Texas Basketball: Resiliency wills Horns NIT Title win over Lipscomb

All it took for the Texas basketball program to finally find success this season was a huge string of performances from the two senior leaders.

On a big night in terms of redemption for the Texas basketball program, on April 4, the effort on the floor at Madison Square Garden spoke volumes about the mindset of this locker room in the NIT Finals. Texas basketball got to take on the five-seed Lipscomb Bisons as slight 1.5-point favorites at MSG tonight.

The winner of this game got the right to take the NIT Championship back to campus. On the Forty Acres, an NIT Championship would at least repair some of the damage and disappointment that the 2018-19 regular season brought for the Texas basketball program. This program missed the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in the past 21 years to cap off the regular season.

However, surpassing expectations during the 2018-19 campaign weren’t on the minds of the Texas basketball players on this night. Completing this nice NIT run with a win over the upstart Bisons was the main task at hand for head Texas basketball coach Shaka Smart and his squad.

Lipscomb was coming off a big NIT run that featured a number of quality victories. That run included wins over the one-seed UNC-Greensboro, NC State Wolfpack, and Wichita State Shockers. There’s a good argument that all three of those aforementioned hoops programs were more talented than Lipscomb by a decent margin.

If nothing else, the Bisons weren’t going to be intimated by what the two-seed Texas Longhorns basketball program brought to the table for this NIT Finals showdown. This was a difficult matchup to prepare for.

On the other side, Texas basketball was able to take down the Xavier Musketeers, Colorado Buffaloes, and TCU Horned Frogs on the way to this meeting with Lipscomb. Both paths to the title game were pretty impressive given the circumstances.

Moreover, we got to witness one of the better two-way efforts for the Horns in this game. Texas knocked off Lipscomb by the final score of 81-66. That came after the Horns allowed just 44 points in a dominant defensive effort against the Horned Frogs.

Texas came out with a solid defensive effort again here that was more evident in the first half than the second. Texas exited the first half with a commanding 41-27 lead. Lipscomb did narrow that margin a bit for some portion of the second half, but the Horns ultimately came out on top for both halves.

As a team, Lipscomb shot worse than 40 percent from the field while Texas hovered around 45 percent. A huge difference also emerged with the Horns hitting 13 three-point tries while Lipscomb only managed five.

And, as was true for most of the NIT, the Horns were led by the seniors here. Center Dylan Osetkowski posted a shining performance with 19 points, 11 rebounds, and three steals. Shooting guard Kerwin Roach Jr. and sophomore wing Jase Febres were also big. Roach Jr. had 16 points off the bench and Febres added 17 points and five boards. It was the pure effort and intensity for the Horns that pushed them to victory, like a number of the other wins during this NIT run.