After suffering a crushing road loss to the rival Texas A&M Aggies on Monday night, the Texas Longhorns sit in a precarious position. At just one game above the .500 mark in league play, they are in significant danger of missing out on a first-round tournament bye for only the third time in the Big 12 Conference’s 13-year history. Even more chilling is the very real possibility that the Longhorns could melt down just enough this February to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1998.

There are some who would say tonight is a “make or break” game for this team. That’s only half correct. The Longhorns can certainly make their season with an upset victory over the Oklahoma Sooners, a team that is ranked second nationally and is only two days away from ascending to the No. 1 position. But a loss tonight is not the last straw. Although the bookies are favoring Texas from one to two points, make no mistake about it. This is a game that the Sooners are expected to win.

So while the potential reward tonight is huge, the risk is not nearly as great. Texas would still need to win three of its remaining four games and probably even a conference tournament contest to be on the safe side of this year’s soft bubble. But a win tonight? A win could certainly change the picture…

The previous meeting

The two teams first met on January 17th in a game many expected would help establish a favorite in the conference race. But Texas looked awful coming right out of the gates, and an irritated Rick Barnes benched most of his starters to send a message. The fact that Harrison Smith played fourteen minutes in the game should be a crystal-clear indication of just how annoyed the head coach was during the first half. Heading to the locker room, Texas was already down eleven points to the Sooners.

In the second half, the starters seemed to get the message, playing with heart and determination as they whittled the lead down to only four points with just under 12 minutes to play. But then came the meltdown. The Sooners reeled off twelve straight points and kept the Longhorns at arm’s length the rest of the way, cruising to a convincing 78-63 win.

The game showcased just how balanced this year’s Oklahoma team is, with four of the five starters contributing 15 points or more. Superstar Blake Griffin led the way with one of his countless double-doubles, scoring 20 points to go with 10 rebounds.

Since then…

Oklahoma has not lost a single conference game this season, although they have made it interesting a few times. On the road, they struggled with Texas A&M, Iowa State, and Oklahoma State, while letting the Aggies and Colorado Buffaloes hang around in games at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman. But in every single instance, the Sooners pulled away late on the strength of solid rebounding and efficient possessions. Oklahoma has proven that even if they find themselves in a dogfight as the minutes tick away in tonight’s ballgame, you’d still want to bet the house on them.

The biggest storylines since the last time these two teams met are the emergence of Austin Johnson and the addition of Juan Pattillo to the lineup. Johnson, the team’s senior point guard, has absolutely exploded in conference play. He is averaging nearly 12 points per contest in Big 12 games and is shooting 46% from behind the arc. But perhaps most importantly, his assist-to-turnover ratio is a serviceable 2.5-to-1, an impressive achievement for someone who was known as a turnover machine during his first three seasons.

The Sooners also gained a huge advantage when they decided to take the redshirt off of Pattillo, a 6’6″ forward. He has stepped right into the rotation and gives Oklahoma some much-needed depth. Not only is Pattillo an extra body for a team that once had a short bench, but he can actually play. He’s a force inside, but also has a great midrange jumper. He’s another quality shot blocker that pairs nicely with the Griffin brothers down low, and his deft passing is an asset for a team that runs a highly-efficient half-court set.

If you’re looking for a refresher on the rest of the Sooners and their style of basketball, be sure to check out the game preview from the first match-up in Norman.

Keys to the game

Don’t put the Sooners on the line – As we pointed out in that first game preview, Oklahoma owns a distinct advantage at the charity stripe. On the season, they are averaging 9.6 more free throw attempts per game than their opponents, and you can be sure that the Sooners will be looking to exploit that advantage tonight. There is a severe drop-off in talent after the core group of Longhorns, so they simply cannot afford to rack up fouls while sending OU to the line for free points.

Keep it close early – Oklahoma has jumped out to huge leads in many of their games, and that is the one way that the Sooners can quickly mitigate the crowd factor in tonight’s contest. OU has struggled on the road, and the Frank Erwin Center is the largest arena in the conference. If Texas wants to exploit that home-court advantage, they will need to keep the score close.

Defend the three-point line – The Sooners are going to get a ton of points in the paint. It’s simply a given fact that their opponents must find a way to deal with. But in the first match-up, Texas allowed OU to shoot 40% from behind the arc, with many of the three-pointers coming at inopportune moments. Texas is already going to have its hands full in this one, so they simply cannot afford to let Tony Crocker, Willie Warren, and Johnson to make things even more difficult with a barrage of threes.

