Tough Week Shows Texas Basketball Is Improving

Last week was a tough week for Texas basketball. On paper, it looked like the Longhorns were in for a pair of losses with road trips to a pair of Top Ten teams.

Yet the Longhorns held up well, managing to earn a split during that rough tough game stretch while remaining competitive throughout in Saturday’s loss to Kansas.

The takeaway is that he Longhorns have a bright future ahead of them and it may not be the distant future either. The Longhorns continue to build a very solid case for Big Dance inclusion and that was before they gave Kansas all they wanted Saturday afternoon.

The thought for much of the year was that the Horns were going to be solidly on the bubble. However, when USA Today released a mock bracket on Thursday they had Texas as a 6 seed.

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There is still a lot of basketball to be played between now and tournament time but it is hard not to get excited about this team. While they do have some weaknesses that can be exploited they are also talented enough that no team is going to look forward to matching up against them.

That optimism is a far cry from the mood surrounding Texas is December when Cameron Ridley, the team’s best player to that point, was lost to a foot injury. Without Ridley, Texas lost three of four, including a pair of winnable conference road games to Texas Tech and TCU. At 1-2 in conference play, it looked like NIT time in Austin.

That has all changed now.

Isaiah Taylor has stepped into the leadership role. At times, Taylor has been almost unstoppable and has carried this team on his back with little support.

That is changing too, however, Javan Felix has begun to step up his game, giving Texas a nasty 1-2 punch that even Kansas had a hard time dealing with. In fact, it was Felix, not Taylor, who keyed the big upset over then-no. 6 West Virginia on Wednesday.

Down low, Prince Ibeh is no Cameron Ridley, but he has been a key contributor. On Saturday, Ibeh posted only seven points but added seven blocks and seven rebounds while playing solid defense on KU’s Perry Ellis. The fact that Ibeh has been able to hold his own has allowed the Longhorns to be competitive in every game.

Connor Lammert has also done his part. Lammert was the only Horn to hit more than one three pointer against the Jayhawks, hitting on 5-of-7 beyond the arc to lead all Texas scorers with 15 points. Lammert hasn’t been scoring at that rate consistently, but he has been hitting big shots, including an important late three in the Horns upset of Iowa State on Dec. 12.

The future seems to be in good hands as well. Freshman guard Eric Davis Jr. is improving by the game as well. Davis has gone for double digit points in three of the last four games while fellow freshman Kerwin Roach has also been doing some good things lately.

Texas Longhorns /

Texas Longhorns

If Texas can shoot more consistently, there is no limit to how far they can go this season. That’s a big IF, and when Texas shooters do go cold, as they did in the second half at Kansas, their chances for winning go down dramatically.

Still, the Longhorns have managed to salvage a season that looked like it was lost at the beginning of the month and have given Texas basketball fans plenty of reasons to be excited.

This week gives Texas a chance to get back to their winning ways with a Tuesday rematch with a TCU team that Texas probably should have beaten earlier in the month. The Horns then wrap up January with a non-conference showdown against a Vanderbilt team that is seventh in the SEC.

February won’t be an easy month either. Texas will have to face off against Iowa State, West Virginia and Kansas again while playing Baylor and Oklahoma twice. That’s a tough enough schedule to knock the Horns right back out onto the bubble should they play poorly.

Given what we’ve seen of Texas over the last couple of weeks, don’t be surprised if the Longhorns give those teams some fits and pull a couple of more upsets out of their hats along the way.

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