Preview:
Our trip to Austin will be the first real road trip to hostile territory, and with Christmas just around the corner one could imagine our very young team losing some focus. That makes this a dangerous trip.
Texas is 6-4, with its best win being over Tennessee @ Tennessee. It has a respectable loss to #12 North Carolina State, but has also lost to Hawaii, South Florida, and a blowout to Arizona in which MacDonald scored 44. That leaves it unranked, 63rd by Massey, with an RPI of 123. Despite its mediocre ratings and record, Texas has some terrific players and is talented and fully capable of beating us if they shoot and play well.
Texas plays reasonable defense, holding opponents to 36% shooting, although they don’t do so well defending the three. They outrebound their opponents by 10, steal 7 times a game, and block 3.
23 Joyner Holmes is a 6’3” senior who leads the team with 16 points and 10 rebounds a game.
34 Charli Collier is a 6’5” sophomore center who scores 14 points and snags 11 rebounds a game.
1 Sug Sutton is a 5’8” senior guard who scores 11 and has a 2:1 assist:turnover ratio.
0 Celest Taylor is a 5’11” freshman guard who is probably their best three point shooter at around 30%
10 Lashan Higgs is a 5’9” senior guard who fills up a stat line. But last game she did not start—instead
12 Jada Underwood, a 6’ senior guard
In looking over the stats, Texas makes about 5 threes a game, but most of its points come from the paint with Holmes and Collier. Having two big scorers inside will necessitate that our defensive attention goes there. They look a lot like Tennessee, actually, right down to the ugly orange colors. In the Texas vs. Tennessee game, Texas guards got hot and made a lot of jumpshots, with Higgs and Sutton combining for 38 points--so Texas can be versatile and score down low or score outside with jumpshots.
Overview:
We shot 32% and gave up 19 O-boards which fed a career day for the Texas bigs. We scratched our way back into the game but were unable to cling to a lead late in the 4th quarter.
Flow of the Game:
Our offense looked badly out of sync throughout the game--Texas played a close man defense and was able to disrupt the Princeton. The way to punish such a close defense is the back door cut--but while we made a couple of them we also turned the ball over several times trying to feed the ball.
Poor shooting, turnovers, and a growing inability to defend Charli Collier left us down by as much as 11 in the 2nd quarter. The third quarter we hit 10/10 free throws--although our offense still looked stagnant--and we managed to take a 47-46 lead going into the fourth.
In the fourth Williams blossomed late, again, opening up with two treys and a layup. When Lexie hit a trey we led 60-58 with about 4 minutes left. That proved to be our high water mark. Collier made the next 5 points. We got the game back to 3 points with 48 seconds left, but then a couple of poor decisions cost us a chance to tie. We got a defensive rebound down 3 with 24 seconds left, and wound up wasting most of the clock before taking a layup rather than a trey with 6 seconds left. Either a fast layup or a three point attempt was in order, but not a slow layup. Then, after Texas sank 2 free throws we advanced the ball with 4 seconds left and enough time to tie it up on a quick three, but Jerome inbounded the ball straight to Joyner Holmes. Our time at 1 was over.
Performances:
Fingall had a good game--both defensively and offensively--scoring 14 points and grabbing 7 rebounds. She was our most consistent player.
Lexie led with 17 points--mightily helped with her 10/10 free throws. She also had 12 rebounds--a double double.
Williams wound up with 15 points after a good fourth quarter. She had only 1 assist for the game.
Jones and Prechtel and Belibi were not the factors we have come to expect--with 4 and 2 and 7 points respectively. I wonder about freshman-itus. Jones was a particular surprise, getting 17 minutes and definitely not filling up a stat line. Prechtel was 1/7. Belibi had 7 rebounds--the only person not named Lexie who was effective at rebounding which must be why she got 18 minutes.
Jerome, Jump, Brown, Wilson, Lacey all made appearances.
As a team, we had 10 assists on only 20 made baskets--7 of which were treys. Texas made 27 baskets. Hard to win like that.
Conclusion:
It is not much fun for us fans to see a game like this, but it might be a blessing in disguise. It exposes our weaknesses and eliminates any overconfidence. Our freshmen had never lost before. Now they have. Hopefully they will come back from their holidays a little hungrier and ready to work hard against Davis to get ready for the Pac 12 soon thereafter.
We could really use Carrington and Dodson back. Without them, we need Prechtel and Belibi and Jones to become better defenders against players who are sometimes bigger than they are. There will be a lot of that in the league. They need to get better at boxing out players and suppressing O-boards, which were really the reason we lost this close game.
And somehow we need to be able to run our offense against tight defenses without turning the ball over.