While the Longhorns have struggled through a recent stretch that included a three-game losing streak, it was easy to make reasonable excuses for their play. Players were in foul trouble, or the style the opponent played was a bad match-up for Texas. A player was having a career night, or the other team just got hot at the wrong time. The list of reasons was seemingly endless. But in Monday night’s drubbing of Texas, there was absolutely no excuses for the heaping pile of crap they put out on the floor. Texas was flat outplayed, and didn’t even look like they belonged on the same court with a team that is likely headed to the NIT.

Defensively, the Longhorns let the Aggies do whatever they pleased. Gary Johnson, Damion James, and Dexter Pittman defended the post with the will of the French army in World War II. A baseline spin move was apparently a new and amazing thing that completely baffled the Longhorn front court, as Bryan Davis and Junior Elonu each easily dropped 15 points on Texas. When the Aggies weren’t busy attacking the paint and racking up the fouls on Texas, it was open season on the three point line. The Longhorns felt it reasonable to leave deadly three-point shooters like Josh Carter and B.J. Holmes absolutely wide open time and again.

Even when the Longhorns showed a little bit of heart in the second half and trimmed the Aggie lead to just four with eight minutes to play, they gave up the most frustrating possible baskets as A&M pulled away once again. The Longhorns would make defensive stops and allow the Aggies what seemed like unlimited second chances, killing any chance of a comeback. In the final eight minutes of the game, Texas allowed A&M to grab four offensive rebounds, while they grabbed only one defensive rebound over that stretch. Not even the best defense in the NCAA could overcome that kind of shoddy work on the glass.

Granted, a huge part of the reason Texas fell behind in this one was a result of Dogus Balbay struggling with fouls and only seeing the court for 25 minutes. In fact, early in the second half the A&M lead ballooned from just five to an insurmountable twelve as the point guard spent three minutes on the bench following his third foul. It’s been perfectly clear over the last week and a half that this team grinds to a halt without Balbay, but the team must at least keep things within reach by playing defense when he leaves the game.

I could spend another five paragraphs recounting every single thing that went wrong in this trainwreck, but it’s just not worth the effort. All told, this was a gut-punch of a loss. The chances were good that Texas A&M was going to defend their home court. This rivalry is a very even one, and the Aggies are much better than their 4-7 conference record would indicate. But there is absolutely no reason that Texas should have folded the way they did in this one.

Things get no easier with the juggernaut known as OU heading to Austin this weekend. The Longhorns must crack down in practice during this long week, or else they’ll be sitting squarely at .500 in league play with only four games to play.

Now that LRT is in its third year of existence, it’s a known fact that there will be a rough stretch of traveling hidden somewhere in each season’s schedule. The first year, it was an eight day span that included trips to Stillwater, Philadelphia, and Lincoln. Last year, it was two lengthy trips via car to Norman and Iowa State just days apart.

This season, that time is right now. Fresh off the heels of a there-and-back shot to Lincoln, this weekend has given us the pleasure of a Saturday contest in Boulder followed by a tilt in College Station just two days later. It’s sometimes tough to look forward to a game when you’ve just spent nearly as many hours in a car (33) as you did in the mountain town you visited (39). It’s often even tougher to look forward to that following game on just over an hour of sleep, especially when you consider the recent losing streak Texas has enjoyed on its road trips to College Station (4). We’re certainly not complaining, but when your brain is running on sleep debt, these are the kinds of numbers that run through your head.

For now, it’s off to work where we’ll pound the energy drinks and look forward to the possibility of exorcising the Reed Arena demons that have haunted Texas. We’ll be back this afternoon with a brief refresher on the Aggies, but in the meantime you can revisit the game preview from the first match-up in Austin.

It seemed like a familiar script for Longhorn fans. Build a big lead, let a team storm back into it, and then blow the game by a slim margin. So when a nine point Texas lead had evaporated in only three minutes, it seemed like the inevitable ending was just moments away.

But Damion James was fouled with only 1.6 seconds left on the clock and the score knotted at 72. Finally, it was a chance to re-write the script. He headed to the line, facing directly into the black and gold student section, where the Buffalo fans leaned down and pounded on their seatbacks. He needed to make just one to seal the win. This was it. Texas could put the demons to rest.

Until both free throws clanged off the iron.

With the weight of those misses on his shoulder, James played like a man possessed in the ensuing five-minute overtime. He ripped down six of his 14 rebounds in the extra session and added six of his 21 points as Texas pulled away. Ironically, two of those points came at the line, with the lead safely in hand.

The problem is that most Texas fans won’t remember that. They will only remember the pair of awful metallic thuds as James missed his chance to be the hero.

Fans also won’t remember the fact that the Longhorn offense played exceptionally well for the second straight game, shooting a season-high 57.4% from the field. The previous high had come just four days prior, when Texas blazed past Oklahoma State with a 52.2% clip. As a result of the hot shooting, Texas’ efficiency numbers were also sky high once again. The Longhorns posted a 124.5 offensive efficiency rating, their third-highest performance of the season.

