Texas Basketball: 3 takeaways from second-half slump loss vs. Miami

Interim head coach Rodney Terry and the two-seed Texas basketball saw their deep postseason run come to an end in disappointing fashion against head coach Jim Larranaga and the five-seed Miami Hurricanes in the Elite Eight on March 26. Texas had its seven-game winning streak snapped by Miami in a game that looked very winnable at one point in the second half.

Texas wound up falling short of Miami by a score of 88-81. That final score indicates that the game wasn’t as close as it was in reality.

Terry and the Longhorns had the lead for nearly 28 minutes in this game, compared to just over seven minutes for the Hurricanes. Yet, Miami was able to pull off a 28-11 run to close out this game in the final nine minutes.

Texas couldn’t keep Miami off the free-throw line and the offense really dried up late for the Longhorns. The Longhorns ultimately wound up getting outscored 51-36 in the second half, which was its worst performance in the final 20 minutes in the last month.

Postseason run comes to an end vs. Miami for Rodney Terry and Texas basketball

Here’s a look at three takeaways from the Longhorns’ second-half slump of a loss to Miami in the Elite Eight.

The little things add up

As easy as it would be to exclusively blame the refs for this loss, there was a multitude of other factors that obviously caused the Longhorns to fall short of Miami in this game.

First off, Texas didn’t have much of an answer for Miami’s offense and rebounding down the stretch. Turnovers also killed the Longhorns in the last 10 or 12 minutes after having a pretty clean start to this game.

Texas turned the ball over 10 times in the second half, more than 70 percent of which came in the last 12 minutes. The ball movement also really slowed down for the Longhorns late in the second half. In fact, Texas didn’t have a single assist in the final five minutes after putting up a whopping 20 in the rest of the contest.

Another challenge the Longhorns faced throughout the weekend, and particularly in the second half, was some tough injury issues. Not only was senior big man Dylan Disu out for this game with a lower-body injury, but Texas also saw senior guard Marcus Carr experience what looked like a hamstring injury in the second half.

I should also note that freshman forward Dillon Mitchell banged up his wrist on a play where he fouled a Miami shooter at the rim.

Combine those factors with the 27 second half free-throw attempts for the Hurricanes, and it’s easy to see why the Longhorns weren’t able to close this one out.

And according to Sports Reference, Texas is now the only team to have at least 32 opponent free throws in an NCAA Tournament game since the Round of 32 last year while boasting a net free-throw attempt margin of -15 or worse.