AUSTIN, Texas — “It’s actually overwhelming, the disappointment.”
After a 88-69 demolition by the Virginia Cavaliers at the Moody Center last Wednesday in the only meaningful non-conference home game for the Texas Longhorns this season, first-year head coach Sean Miller managed some candor about a team that looks like an NCAA Tournament bubble team at best.
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Asked by Kirk Bohls whether the team was at a crossroads with four games remaining before the crucible of SEC play, Miller agreed.
“We’re at a crossroads. You can’t lose at home and be down by 25, 20, 30 [points] in a big game early in the year, great crowd, and not feel like that’s a problem,” Miller said. “That’s where we’re at. So we have to improve. We have to to coach and teach, and in some of it is, individually, we have to be tougher and better when it comes to that [defensive] side of the ball. Too many guys had their way against us on offense.”
Mediocre in adjusted efficiency defensively, the Longhorns are in the fifth percentile nationally in forced turnover rate, illustrative of the team’s inability to disrupt opposing attacks. In Wednesday’s blowout, Virginia limited its turnover rate to 11.3 percent, shot 50 percent from three, and 53.8 percent from the floor.
In scoring 1.419 points per possession, the Hoos “destroyed” the Longhorns defensively, according to Miller. “That’s about as high a points per possession as you can give up in a college basketball game,” he said.
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It’s only marginally higher than the 1.329 points per possession that NC State managed in the final game of the Maui Invitational, a game that Texas actually won despite allowing 97 points on 53.1-percent shooting.
The pick-and-roll coverage for the Horns lacks diversity, as Miller tends to rely on drop coverage, especially when sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis is in the game, the Texas head coach conceded that the defense is just not particularly good overall.
“I would say for the most part where they really punished us is just off the dribble. I don’t know if it was our ball screen coverage, as much as it was move the ball, move the ball, move the ball, move the ball, and when they attacked, especially towards the end of the clock, there’s too many times where we gave something up, a three, a foul, a shot at the rim,” Miller said.
Virginia finished with 12 made threes with five coming in the critical seven-plus minutes of the first half as the Cavaliers went on a 12-0 run that effectively ended the game.
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From that point forward, the fullcourt press employed by UVA head coach Ryan Odom and the inability to get stops kept Texas from playing at the offensive pace that Miller wants — the Horns only had six fast-break points because they started so many possessions trying to make inbounds passes against the press and struggled to space the court effectively with 4-of-19 shooting from distance.
Miller praised the depth of Odom’s team, which boasts favorable head-to-head matchups against the one through eight players for Texas, a talent disparity that wore on the Longhorns, especially Vokietaitis, who had to contend with two mature seven footers who limited him to seven points on 2-of-7 shooting and stood up to him enough physically to help induce a 3-of-9 performance at the free-throw line. The Florida Atlantic transfer finished a team-low minus-19, an unusual result for a player who forces so many fouls, but one that indicated the extent to which Virginia’s frontcourt won the battle against Vokietaitis.
The guard play for Texas wasn’t any better — senior guard Jordan Pope missed all five of his three-point attempts in scoring 10 points, only notched one assist, and failed to positively impact the game defensively. So while Pope has always been a massive net negative defensively, the delta between his best performances and his worst performances depends entirely on his jump shooting.
Graduate guard Tramon Mark had a similarly negative performance — minus-14 in 24 minutes with two awful turnovers — as did junior guard Simeon Welcher, minus-16 in 22 minutes.
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It’s a group that rates as inconsistent at best and has a floor low enough to consign Texas to the SEC cellar this season if there isn’t significant improvement from the entire team.
Miller’s team hosts Southern at 7 p.m. Central at the Moody Central on SEC Network, a Jaguars team that is concerningly mediocre for this Longhorns team.
