One of the hottest topics right now amongst Texas fans regarding the Sweet 16 loss to Purdue has to do with Sean Miller's decision to leave Matas Vokietaitis on the bench for the biggest defensive possession of the tournament.
In the moment, it was definitely hard to fathom why Miller would've made the move that the did, seeing as though the gameplan seemingly should've been to get the rebound at any cost once the Boilermakers took their first shot. It's pretty safe to say that in order to do this, you'd want your tallest, most physically imposing player near the basket.
Sean Miller answers for his actions
Coach Miller obviously chose to do something different, and he explained it in the postgame conference:
"Cluff fouled out. Renn would've played the 5 - and he's a difficult matchup for a game-winning play, especially from Matas. Matas having 4 fouls on top of that - it hadn't worked out very well for us during the game. By playing quicker and smaller we could switch that and defend the drive in a better fashion. Matas can't really switch.
We did get the stop. They got us with their size on the offensive rebound and many times a game is won and lost not on the first shot but the second."
Though what he says kind of makes some sense, it's hard to believe that keeping the Longhorns' 7-footer on the bench in that moment was the right thing to do. The whole "Matas not being able to switch" thing has some legs, but he wouldn't have necessarily needed to if he's on the court with three to four guards. He'd just need to grab the rebound and lob it down the court to someone like Dailyn Swain, Jordan Pope, or Tramon Mark, who was having a historic game at that point.
Don't get me wrong, I love what Sean Miller did throughout the entirety of the tournament from a personnel perspective, but this decision sounds like it possibly cost them the game.