After a 24-4 run put the Longhorns up by twelve points with seventeen minutes left, it appeared that Texas could coast to a much-needed road win over a low-scoring Nebraska team. But as they have done numerous times this season, the Longhorns melted down the stretch and made questionable decisions in the final minutes to choke away another victory. This time, it resulted in a 58-55 loss in Lincoln, Nebraska, just the second time in the last eleven years that Texas has been defeated by the Cornhuskers.

The Longhorns (15-7 overall, 4-4 Big 12) built their large lead with solid defensive play, holding Nebraska to just two field goals during a thirteen minute stretch spanning both halves. But poor three-point defense reared its ugly head once again, as the Huskers (15-7, 5-4) hit four of five from long range the rest of the way, including an Ade Dagunduro rainbow taken from just outside Omaha that put them ahead for good.

Poor decision making was again a culprit in the loss, as A.J. Abrams tried to force the issue once again. With Texas only down two and holding the ball with 30 seconds to play, Abrams fought a futile battle to work for an open shot. But with three defenders in his face, rather than looking for his open teammates, he decided to force up a prayer from 25 feet. It was the second straight game where Abrams forced up a contested trey in the waning seconds, as his long-range look in a tie game against Missouri clanged off the rim with 32 ticks left on Wednesday night.

The loss was the third straight for Texas, who now drops into sixth place in the Big 12, half a game behind Kansas State and Nebraska, teams which now both hold tiebreakers over the Longhorns. The three-game skid is the first since the 2004-05 season, a year in which they were without LaMarcus Aldridge (hip injury) and P.J. Tucker (academic ineligibility). You would have to go all the way back to 1997-98 — the last season of the Tom Penders era — to find another such slide in Texas history.

Lost in the sting of defeat were solid performances by Dexter Pittman and Damion James. Big Dex was a force down low, but his game was hampered by foul trouble throughout. Pittman and the rest of the Longhorns seemed to be a step behind the smaller, quicker Nebraska guards, and the infractions quickly piled up. With Dexter’s minutes spread out, James had to step up on the glass, and did so in a big way. He finished the game with 13 points and 12 rebounds, despite fighting his own foul trouble.

The road doesn’t get any easier for Texas, with the Oklahoma State Cowboys arriving at the Frank Erwin Center on Tuesday night, currently ranked 11th in the nation in three-point percentage. For a Longhorn team that has let many opponents thrive from the perimeter, the outlook remains troublesome.

If there was ever a must-win game for the Texas Longhorns, this would be it. They have lost two straight games by a combined eight points, slipping to only .500 in conference play, where they sit just a half-game above the dreaded fifth-place line.

So while it’s certainly time to stop the bleeding, the Longhorns have the unenviable task of doing so on the road against a very well-coached team that has historically takes them to the wire. Although Texas has defeated the Cornhuskers nine out of the ten meetings under Coach Rick Barnes, the last two meetings against new Nebraska coach Doc Sadler have been much more interesting. In 2006, the Longhorns escaped Lincoln with a one-point victory — a contest they also entered on a two-game losing skid — and won by only four last season in Austin.

But if Tuesday night’s game against Missouri was the worst possible match-up for the Longhorns, this afternoon’s contest with Nebraska could be one of the best. The Huskers play a style of basketball that is nearly identical to Texas, but do it with a smaller, less-athletic team. If Texas plays sound basketball, they should escape Lincoln with another narrow victory.

By the numbers

As we just mentioned, watching a Nebraska game can be eerily similar to watching this year’s Texas team. While the Longhorns average just 67.4 possessions per game, the Cornhuskers run things at a slightly slower pace, averaging 63.8 possessions. Today, Texas will not have to worry about dictating the pace of play or preventing from falling into a transition battle. It’s going to be a half-court slugfest, and the team that can best utilize their limited possessions will come out on top.

The best measure of that skill is Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency metric, which represents how efficiently offenses and defenses work. Just as with the tempo statistic, these two teams are nearly identical in efficiency. Both Texas and Nebraska are solid defensive squads with slightly above-average offenses, and are so closely matched that their efficiency margins (offensive pts/poss – defensive pts/poss) differ by only .065, with Texas on top. If you were to extrapolate with the tempo these two teams play at, we should be looking at a game hovering around 60 points, with the winner clinging to a four-point margin of victory. It might be time to break out the Tums.

