Texas Basketball: 3 overreactions after the huge road win over WVU

Sir’Jabari Rice deserves Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year

One Longhorns player that deserves a ton of love for what he’s done for this team of late is the fifth-year wing Rice. The former New Mexico State Aggies grad transfer has led the way for Texas’ bench this season while proving another source of clutch scoring that was largely absent throughout last season.

The advanced metrics do a nice job of showing the type of impact that Rice had on the Longhorns coming off the bench this season.

Rice is one of the few bench players in the Big 12 this season that ranks among the top 25 in the conference in terms of box plus/minus and win shares per 40 minutes.

He’s also provided some critical late-game clutch scoring for the Longhorns. In fact, Rice (4.4) ranks behind only Carr (4.8) in terms of points per game in clutch time. And among eligible players, Rice leads the Big 12 in clutch time true shooting percentage (79.5).

Rice has shown an ability to take over games in situations where Texas really needs someone to step up. Another situational stat that shows just how effective Rice can be on the offensive end of the floor when needed is his iso scoring.

He leads the Big 12 in points per possession on iso plays, at a clip north of 1.60.

And in terms of how Rice’s offensive output is helping Texas boast an extremely strong bench shows up in the team’s overall bench scoring. Texas leads the Big 12 in bench points per game this season, at a clip north of 27.

Considering that Rice is responsible for more than 10 of these bench points per game, he’s clearly a big reason for Texas leading the Big 12 in that stat category.

All of these impressive stats for Rice this season just go to show that he is very worthy of the Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year honors.