The one constant in both of those games? Significant minutes for point guard Dogus Balbay. The Turkish sophomore played 37 of the 45 minutes against Colorado after seeing the floor for 33 against Oklahoma State. Prior to those two games, Balbay was averaging just 15.6 minutes per contest.

His presence on the court makes the offense flow, which was painfully obvious when he was taken out with roughly ten minutes left in the first half. In the two minutes he sat on the bench, Texas seemed content to pass the ball around the arc, yet still turned it over twice. With the ball in his hands, the Longhorns throw away far fewer possessions, as he’s posted a ridiculous 7-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio in these last two games.

Balbay’s presence also opens things up for sharpshooter A.J. Abrams. The senior guard had 29 points, and scored 20 against Oklahoma State. In the previous five games, he was averaging 15 points per contest. While the scoring boost is a nice result, the real reason that Balbay’s emergence is a massive development is the fact that it keeps A.J. from forcing bad shots. In these last two games, Abrams scored his 49 points on 61% shooting, including 56% behind the arc. In the previous four, he shot 38% from the field. Simply put, Balbay makes Abrams better.

Three-point defense was not a huge issue throughout the game, but once again it reared its head at the worst possible time. Colorado shot just 5-of-14 from long range, but hit two out of three attempts in the second half as they clawed into at a ten-point Texas advantage. The Longhorns have an awful tendency to let teams eat away at huge deficits by making hay from behind the arc. Against a team with more long-range consistency than the Buffaloes, that will be deadly.

Texas also struggled on the glass, which is quite embarrassing when you look at the height disparity between the two teams. The Buffs play with four guards for most of the game, none of which are taller than 6’6″. Add in the fact that Colorado’s leading rebounder was their 6’5″ off guard, and it’s a definite cause for concern. The worst offender for Texas was Gary Johnson, who laid a big fat goose egg on the stat sheet despite being the team’s second-best man on the glass. The Longhorns are going to face much stronger rebounders in Oklahoma and Kansas, so a performance like this will absolutely scuttle any chances of upsetting those teams.

Obviously, the collapse down the stretch is also a huge reason for concern. After all, it seems like it’s only about the 874th time that Texas has done it this year. But Longhorn fans can take some solace in the fact that, for once, this team did make the necessary plays to pull out the victory.

The Longhorns travel to Boulder, Colorado today in a game that, at first blush, looks like an easy win on paper. And for a Texas team that is trying to get back on the right track after a brutal stretch where they lost three games by a combined total of eleven points, it couldn’t come at a better time. But this Colorado squad is playing much better basketball than their record would indicate, and the mile-plus elevation of Boulder has often made the Coors Events Center a dangerous gym for visiting conference opponents.

The Buffaloes have only one win in the Big 12, a home victory over Iowa State. And although those same Cyclones absolutely decimated Colorado in Ames on Wednesday night by a 70-42 count, Jeff Bzdelik and the Buffs have been putting a scare into the league’s top teams. Colorado played both Kansas State and Nebraska to narrow two-point losses and fell five points short against both Kansas in Lawrence and Oklahoma in Norman.

As if the recent play by Colorado wasn’t reason enough to harbor some doubts about today’s game, the Coors Events Center has given Texas fits in the past. The Final Four team suffered a loss here in 2003, getting absolutely shot out of the building by a red-hot Colorado team, 93-80. Two years later, the Buffs repeated the accomplishment with an 88-79 win on its home floor. Even the convincing 102-78 win by Kevin Durant and the Longhorns in 2007 was an absolute battle for the first 24 minutes or so. While the preview below will likely lead you to believe that Texas should cruise back home with a victory, things likely won’t be easy.

By the numbers

There is nothing remarkable about the Colorado offense or defense, as their efficiency numbers in both categories rank almost exactly in the middle of the NCAA pack. What is troublesome for Coach Bzdelik, though, is the fact that their margin is actually a -0.2, meaning that they give up 0.2 points per possession more than they score. He counters that problem with a Princeton offense that burns clock, so the Buffs typically only see 63 possessions per game, cutting down on the opportunities for their opponents to exploit that statistic.

Colorado struggles to rebound, particularly on the offensive side of things. They grab only 21.4% of their opportunities on the offensive glass, which puts is 342nd in the country for that metric. Three hundred and forty-second. Out of 344 teams. Quality. This inability to rebound is mostly a result of the four-out, one-in look that Colorado runs, along with the fact that their only post player is often setting screens up high and is nowhere near the basket when shots are released. Texas is already a solid rebounding team, but if they can limit Colorado to one-and-done possessions today, a win should come easily.

