Texas Basketball: 3 x-factors that will make or break the 2023 postseason

Bench scoring continues to provide a major spark

Among the most pronounced strengths for Texas as a team this season is the offensive output from the bench. Texas’ bench scoring is the best in the Big 12 this season, and it’s not really close.

Texas is averaging 29.3 bench points per game this season, which is nearly four more than the next-best team in the Big 12 (West Virginia Mountaineers at a clip of 25.7 bench points per game). The Longhorns have only continued to get better in terms of the edge that it holds in bench scoring per game over the rest of the conference in Big 12 play.

Texas nearly has a five-point edge in terms of bench points per game over West Virginia as the top team in conference play this season.

You can largely thank the efforts of standout senior shooting guard/wing Sir’Jabari Rice for Texas’ insane bench scoring this season, especially in Big 12 play. Rice has turned into one of the best sixth men in all of college hoops.

In fact, Rice’s 24-point performance in the win over Oklahoma this weekend put him in a league of his own in terms of major conference guards this season. Rice just became the only major conference reserve guard in college hoops this season to have four games with at least 21 points while shooting at least 50 percent from the field.

What’s even crazier is the fact that Rice was able to get each of these 21+ point outings over the course of the last three weeks.

The question remains down the stretch can Rice continue to carry Texas’ bench scoring the way he has throughout conference play in the last couple of months?

I do have faith in Rice’s ability to continue to come up with double-digit scoring efforts off the bench down the stretch this season and in the postseason. He’s proven in the past that he can be a clutch scorer in the postseason. At New Mexico State last season, Rice averaged more than a dozen points per game in four postseason outings, including a Round of 64 upset of the four-seed Arkansas Razorbacks.

The question will be whether Rice can actually get some help from other bench scorers down the stretch this season.

Texas needs other core reserve players in this rotation such as Cunningham, Bishop, and even freshman guard Arterio Morris to provide more secondary scoring support off the bench.

I think Cunningham could be a real x-factor down the stretch, as he’s scored in double figures off the bench in three of the last seven games in Big 12 play for the Longhorns.

Cunningham has turned into a real threat shooting from beyond the arc and as the pick-and-roll man on offense. He leads the Big 12 in points per possession as the pick-and-roll man this season. And only TCU senior forward Emanuel Miller is shooting a higher percentage from deep than Cunningham in the Big 12 this season. Cunningham is shooting an insane 44.9 percent from beyond the arc.