Texas Basketball: 3 reasons Longhorns can dominate West Virginia

3) Why Texas basketball could dominate WVU

Getting to the free-throw line

One potential area of weakness that Texas could exploit on an otherwise very strong defensive team in the Mountaineers in the ability to get to the free-throw line. When Texas is driving the lane and racking up team assists in the dozens in games, they are one of the hardest teams to defend in the Big 12, and that tends to mean they get to the charity stripe often.

West Virginia does allow their opponent to get to the line around 18-19 times per game this season, which ranks around the middle of the road in Division I. They are doing better in terms of free-throw attempts given up since the start of Big 12 play, but this is still an area of opportunity for the Texas offense in this game.

Texas ranks in the top 100 in the entire country in free-throw attempts per game (around 21). And in Big 12 play, they rank in the top four with around the same amount of attempts per game from the charity stripe.

Texas could see the likes of senior center Jericho Sims, freshman power forward Greg Brown, and sophomore power forward Kai Jones get to the line early and often in this game. That trio of big men all have a free-throw attempts rate this season sitting at least at 40 percent.

Hitting their free-throw attempts at an efficient clip will be the main challenge at hand for the Longhorns. Hit their attempts from the charity stripe at a clip better than 75 percent and there’s a good chance that the Longhorns could walk away with a big win on this afternoon.