifling defense. Last year, he was the main man responsible for holding A.J. Abrams to just seven points.

Keys to the game

Based simply on the size mismatch and the trouble that Arkansas has on the glass, the rebounding battle will be key to the outcome tonight. If the Razorbacks want to have any chance at the home upset, they will have to keep Texas from piling up second-chance points, and they will have to earn their own extra possessions by beating the Longhorns on the offensive glass.

The other huge factor in tonight’s game will be the play of Clarke, the three-point specialist. If the suffocating Texas defense can limit his scoring, it will not only scuttle the Arkansas offense, but also exhaust the Razorbacks as they work even harder to free Clarke up for open looks. If Arkansas hopes to pull off a huge upset tonight, there is no doubt that the dead-eye sophomore must have a huge game.

Those two keys are essentially all that matters tonight. But for Texas fans, it will worth keeping an eye on what the Longhorns do against the zone looks that Arkansas will mix in. Texas seemed completely unwilling to attack the soft middle of the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi zone on Saturday, settling just for ball reversal on the perimeter and an excessive number of threes. The Longhorns simply must attempt to run some passes through the high post or attack the defense with some solid dribble penetration. If they can’t do it against the likes of Arkansas, they will have a really hard time getting any offense against many of their Big 12 foes.

The big finish

It’s interesting to note that both the Longhorn basketball and football teams are 13-0 as of this morning. If both can win their weekday games over the next three days, the the basketball team will match the best start in school history and the football team will win some sort of trophy. I hear it’s a shiny crystal thing that looks like a football…

This game preview is coming to you from the passenger seat of a car on northbound I-35, so further website updates will be at least a day away. We’ve got a nine-hour drive in store right after the game tonight, meaning that post-game thoughts — and a few thoughts about the A&M-CC disappointment — won’t be available until Wednesday night.

In the meantime, you can get quick updates from the road and Bud Walton Arena by following our Twitter @LonghornRdTrip. Don’t say it — we know. The whole idea of the Twitter thing seems a bit ridiculous, and we were more than resistant to the idea. But after much convincing, we finally realized that it does provide an incredibly easy way to update from inside the games, and even allowed us to break the diagnosis of Varez Ward’s injury a full twelve hours before the mainstream media. If you don’t feel like following our updates on another whole website, don’t fret — in theory, we’ll even have the Twitter updates lodged into this website’s sidebar in the near future.

For those of you fortunate enough to not be living in the state of Arkansas — or crazy enough to make the drive — you’ll have to catch tonight’s action on ESPN2. Enjoy the game, and we’ll see you folks here again tomorrow night.

No, the title doesn’t say “pasties.” That would be an entirely different sort of game preview. What it does say is patsies, the collective noun for the awful-to-middling teams that the Longhorns face in non-conference when not squaring off against the North Carolinas and Michigan States of the world. With Tuesday’s road trip to Arkansas looming on the horizon and conference play starting up on Saturday, this afternoon’s contest with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi represents the final “easy” win on the schedule.

While the Islanders likely won’t provide much of a threat to the Longhorns’ perfect mark this afternoon, they are infinitely better than the teams from Gardner-Webb and UT-Pan American that played sacrificial lamb at the Erwin Center. A&M-Corpus Christi started their season with a convincing 67-43 win over Oregon State at Texas Tech’s “Duel in the Desert” event. Since then, they’ve added a trio of wins against teams that play in Division II, and destroyed UT-Pan Am at home. Unfortunately for the visiting Islanders, they are 0-5 in road games this year.

By the numbers

Coach Perry Clark has taken the Islanders in a different direction since Ronnie Arrow led the team to a Southland Conference championship and nearly a first-round upset over 2-seed Wisconsin in the NCAAs. While Arrow’s teams were pushing the tempo and forcing a ton of turnovers, the current batch of Islanders are perfectly content playing half-court games, where they rely on a stout defense to earn their victories.

The biggest hole in the A&M-CC game is at the free throw line. It may be hard for Texas fans to believe, but the Islanders actually shoot a lower percentage from the stripe than the Longhorns do. No, really — it’s true. Texas A&M-CC shoots just 60.5% from the free-throw line, while the Longhorns have improved to 62.2% after Tuesday evening’s solid shooting night.

