Texas Basketball: 3 reasons Longhorns can win Big 12 Tournament
1. Suffocating defense
The mainstay of the Texas basketball program since Smart took over a little less than five years ago was how good of defense he gets his teams to play with. Defense and pace are usually very patterned and slow with the Longhorns.
In fact, Texas has six players that all have defensive ratings lower than 95.0. That list includes freshman center Will Baker (94.0), junior forward Royce Hamm Jr. (94.5), sophomore forward Gerald Liddell (93.4), freshman forward Kai Jones (92.4), junior center Jericho Sims (92.2), and freshman forward Brock Cunningham (92.1).
Kansas clinched the Big 12 regular season title this season thanks to the versatility of their lineup and how good they can be on defense. The Big 12 doesn’t necessarily completely float to the modern era of basketball in the sense that the pace and space mentality rules all. Kansas was able to win the Big 12 regular season title with a team defensive rating that ranked fourth in Division I at 88.4. They also ranked ninth in the country in points allowed per game (60.5).
Meanwhile, Texas ranks 72nd in the country in defensive rating (94.8) and 22nd in points allowed per game (62.7). Texas also has the 20th ranked strength of schedule in the country this season. Those three numbers show that Texas played a difficult schedule and was able to still play good defense, but also slowed the pace down pretty far.
Next. 5 arguments for Texas to make the NCAA Tournament. dark
There’s a good opportunity for Texas to play lock down defense against the standout Oklahoma State guard combination of Lindy Waters III and Isaac Likekele this weekend. Building more momentum ahead of the Big 12 Tournament with what Texas is known for can help get the confidence where it needs to be at the right point in time.