Nearing the midway point of conference play, the 3-4 Texas Longhorns head to the Plains on Wednesday to face the Auburn Tigers as head coach Sean Miller emphasizes a horse-race mentality to his team.
Preparing for Saturday’s resounding 87-67 home victory over Georgia hoping to avoid a third-straight conference loss, Miller compared SEC play to a Kentucky Derby.
“You’re watching the horses and it’s just all this crazy excitement and if you stop the race halfway through, it’s like a cluttered picture
— you have six horses, seven horses, all in a row. They all look the same. Can’t tell one from the other. Somebody’s winning, oftentimes not the winner of the race. But you keep moving, you keep running it, you keep running it all the way to the end and of those five or six horses in that race, one or two or two or three separate themselves,” Miller said on Saturday.
Saturday’s race was one that the Longhorns ran particularly well in the second half, overcoming a seven-point halftime deficit — a moment of truth, in Miller’s estimation — by outscoring the Bulldogs 57-30 over the final 20 minutes behind four players reaching double digits, led by 16 points on 7-of-10 shooting by graduate guard Tramon Mark and 14 points on 7-of-7 shooting with three steals by junior wing Dailyn Swain.
“They really willed our team, not only the entire game, but especially in the second half,” Miller said of Mark and Swain.
Mark finished with 23 points, six rebounds, four assists, and a steal and Swain scored a game-high 26 points with six rebounds, two assists, and five steals that didn’t reflect his entire defensive contributions — the Longhorns coaching staff tracked 13 deflections for the impactful wing.
“Dailyn playing the way he played at Kentucky, and now playing the way he played here today against Georgia, I think these are the best two games I’ve ever seen him play in a row,” Miller said.
In those two games, Swain has averaged 27.5 points, six rebounds, 3.5 steals, and 2.5 assists while shooting 68.8 percent from the floor and 40 percent form three.
For sophomore center Matas Vokietatis, who was battling illness, it was a tale of two halves — a jump-ball violation to start the game followed by two fouls in the game’s first 4:04 and four turnovers in the second half before steadying himself with 11 points on 4-of-4 shooting from the floor and 3-of-3 shooting from the free-throw line and six rebounds after halftime.
“You could just tell in the first half, he didn’t have it and it’s not easy to put that behind you, but I thought he was terrific in the second half,” Miller said.
At 13-7 overall and 4-3 in SEC play, Auburn enters Wednesday’s matchup at Neville Arena under first-year head coach Steven Pearl with some momentum generated from a three-game winning streak, including dealing then-No. 16 Florida its second conference loss in Gainesville on Saturday.
The nine-point win saw the Tigers race out to a 15-point halftime lead behind three decisive runs and hold on behind 24 points from star forward Keyshawn Hall, a senior who is now at his fourth school in four years after stops at UNLV, George Mason, and UCF.
The 6’7, 240-pounder from Cleveland plays like the creation of modern basketball analytics, hitting 41.2 percent from three while scoring relentlessly close to the rim, which helps allow him to get to the free-throw line for 8.6 attempts per game, and largely eschewing the mid-range jump shot.
Buoyed by Hall’s aggressiveness, Auburn is No. 6 nationally in free-throw rate and No. 10 in offensive rebounds, areas that help make up for a low three-point rate, a low assist rate, and an adjusted tempo that slots slightly above the college basketball median. Defensively, there’s not much bite from the Tigers beyond protecting the rim.
As Pearl takes over for his father, Bruce, the biggest disappointment for Auburn is the lack of development from sophomore guard Tahaad Pettiford, a consensus five-star prospect who sparked the Tigers off the bench last season with 11.6 points and three assists per game. This year, however, Pettiford’s efficiency numbers have dropped and his turnovers have increased after his move into the starting lineup, including shooting just 27 percent from three on 6.3 attempts per game.
With the Tigers holding a 72-percent win expectancy heading into Wednesday’s tip at 6 p.m. Central on ESPN2, the Longhorns little margin for error to win on the road, but they did flash the team’s upside in Saturday’s dominant second half.
Given separation of only one loss between Vanderbilt at fourth in the SEC and Ole Miss at No. 12th, Texas is in the pack in this horse race almost halfway through. Now it’s a question of how they finish it.