Another issue for the Islanders is their trouble hanging on to the basketball. They cough it up on more than a quarter of their possessions, which is 332nd in the nation according to Ken Pomeroy. While that percentage only equates to about 18 turnovers per game, A&M-Corpus Christi plays a much slower brand of basketball than what they will see today. The up-tempo pace of Texas basketball means that the Islanders could likely turn it over 25 times this afternoon.

Meet the Islanders

Everything in the Corpus offense starts and ends with Kevin Palmer. At 6’6″ and 205 pounds, his natural position is small forward. But due to injuries last season, he was forced to play in the backcourt and turned out to be quite the facilitator. Palmer dished out 94 assists, tops on the team, while also leading the Southland Conference in scoring with 18.2 points per game. Back in the frontcourt this season, his scoring has increased to 20.2 PPG to go along with 5.6 boards per contest.

The reason Palmer has been able to shift back to forward is that freshman point guard Terence Jones was finally cleared to play by the NCAA. He’s responded quickly, scoring more than eight per game, and has reclaimed the team lead in assists from Palmer. He’s a strong 6’2″ guard that fits well into Clark’s defense-focused game plan, but he will certainly have his hands full with the high-powered Texas offense.

Jones’ newfound eligibility also allows guards LaMarr Drake and Shamar Coombs to shift off the ball to shooting guard, after splitting the duties at point last season. Drake missed the second half of the year after being ruled academically ineligible, forcing Coombs to take the reigns the rest of the season. This year, Coombs has been fairly invisible on the offensive end, scoring less than five points a game while posting a negative assist-to-turnover ratio. Drake, meanwhile, is having his own struggles. He finally made his season debut against Kent State, and his first three games back have been shaky.

Where the Islanders have made their hay this season has been inside. In addition to Palmer, they are relying on the solid play of forwards Demond Watts and Justin Reynolds. They are 1-2 on the squad in rebounding, combining for fourteen boards per game, while they are responsible for almost 20 points per game for the Islanders.

Big man Filip Toncinic could be the most interesting match-up for Texas, as he checks in at an even 7-feet. Coming off the bench, he is a much bigger contributor on defense than offense. Although he scores just five points per game, his defensive presence is game-changing. He has only seven blocks on the season, but having Toncinic down low forces opponents to find other ways to attack the defense. It should be interesting to see the shot-averse Dogus Balbay drive the lane when the seven-footer is in the game.

Horace Bond is a junior who has started every game this season and last season, and provides solid numbers on the glass. He’s playing more than 25 minutes per game this year, and is chipping in nearly six points per contest. Interestingly enough, his 44% shooting from three-point is tops on the team, but he has taken just nine attempts this year. That stat will likely not matter in a game as lopsided as this one, but don’t be surprised if, at one point this afternoon, the big man steps out and tickles the twine from long range.

Marcus Hammond is the only other Islander who plays significant minutes. At 6’5″, 200 pounds, he backs up superstar Palmer and provides steady minutes down low. He won’t make a huge impact on the game today, unless Palmer finds himself in foul trouble.

Keys to the game

As is usually the case in games like this, the only true key for the Longhorns is to show up on time for the game. But for Texas fans, there are a handful of things we’ll be keeping our eye on as we look ahead to conference play….

Can Texas keep up the solid free-throw shooting? — It’s been an Achilles heel all season long, but Tuesday night provided a glimmer of hope for Longhorn fans. Was the 76.2% mark against Gardner-Webb a sign of things to come, or just an aberration?

How will J’Covan Brown bounce back? — The freshman guard had a really tough night shooting the ball on Tuesday. He’s certainly never been one to shy away from an open look, so we have no doubt he’ll keep firing it up this afternoon. What is a question is how he’ll respond if he has a second-straight cold game. For the sake of the Longhorns, we hope he lights it up against A&M-CC and no one ever has to find out.