Meet the Cornhuskers

The biggest question coming into this season was how Doc Sadler would replace big man and go-to scoring option Aleks Maric. The Aussie averaged a double-double last season for Nebraska, putting in more than 15 points with 10 rebounds every night. Without him, the current incarnation of Cornhusker basketball is a four-guard look, with an unreliable “post” player inside that can hardly stay on the floor for five straight minutes.

Miniscule Cookie Miller leads things at the point for Nebraska, checking in at an alleged 5-foot, 7-inches. But if Cookie is truly that tall, then Muggsy Bogues was a power forward. What Miller lacks in height and muscle, though, he makes up for in unabated scrappiness. He’s one of the fastest players on the floor, a fiesty defender, and has a knack for taking ridiculous-looking shots that somehow find their way in the hole. But perhaps most importantly, he is a quality floor general who keeps his teams turnovers low while dishing out nearly five assists per game.

Although Sek Henry is third on the team in scoring with nine points a game, the thing Coach Sadler loves about him most is the quality defense he gives night in and night out. He’ll hassle your guards on the perimeter and make it hard for the offense to get started, and even provides about a steal per game.

Senior Steve Harley leads the team in scoring, although that title changes from game to game. Entering this contest, Harley has 11.8 points per contest, and does it with solid jump shooting and nice range. He’s not the team’s best three-point shooter, hitting just over 36% of his long-range attempts. But Harley has an excellent mid-range jumper, and he can use it not just for the easy two, but also to pull the defense out and open up the driving lanes for the other three guards.

The other main scoring threat for Coach Sadler is Ade Dagunduro, a 6’5″ swingman that has become the team’s de facto post presence. He is often matched up defensively with the biggest players that the opponents throw out there, and he’s not afraid to bang with the frontcourt players to earn his points. Ade is a very lengthy player with great handles that can drive the lane, but needs to step up his consistency in Big 12 play. He has had breakout, 20-plus point nights against quality teams such as Missouri and Kansas, but nearly disappeared on Wednesday against Colorado. If he has an off night, it will be much harder for Nebraska to grind out the win over the Longhorns.

While the four guards run the show, Coach Sadler’s offense relies on one post player who can step out and set screens or start things from the high post. Junior Chris Balham fills that role in the starting lineup, although his propensity to collect fouls like Pokemon cards makes him nearly inconsequential in most games. He has yet to play more than fourteen minutes in a conference game, and it seems that even on nights when he’s not fouling indiscriminately, that the knee problems which have bothered him the last two seasons flare up once again.

Off the bench

For most of the season, Coach Sadler has gone with an eight-man rotation, but has lately been trying to expand his bench to include ten contributing players. With his defense-first philosophy, a deeper team is definitely going to be needed to last through the second half of conference play and into the post-season.

Ryan Anderson is the biggest threat off the bench, and despite his 6’4″ frame, he often picks up the slack for Balham down low. He is actually the team’s leading rebounder, despite playing only 24 minutes per game, and he has no qualms about bodying up on defense in the paint. On offense, Anderson uses his long-range threat to make himself a true dual-threat player. He can knock down the three, or slash to the basket on a moment’s notice. Even though this junior is technically a bench player, he will be a big factor in today’s game.

Another bench player who sees a solid chunk of minutes every night is three-point weapon Paul Velander. At one point just a few weeks ago, he actually led the nation in three-point accuracy, but has since slowed down in conference play. Even with the cold spell, he’s hitting over 44% of his threes this year, and will certainly cause a problem for a Texas team that allowed Kansas State to light them up from long range.

Toney McCray is a smooth freshman wingman from Texas that Coach Sadler sees as the future of the team. And if you’ve seen the flashes of brilliance from this kid, you can tell why. McCray is only averaging 16 minutes per game, but has been seeing significant minutes in most of Nebraska’s conference games. He’s another guy who can knock down the three or glide to the rack, so look for him to make a few key buckets in this afternoon’s contest.

Guard Brandon Richardson is one of the players that Coach Sadler is trying to work into the gameplan a little more as conference play rolls on. After not seeing the floor in the first four Big 12 games this year, Richardson has given quality minutes in the last four contests. He’s yet another quality three-point shooter, and you can tell he’s eager for more minutes by how hard he plays when he’s on the floor.

