Texas Basketball: 2 studs, 1 dud from offensive outburst vs. OK State

Dud No. 1: Tyrese Hunter, G

I had high hopes about the direction that sophomore guard Tyrese Hunter was trending after he had a solid outing in the win over the West Virginia Mountaineers on Jan. 21. Prior to exiting the game with a lower-body injury, Hunter had his best showing of the last couple of weeks, posting 11 points and four assists on an efficient 5-of-8 shooting from the field.

However, we continued to see the version of Hunter that essentially disappears on the offensive end of the floor on this night against the Pokes. Hunter posted just five points on 1-of-4 shooting from the field, 1-of-2 from beyond the arc, and 2-of-2 from the free-throw line. He also registered three rebounds, four assists, and two turnovers.

Hunter didn’t look very confident on either end of the floor in this one. While he did at least have twice as many assists as he did turnovers, he didn’t pull the trigger on the opportunities to let it fly when he had them on soft Oklahoma State closeouts.

There was also a tough missed shot for Hunter on an open kick out for three and one that he missed when he had some space on a handoff.

It is interesting to see, though, that when Hunter starts out cold shooting from the field, it looks like Texas isn’t letting him shoot the ball near as much. It took him until late in the second half to drain his first and only bucket of this game from the field.

And, similar to what happened in the win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders a couple of weeks ago when Hunter didn’t make a single field goal in the first half, the Longhorns took the shot-making duties away from him almost completely.

Against Texas Tech on Jan. 14 and in this win over Oklahoma State, Hunter only took four attempts from the field.

I don’t know how much I necessarily agree with that approach, especially when Texas is up late in games. While this might be an unpopular opinion at this point of the season given all of Hunter’s struggles, I still don’t think this team can reach its full potential without having Hunter at least contributing offensively on one-fifth of the possessions on that end. In this game, his usage rate was down around 10 percent.