Can Jai Lucas keep it up? — He has a funky shot and a severe height disadvantage. But Jai Lucas proved just how dangerous he is from long range when he went 5-of-7 on Tuesday night. If he keeps shooting that way, the Longhorn offense becomes even more dangerous, and Texas can truly become an inside-out kind of team. If Lucas lights it up again tonight, it will officially become time to feel giddy.

Seats still remain

This sub-head shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. It’s a 16,000-seat arena in the middle of a football state in early January, and the opponent is a directional school that most have never heard of. But fortunately for Austin-area basketball fans, UT’s marketing department is committed to filling those seats. All mezzanine tickets to this afternoon’s game are just $3, so you have no reason not to grab the family and head down to the Drum for the cheapest afternoon of family time you can find. Plus, the lower bowl will likely be half-full, so you can move the kiddos down closer to the action whenever you want.

For those staying at home, you can catch the game on Fox Sports Southwest in the state of Texas. Elsewhere in the country, you’ll have to be subscribed to ESPN Full Court, or use ESPN360.com if your internet provider doesn’t suck. We’ll see you Sunday evening with the breakdown.

Another non-conference opponent, another double-digit win for the Longhorns. But while the scoreboard boldly trumpeted a 32-point Texas win on Tuesday night, the play on the court was anything but dominating. The Longhorns had arguably their ugliest game of the season, yet still cruised past a horribly overmatched Gardner-Webb team. It was as if Texas knew they simply had to show up to win, and their effort certainly reflected that sentiment.

What looked good

The high point of the night was freshman Jai Lucas breaking out with a 5-of-7 performance behind the arc. Although his shot is a funky little line drive, the Florida transfer was nearly unstoppable from long range. Gardner-Webb was focused on the post man all night when Texas used the pick-and-roll, and as the Bulldogs doubled down on the rolling big man, Lucas quickly fired up the threes.

If Jai can be that accurate all season, teams are going to have to pick their poison when Texas sets high ball screens. Of course, for the rest of the season Texas will be facing many teams with taller guards than those of Gardner-Webb. On those nights, it might feel a bit like A.J. Abrams is on the court, as the Longhorns work to free up their long-range gunner.

The other big storyline of the game was the improved free throw shooting for the Longhorns. Texas shot 76.2% from the line, a full twelve percentage points better than their season average. Gary Johnson was 7-of-8 from the line after starting the season 15-for-20, but most surprising was Damion James‘ perfect 8-for-8 night. Coming into the game, DaMo was just 47-of-72 at the charity stripe, giving him just a 65% success rate. Hopefully this steady shooting night is a sign of things to come.

The Texas defense forced a season-high 27 turnovers, 19 of those coming on steals. They did it with a variety of traps that completely befuddled the Bulldogs and led to lazy passes that hung over midcourt for the waiting Longhorn defenders. Texas has shown a ton of trapping looks early this season, and as a result are turning their opponents over on nearly a quarter of their possessions. When you consider that the Horns weren’t really forcing a ton of turnovers early in the year, it makes the season-long numbers even more impressive.

What needed work

While the trapping was excellent, the perimeter defense was absolutely atrocious for Texas. The Longhorns allowed Gardner-Webb to hit 8-of-14 from beyond the arc in the second half, and allowed a disgusting 50% success rate for the game. Defenders simply did not close out quickly enough and often failed to get a hand up to even challenge the shooter. Whether it was a result of the week-long layoff after the Michigan State game or just a lack of effort due to a pitiful opponent, it was an embarrassing display, and something that surely had Rick Barnes fired up at practice yesterday.

On the offensive end, Texas looked completely careless with the basketball. The Horns turned it over 19 times, much worse than their previous season average of fourteen per game. Most of the turnovers came on lazy passes or overly-fancy, streetball-style dime attempts. Even the typically steady Dogus Balbay was bit by the turnover bug, recording four miscues to just two assists. Before the game, he was boasting a 3.67 assist-to-turnover ratio.

