Texas Basketball: 3 takeaways from sloppy loss to TCU

A game that Texas basketball and interim head coach Rodney Terry needed to win to stay alive in the race for the Big 12 regular season title ultimately didn’t come to be on the night of March 1. Texas fell short of the No. 22 ranked TCU Horned Frogs and head coach Jamie Dixon on the road at Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth by the final score of 75-73.

The final score of this game indicates something closer than this game was in reality. Throughout most of this game, it felt like the Horned Frogs were in complete control. Aside from a late run in the dying minutes of the second half, largely thanks to some spurts led by senior big man Dylan Disu and sophomore guard Tyrese Hunter, TCU was up by more than six or eight points throughout.

The loss to TCU moves Texas’ record on the season to 22-8 (11-6 Big 12). Texas has lost two games in a row and four of its last seven.

All that remains on the regular season slate now for Terry and the Longhorns is the finale at home at the Moody Center on March 4 against the No. 3 ranked Kansas Jayhawks.

Tyrese Hunter’s 15 points isn’t enough to get Texas basketball past TCU

Here’s a look at three takeaways from a sloppy two-point loss to TCU for Texas on the road on March 1.

Big 12 refs continue to do Big 12 ref things

One of the critical moments of this game that saw a big swing in momentum was in the second half. Texas was trying to mount a comeback about halfway through the final 20 minutes when we saw the refs hit Terry with a technical foul.

At the time, Texas was down by eight points after Chuck O’Bannon hit a clutch three-pointer for the Frogs. But, it looked like Terry was looking for both a missed foul call on a moving screen. Literally right before that happened, there was an even more egregious missed call by the refs.

Right before that, Terry was complaining to the refs that TCU was trying to run a play with six men on the floor. And you could pretty clearly tell once ESPN’s crew got the camera angle that TCU had six men on the floor at the time, which is a technical foul. Yet, no tech was called on the Frogs.

On the ensuing offensive possession, the aforementioned three-pointer that O’Bannon knocked down extended TCU’s lead to eight points.

This was another big swing in a key road game for the Longhorns that was caused by a trio of mind-boggling calls by this reffing crew.

This is a little bit of a reminder of the loss to the Iowa State Cyclones on the road earlier this season. A missed call on Iowa State’s Caleb Grill that caused Dillon Mitchell to hit the floor hard wound up pushing a key momentum swing in the first half of that game.

I honestly can’t remember spending this much time talking about ref blunders that cost the Longhorns in the Big 12 on the road as often as it has this season.

Can we also talk about how Terry was given a technical foul for going outside of the coach’s box when TCU’s Dixon seemingly spends at least half of the game outside of the box with no warning whatsoever?