Cole Salomon is the other player seeing more minutes in recent action, as he’s averaged more than ten minutes in the last three games after playing less than a minute per game during the first eighteen of the year. He’s not going to score many points, if any, but proved against Kansas that he was willing to crash the glass despite being just a 6’4″ guard.

Keys to the game

Give Dexter the ball – Dexter Pittman was a huge risk/reward proposition against Missouri, and it showed. While he set a career high with 25 points, it was his poor defense that let the better-conditioned Tigers blow past him for key buckets late in the game. But against Nebraska, he should have an absolute field day. There is absolutely no one on this Cornhusker team that can hope to defend him or outrebound him. And because Doc Sadler loves the slow, grind-it-out style of play, Dexter will not be out of place having to run up and down the floor. He can hide in the back of a zone defense — something Nebraska seemed to be completely confounded by when Colorado used it — and dominate on the offensive end.

Destroy Nebraska on the glass – The Cornhuskers are one of the worst offensive rebounding teams in the country, — in fact, there are only six teams with poorer numbers in the NCAA — which means that they have to be incredibly efficient with the basketball. Part of the problem is that they are so severely undersized, but some of the blame also falls on the fact that they are so committed to defense that three Nebraska players are usually backpedaling as soon as the team’s shot is released. Texas has to limit the Cornhuskers to a bunch of one-shot possessions, and on the offensive end they must utilize their massive height advantage to extend their own possessions with timely rebounds.

Control the basketball – Nebraska doesn’t run Missouri’s adopted “Forty Minutes of Hell” style of play, but they are very good when it comes to winning the turnover battle. Their +6.2 turnover margin ranks in the top five nationally, and it’s even more impressive when you stop to consider how few possessions there are in a typical Nebraska game. Their opponents average 18 turnovers per contest, so when there’s less than 64 possessions in a game, that leaves Texas with very, very little margin for error.

Texas slid to 17th in the Coaches Poll following their home loss to Kansas State. Meanwhile, Kansas cracked the rankings once again at 24th, giving the Big 12 three teams for the first time since Baylor hit the skids. Oklahoma still leads the way for the conference with its No. 2 berth, having grabbed three first-place votes in this week’s poll.

The Longhorns are a spot higher in the Associated Press rankings, checking in at 16th. The Jayhawks also enjoyed a gaudier review from the media folks, who slotted at No. 21. Following Duke’s loss, the AP was more split than the coaches when it came to which team is truly the best team in the nation. The writers not only gave OU five nods, but also included UNC in the discussion with three first-place votes of their own.

Is Bob Knight making his way back into the coaching ranks? Reports have confirmed his interest in the newly-vacated office at Georgia, where players are excited about the possibility. Since the story first broke, Knight has only admitted that he would return in the right situation. If The General is truly ready to come back, will Georgia truly be his destination? Arizona will be looking to make a splash with their next hire, while SI.com’s FanNation points out that Gary Williams might be on the way out at Maryland. There are going to be a number of high-profile gigs out there, and those of us at LRT certainly hope Coach Knight decides to take one.

The Texas Longhorns return home after a hard-fought road victory against Baylor, sitting just a game out of first place in the Big 12 with a 4-1 mark. Their waiting opponents are the Kansas State Wildcats, a team that is much better than their 2-4 conference record would indicate. But lest my dear readers think I am playing Chicken Little with a KSU team that lost to Texas by nine at home last season even with Michael Beasley and Bill Walker — two players who will not be on their roster today — a quick glance at Kansas State’s strengths should support my claims.

Their strengths

The Wildcats rebound the ball well, particularly on the offensive glass. And for a Texas team that doesn’t score a ton of points and relies upon its defense to win games, there is nothing more frightening than the thought of numerous solid defensive stands being wiped away as KSU swipes an offensive board and adds a possession. The Wildcats are grabbing 42.8% of their offensive rebounding opportunities, which is good for second-best in the nation. The Longhorns, meanwhile, are already slightly below-average in allowing their opponents to grab those offensive rebounds, giving them up on 32.3% of the opportunities. If Texas cannot keep KSU off the offensive glass, this game will be much closer than it should be, and the Wildcats could even pull off their second straight win at the Frank Erwin Center.