A mixed bag

Against the Bulldogs, J’Covan Brown was absolutely cold from outside. But Gardner-Webb kept giving him looks, and he kept firing away. For as good of a shooter as J’Covan is, that seems like the correct course of action. On most nights, he would eventually hit a shot, get some confidence, and help out the team. Fortunately for the Longhorns, his 1-of-8 night from long range happened to come against one of the worst opponents on their schedule. To Brown’s credit, however, it should be noted that even though the three-balls weren’t falling, he did still occasionally slash to the basket and earned nine points on the night.

Jordan Hamilton was limited to just eleven minutes thanks to an ankle injury, but played within the flow of the offense. In perhaps the most shocking statistic of the night, Hamilton did not attempt a single shot, and actually had three assists. He made a conscious effort to work the ball into the paint in the hopes of exploiting Texas’ massive size advantage. While Longhorn fans won’t want a healthy Jordan Hamilton taking zero shots in a game, his commitment to fitting into the offensive gameplan was a welcome sight.

Looking forward

The Longhorns have another home game before they travel to Fayetteville next week, where they should likely reach the 14-0 mark for just the first time in 28 years. That Saturday home game will be against the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders, and the Texas Box Office has a slew of promotions available to get fans into the arena. All upper level tickets are just $3, and fans can show their tickets at the box office to also score a free general admission seat to the women’s game that tips at 11 A.M.

After a pair of games against top-ten opponents, the Longhorns take it down a notch tonight in a home contest against the vastly overmatched Gardner-Webb Runnin’ Bulldogs. Much like the UT-Pan American game, this one will be out of hand very, very early. As a result, this game preview will be short and sweet, focusing more on the big picture than on the specific players facing off against the Horns.

First and foremost, you can ignore every single person who points out that the Bulldogs defeated Kentucky on the road two years ago. This is a completely different Gardner-Webb team, and those Wildcats were also a completely different team. This year’s Runnin’ Bulldogs have managed just three wins, and not a single one of them came against Division I competition. While Gardner-Webb has a very tough, challenging schedule, the results have been embarrassing. Excluding a two-point loss in their conference opener against UNC-Asheville, the Runnin’ Bulldogs have lost their games by an average of 31.5 points and have not kept it closer than a 16-point loss to Western Carolina.

The Runnin’ Bulldogs love to push the tempo, proving that their mascot is anything but a misnomer. The Longhorns play the 8th-fastest style of basketball in the country, while Gardner-Webb is the 20th-fastest, so expect a ton of possessions and a lot of points. And because the visiting team does so many things horribly, expect a vast majority of those points to be scored by Texas.

You may be asking your computer screen, “Just how horribly can a Division I team play?” We’ll let stat guru Ken Pomeroy’s numbers do the talking. In the simplest of terms, red is bad. The darker the red, the worse your team is at that aspect of the game. Gardner-Webb’s numbers have more red than a Soviet flag.

You can also take a look at the numbers framed in brackets next to each stat. That represents where Gardner-Webb ranks in relation to the rest of Division I basketball teams for that statistic. For ten different factors out of the twenty listed, the Runnin’ Bulldogs are 310th or worse. It should be noted that there are only 347 teams that play men’s basketball at the NCAA Division I level.

Texas also has a massive size advantage over Gardner-Webb and should have its way in the paint tonight. The tallest Bulldog who sees significant minutes is Auryn McMillan, a 6’8″ senior from Australia who averages 8.8 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. His backup is another Australian, the 6’11” Matt Maden. While he averages less than four minutes a game, Maden will likely be called upon for some extra playing time against the much bigger Texas frontcourt.

Having said all that, it should already be apparent that tonight the only real key is to see how Texas plays after the holiday break. How will Dexter Pittman respond after missing most of the Michigan State game with foul trouble? Will Jai Lucas have a breakout performance in only his third game as a Longhorn? Can Dogus Balbay set a new career high with three dunks in one game?

For those not in Austin or not willing to brave the cold for this inevitable beatdown, the game will be aired in Texas on Fox Sports Net. Longhorn fans spread across the nation can check it out on ESPN Full Court, or at ESPN360.com, if your ISP allows it. For now, enjoy the lopsided affair, and we’ll be back tomorrow for the post-mortem.