Texas Basketball: 3 takeaways from sloppy loss to TCU

Texas appears to be out of energy

Refs were not the biggest issue in this game for the Longhorns. It was just one of many smaller problems that added up to a loss that felt like it was bigger than a margin of just two points.

Texas was outrebounded by a massive margin throughout the night. TCU outrebounded Texas 46-28, which was one of this team’s worst showings on the glass all season. There was a point in this game when Texas was being outrebounded 13-2 early in the first half.

TCU also commanded second-chance points (16-6) and points in the paint (36-26) in this game.

The cherry on top of this game for the Longhorns was shooting well under 40 percent from the field. For only the second time this season, Texas shot worse than 39 percent from the field. Ironically, the one other time Texas did that this year, it resulted in a win over the Oklahoma State Cowboys on the road on Jan. 7.

All in all, it just doesn’t look like Texas has the energy it did early in Big 12 play.

March is supposed to be a time in the season when a team really hits its stride and starts to build momentum for the postseason. However, Texas is playing some of its worst basketball of the season in the last couple of weeks. That’s obviously not a good sign for the postseason.

In fact, this is now the first time this season that Texas has lost two games in a row.

One of the craziest stats that I could find coming out of this game was that Texas is the first major conference team this season to lose a game when it turns the ball over no more than 11 times while the opponent turns it over at least 22 times (per Sports Reference).

All of these numbers show me that Terry and the Longhorns need to flip the switch soon, or this once-promising season is going to result in an early postseason exit.