Texas Basketball: 3 players struggling mightily against top competition

Marcus Carr, G

The start to this season as a whole for the former Minnesota Golden Gophers and Pitt Panthers senior guard Marcus Carr was definitely less than ideal. Carr is not the high-scoring playmaker that the Longhorns were hoping for so far this season. While he has shown flashes, this is one of the slowest starts of Carr’s college hoops career to date.

Carr ranks among the worst Longhorns players so far this season in terms of player efficiency rating (12.3) and box plus/minus (0.5). Considering the fact that he had some easier competition to get in rhythm against this season and put up some big numbers, it’s pretty disappointing to see the way that things started out for Carr on the Forty Acres.

The weird part about Carr’s split stats this season is that his per-game counting stats look pretty good. In Texas’ two losses this season (both against ranked competition), Carr averaged 10.5 points per game, two rebounds, three assists, one steal, and 1.5 turnovers. But his shooting percentages are where it starts to fall off the rails for Texas.

Carr shot just 33.3 percent from the field, 12.5 percent from beyond the arc, and 66.7 percent from the free-throw line in the two games for Texas against ranked competition thus far.

It’s clear that Carr is just taking way too many shots in these games. He’s averaging around 14 field goal attempts per game, which is too many considering he’s hitting on just 33.3 percent of them. He’s also only hit one of his eight attempts from beyond the arc against ranked competition this season.

Carr is managing turnovers pretty well and his on-ball defense is decent. But his off-ball play needs to pick up as does his shot selection against ranked competition.