Texas basketball: 2 studs, 1 dud from Sweet 16 win over Xavier

Dud No. 1: Dillon Mitchell, F

Another game, another disappointing night on the stat sheet for true freshman forward Dillon Mitchell.

The uber-talented former five-star recruit has now put up zero points in two of the last three games. And to find the last game that Mitchell scored more than four points, you have to go all the way back to the Jan. 30 win at home over the Baylor Bears.

Mitchell is now well over a dozen games since the last time he even scored more than four points.

While Terry kept Mitchell in the starting five in this game, he continued to get limited minutes on the floor compared to the rest of the Longhorns’ core rotation. He only played 11 minutes in the win over Xavier, which was the least among players on this team not named Disu.

Unfortunately, Texas hasn’t found many ways to use Mitchell in a proficient way on both ends of the floor in the last couple of months. The limited scoring threat that Mitchell poses away from the basket severely handicaps how much Texas can space the floor on offense.

And while there is a lot of value that Mitchell can bring to the table as a stout on-ball defender and an electric rebounder, that isn’t enough to warrant him getting starter-level minutes at this point of the season.

Since Miami isn’t a very long team in terms of average height and wingspan (224th in the NCAA according to Kenpom in average height this season), I don’t anticipate we’ll be seeing much of Mitchell in the Elite Eight for the Longhorns either.