Another number that jumps out of Ken Pomeroy’s statistical overload is the fact that Colorado tends to win only when it keeps its opponents off the free throw line. Their season average for free throw rate is just in the middle of the pack for the NCAA, but in their losses it nearly doubles. Texas should attack the Colorado zone and draw fouls rather than simply settling for mid-range or three-point jumpers.

Meet the Buffs

Colorado runs only seven or eight deep on any given night, and has had the same starting five for nearly the entire season. Bzdelik’s team is very young after losing Richard Roby, Marcus Hall, and Marcus King-Stockton to graduation, and he is hoping that giving the core group of players a huge chunk of minutes will pay dividends in future seasons.

Australian freshman Nate Tomlinson is slotted at the point, and he’s doing a commendable job running the Princeton offense with no experience. Early in the season, you could see him struggling with the new system, as he actually had more turnovers than assists. But as the season has marched on into conference play, his confidence is up and he’s making less unforced errors. Texas must keep an eye on him today, as Tomlinson is deadly from behind the arc. His 43% success rate from three-point range leads the team, and is going to be needed for Colorado to hang around in today’s contest.

The leading scorer for Colorado is sophomore guard Cory Higgins, son of former NBA player Rod Higgins. He’s one of the best free throw shooters in the country at 86%, and had streaks of 45 and 23 consecutive made free throws earlier this season. Higgins can attack the basket with ease, so it’s important for Texas to turn away his drives before he draws the fouls inside and converts the nearly-automatic points at the charity stripe. In addition, Higgins is at the top of the conference in steals, so a turnover-prone Longhorn team will have to take care of the ball when he’s nearby.

The other Buffalo who is a surefire offensive threat is Dwight Thorne II, a cousin of former A&M standout Acie Law. (As an aside, when you consider that Law is actually Acie Law IV, it makes you wonder why that family can’t come up with any new names.) Thorne is another long-range gunner, having hit on 42% of his three-point tries this year. Colorado’s offense keys on backdoor cuts and open three-point looks, so Dwight is going to be needed if the Buffaloes hope for an upset today.

Freshman Austin Dufault is the lone big man in Bzdelik’s version of the Princeton offense, and he seems to be making a good adjustment to the new system. He was Mr. Basketball in the state of North Dakota last season, and it is easy to see why. Not only can Dufault score inside and clean up the glass when he is actually in position, but he also showcases a nice jumper out to seventeen feet or so. While he’s not going to be an impact player in the league anytime soon, Dufault seems like a four-year guy who is going to be an absolute headache for opponents in his last season or two.

Jermyl Jackson-Wilson is a bull of a player despite checking in at just 6’6″. He fights hard for those offensive rebounds that seem to elude the Buffs, and prefers to muscle his way in for closer looks. With only five points and four rebounds a game, he’s not a huge contributer on the stat sheet, but his energy and hustle seem to make the difference on a few key plays in each contest.

Bzdelik really only utilizes three players off the bench, although he occasionally looks deeper down the pine when things are going horribly wrong. Levi Knutson is a reserve guard who is really struggling this season, hitting only 15% of his three point attempts after being the team’s marksman last year. Big man Casey Crawford will be called upon to spell Dufault on occasion, but he is also a quality long-range shooter. Trey Eckloff is something of a project, as he was just 17 when he hit the CU campus and has had difficulty adjusting to the college game. At 6’9″, his inside presence will be needed in the future, but for now he is relegated to the bench.

Keys to the game

Kill them on the glass – When there are often four Colorado players on the court that are 6’6″ or less, and the lone big man is often at the top of the key setting screens, the rebounds should come quite easily for Texas. The Longhorns shouldn’t have to especially try to control the rebounding battle, but should dominate on the glass and limit the number of looks for the Buffaloes. In addition, Texas should hopefully see a spike in the number of second-chance points they earn this afternoon.

Limit the threes – Colorado is going to get quite a few easy layups as a result of their Princeton offense, and there is likely little that Texas can do to stop it. But the Buffaloes are not going to beat the Longhorns by piling up a ton of layups. The thing that could keep them in this game is hot outside shooting from Thorne and Tomlinson, so Texas must ensure that those two guards do not get any easy looks from behind the arc.

Use Balbay to dissect the D – Things seemed to open up with the insertion of Dogus Balbay into the starting lineup on Tuesday night against Oklahoma State. Connor Atchley enjoyed more open looks and took advantage of them, A.J. Abrams was freed up to the tune of 20 points, and the Longhorns enjoyed a salty assist-to-turnover ratio of nearly 3-to-1. The Buffaloes love to throw a ton of different defensive looks at their opponents, so Texas will need Balbay to probe the different zones and find the open lanes and open men. If he’s not the one handling the ball, Colorado could enjoy a fair share of Longhorn turnovers.