Preview:
Texas is ranked 25 and just beat New Orleans 131-36. Consider that score. A freshman guard for Texas, Kyndall Hunter, scored 27 points off the bench on 7/8 three point shooting. Our game will be on ESPN.
We played Texas at Texas 2 years ago and lost in a disappointing match. None of the Texas starters from that game are back and almost no players at all from the team are back. Notably graduated was center Charli Collier and transferred (to Duke) was standout guard Celeste Taylor. However, Texas's new coach (as of last year) Vic Schaeffer has reloaded the team. Last year Texas had a good but not outstanding year until they caught fire in the NCAA tournament, beating UCLA and Maryland before falling to South Carolina. It certainly did not take Schaeffer long to get Texas back into the national mix. This year he brought in three McDonald's All American freshmen into the program. One of them just scored 27 points in her first college game.
Among the somewhat familiar players is Aliyah Matharu, another guard who was their second leading scorer in that game at 18 points. We played her in Victoria when she was with coach Schaeffer at Mississippi State.
Texas has height, speed, and accuracy and will be the first team we play who can match up with us physically, complete with 6'4" and 6'5" players and a bevy of quick guards who Schaeffer will probably unleash on our "point guard by committee" to test our ball handling. He was, after all, associate head coach at A&M the night their quick guards harassed Pohlen into 7 turnovers and gave all Stanford fans one of our worst memories. That was the night in 2011 when we lost in the national semis despite a 31 point game by Nneka. Yup, Schaeffer is a smart coach and will use the tools at his disposal to probe us for any weaknesses, and the obvious place to probe is the hole left by Williams. We will learn very fast if our team is up to handling ball pressure. In addition, it seems our perimeter defense will be sorely tested if Texas can come close to replicating its 56% three point shooting.
I rather wish that Morgan State were more of a step up from Clarke, to get us a little closer to being ready for an opponent that matches up with us so completely. Texas is a good team--perhaps a very good team--and they seem to have one of the most dangerous of factors working for them--a freshman that nobody has scouted and who can seemingly drop 27 points. Could me as both worried but also excited that we will have our most substantial early season test.
Texas is ranked 25 and just beat New Orleans 131-36. Consider that score. A freshman guard for Texas, Kyndall Hunter, scored 27 points off the bench on 7/8 three point shooting. Our game will be on ESPN.
We played Texas at Texas 2 years ago and lost in a disappointing match. None of the Texas starters from that game are back and almost no players at all from the team are back. Notably graduated was center Charli Collier and transferred (to Duke) was standout guard Celeste Taylor. However, Texas's new coach (as of last year) Vic Schaeffer has reloaded the team. Last year Texas had a good but not outstanding year until they caught fire in the NCAA tournament, beating UCLA and Maryland before falling to South Carolina. It certainly did not take Schaeffer long to get Texas back into the national mix. This year he brought in three McDonald's All American freshmen into the program. One of them just scored 27 points in her first college game.
Among the somewhat familiar players is Aliyah Matharu, another guard who was their second leading scorer in that game at 18 points. We played her in Victoria when she was with coach Schaeffer at Mississippi State.
Texas has height, speed, and accuracy and will be the first team we play who can match up with us physically, complete with 6'4" and 6'5" players and a bevy of quick guards who Schaeffer will probably unleash on our "point guard by committee" to test our ball handling. He was, after all, associate head coach at A&M the night their quick guards harassed Pohlen into 7 turnovers and gave all Stanford fans one of our worst memories. That was the night in 2011 when we lost in the national semis despite a 31 point game by Nneka. Yup, Schaeffer is a smart coach and will use the tools at his disposal to probe us for any weaknesses, and the obvious place to probe is the hole left by Williams. We will learn very fast if our team is up to handling ball pressure. In addition, it seems our perimeter defense will be sorely tested if Texas can come close to replicating its 56% three point shooting.
I rather wish that Morgan State were more of a step up from Clarke, to get us a little closer to being ready for an opponent that matches up with us so completely. Texas is a good team--perhaps a very good team--and they seem to have one of the most dangerous of factors working for them--a freshman that nobody has scouted and who can seemingly drop 27 points. Could me as both worried but also excited that we will have our most substantial early season test.