Kansas State also shoots the ball well from outside, a fact that has kept them competitive in games against much better teams such as Oklahoma. The Wildcats are hitting 36% of their shots from long range, led by sixth man Fred Brown, who has knocked down 43% of his attempts on the year. Texas has improved their three-point defense as the year has progressed, but it should be noted that in the Longhorns’ four losses this season, opponents have hit 38% of their attempts from long range.

The glaring weakness

The one obvious problem that Kansas State has, though, is an inability to handle the basketball. Against Kansas, they turned it over eight times in the first seven minutes and fell behind 18-0 before you could say “Jim Wooldridge in a neck brace.” After hanging with Oklahoma for a half in the conference opener, KSU turned the ball over on seven straight possessions to give the game away. And in a 22-point road loss to Nebraska two weeks ago, the Wildcats coughed it up twenty-five times. Twenty-freakin-five.

Jacob Pullen is the biggest offender on the team, with 62 turnovers logged so far while only dishing out 68 assists. For a team with a lack of a true post player inside, this type of carelessness by the guards is highly problematic. Even point guard Denis Clemente has an awful assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.4-to-1. As often as the Wildcats extend possessions with their great offensive rebounding, they shoot themselves in the foot by giving those same possessions away with poor ball handling.

Keys to the game

As should be clear based on the above paragraphs, Texas has to crash the glass and harass the ball handlers for Kansas State. But they also cannot afford to let KSU push the tempo. The Wildcats run much deeper than Texas, as six players average twenty minutes of playing time, while two others see at least ten minutes a game. Kansas State definitely has the horses to push the transition game, as Denis Clemente is an incredibly fast guard who looks like a water-bug when he scurries coast-to-coast for a layup. Texas is a more talented team, but if KSU can tire the Longhorns out and force Rick Barnes to look further down the bench for fresh bodies, it plays into the hands of Wildcat coach Frank Martin.

In addition, Texas must exploit their strengths inside. While Luis Colon and Jamar Samuels block a lot of shots, they also put their opponents on the free throw line quite often. Kansas State opponents shoot an average of 24 free throws per game, which is nearly one free throw attempt for every two field goal attempts. According to Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, that puts KSU at 333rd in the country out of only 344 Division I teams. Texas must pound it inside, get to the line, and force Martin to use his depth in a reactive fashion as his players pick up fouls.

Top 25 Action

#11 Texas Longhorns 78, Baylor Bears 72 – The Longhorns escaped Waco with their 23rd consecutive win over Baylor, leaning on a nineteen point night from sharpshooter A.J. Abrams. The senior guard was hot early, but went through long stretches of absolute silence, including a nine-minute scoreless bout to open the second half. Damion James logged another double-double in the winning effort, posting a line of fourteen and twelve. Full post-game thoughts and numbers will be headed your way this afternoon.

#16 Purdue Boilermakers 64, Wisconsin Badgers 63 – He only had eight total points on the night, but Robbie Hummel provided three huge ones when he hit the go-ahead trifecta with a minute left to propel Purdue to their fifth-straight win. Meanwhile, the Badgers continued their free fall through the standings, suffering their fifth consecutive loss. It was also their third loss this season at the friendly confines of the Kohl Center after posting an impressive 113-7 home record during Coach Bo Ryan’s first eight years in Madison.

Mississippi Rebels 85, #24 Kentucky Wildcats 80 – It was a rough welcome to the Top 25 for Kentucky, who lost their first game since cracking the poll on Monday. David Huertas dropped 21 for the Rebs — nineteen of them in the second half — to earn their first victory in ten tries against the Wildcats. The loss was the first conference blemish for Kentucky, who still holds the half-game lead over Tennessee, a team they soundly beat on the road earlier this month.

Big 12 Games

Colorado Buffaloes 55, Iowa State Cyclones 49 – Jeff Bzdelik and the Buffaloes shook the monkey off their back last night, winning their first conference game and climbing into a four-way tie for most futile team in the Big 12. Despite allowing Iowa State a robust 48% success rate from the field, Colorado was able to claim the home victory by sinking seven more free throws than their opponents. Craig Brackins once again led the way for the ‘Clones, dropping in 24 points in the losing effort. The performance marked the seventh time in his last nine games that Brackins has cracked the 20-point plateau.