Our trip to Austin will be the first real road trip to hostile territory, and with Christmas just around the corner one could imagine our very young team losing some focus. That makes this a dangerous trip.
Texas is 6-4, with its best win being over Tennessee @ Tennessee. It has a respectable loss to #12 North Carolina State, but has also lost to Hawaii, South Florida, and a blowout to Arizona in which MacDonald scored 44. That leaves it unranked, 63rd by Massey, with an RPI of 123. Despite its mediocre ratings and record, Texas has some terrific players and is talented and fully capable of beating us if they shoot and play well.
Texas plays reasonable defense, holding opponents to 36% shooting, although they don’t do so well defending the three. They outrebound their opponents by 10, steal 7 times a game, and block 3.
23 Joyner Holmes is a 6’3” senior who leads the team with 16 points and 10 rebounds a game.
34 Charli Collier is a 6’5” sophomore center who scores 14 points and snags 11 rebounds a game.
1 Sug Sutton is a 5’8” senior guard who scores 11 and has a 2:1 assist:turnover ratio.
0 Celest Taylor is a 5’11” freshman guard who is probably their best three point shooter at around 30%
10 Lashan Higgs is a 5’9” senior guard who fills up a stat line. But last game she did not start—instead
12 Jada Underwood, a 6’ senior guard
In looking over the stats, Texas makes about 5 threes a game, but most of its points come from the paint with Holmes and Collier. Having two big scorers inside will necessitate that our defensive attention goes there. They look a lot like Tennessee, actually, right down to the ugly orange colors. In the Texas vs. Tennessee game, Texas guards got hot and made a lot of jumpshots, with Higgs and Sutton combining for 38 points--so Texas can be versatile and score down low or score outside with jumpshots.
Overview:
We shot 32% and gave up 19 O-boards which fed a career day for the Texas bigs. We scratched our way back into the game but were unable to cling to a lead late in the 4th quarter.
Flow of the Game:
Our offense looked badly out of sync throughout the game--Texas played a close man defense and was able to disrupt the Princeton. The way to punish such a close defense is the back door cut--but while we made a couple of them we also turned the ball over several times trying to feed the ball.
Poor shooting, turnovers, and a growing inability to defend Charli Collier left us down by as much as 11 in the 2nd quarter. The third quarter we hit 10/10 free throws--although our offense still looked stagnant--and we managed to take a 47-46 lead going into the fourth.
In the fourth Williams blossomed late, again, opening up with two treys and a layup. When Lexie hit a trey we led 60-58 with about 4 minutes left. That proved to be our high water mark. Collier made the next 5 points. We got the game back to 3 points with 48 seconds left, but then a couple of poor decisions cost us a chance to tie. We got a defensive rebound down 3 with 24 seconds left, and wound up wasting most of the clock before taking a layup rather than a trey with 6 seconds left. Either a fast layup or a three point attempt was in order, but not a slow layup. Then, after Texas sank 2 free throws we advanced the ball with 4 seconds left and enough time to tie it up on a quick three, but Jerome inbounded the ball straight to Joyner Holmes. Our time at 1 was over.
Performances:
Fingall had a good game--both defensively and offensively--scoring 14 points and grabbing 7 rebounds. She was our most consistent player.
Lexie led with 17 points--mightily helped with her 10/10 free throws. She also had 12 rebounds--a double double.
Williams wound up with 15 points after a good fourth quarter. She had only 1 assist for the game.
Jones and Prechtel and Belibi were not the factors we have come to expect--with 4 and 2 and 7 points respectively. I wonder about freshman-itus. Jones was a particular surprise, getting 17 minutes and definitely not filling up a stat line. Prechtel was 1/7. Belibi had 7 rebounds--the only person not named Lexie who was effective at rebounding which must be why she got 18 minutes.
Jerome, Jump, Brown, Wilson, Lacey all made appearances.
As a team, we had 10 assists on only 20 made baskets--7 of which were treys. Texas made 27 baskets. Hard to win like that.
Conclusion:
It is not much fun for us fans to see a game like this, but it might be a blessing in disguise. It exposes our weaknesses and eliminates any overconfidence. Our freshmen had never lost before. Now they have. Hopefully they will come back from their holidays a little hungrier and ready to work hard against Davis to get ready for the Pac 12 soon thereafter.
We could really use Carrington and Dodson back. Without them, we need Prechtel and Belibi and Jones to become better defenders against players who are sometimes bigger than they are. There will be a lot of that in the league. They need to get better at boxing out players and suppressing O-boards, which were really the reason we lost this close game.
And somehow we need to be able to run our offense against tight defenses without turning the ball over.
