Even as the Texas Longhorns beat the Southern Jaguars 95-69 on Monday evening at the Moody Center behind a career-high 28 points from sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis, who tied a school record by making
14 free throws without a miss, head coach Sean Miller was blunt about his team’s defensive struggles in the opening statement of his post-game press conference.
“Look, we have problems on defense,” Miller said. “Unless we get better, unless me, us as a staff, solve some of these problems, we’re not going to be good enough.”
The standard for good enough for this Longhorns team looks like finding itself on the right side of the bubble with the NCAA Tournament odds currently standing at 27.3 percent, according to BartTorvik.com.
The defense that isn’t good enough has allowed 87 points in the loss to Arizona State, 88 points in the blowout by Virginia, 78 points to Division II Chaminade in a win, and 97 points to NC State in the team’s only Quad 1 victory so far this season.
Among myriad issues for the Longhorns — like their almost inability to turn other teams over — the inability to defend without fouling looms large.
“We foul, we’re struggling pressuring and guarding the ball, struggling sometimes coming out after timeouts trying to take away a play of concepts, and that’s not good enough. Our fouling is not a thing of aggression, it’s a sign of weakness,” Miller said.
Texas committed 23 fouls against overmatched Souther, sending the Jaguars to the free-throw line for 25 attempts and dropping the team’s opposing free-throw rate to No. 233 nationally at 38.6 percent.
The problems prompted Miller to recall a lesson he learned from Rick Pitino at a Five-Star Basketball camp when he was 18 years old — fouling negates hustle.
“Sometimes when you watch us play through the first 10 games, we’re flying around, and we have guys giving great effort, but it only takes one player to reach in, to be undisciplined, to grab a jersey, and that foul just completely takes the air out of the building,” Miller said.
“So we have to play defense without fouling. It’s a major problem. We’ve got to defend and pressure the ball better, and we just have to get good across the board schematically. Have to take a look at everything we’re doing.”
That includes choices about Miller’s rotation after the Longhorns head coach moved graduate forward Lassina Traore into the starting lineup against the Jaguars, his third change to the starting lineup at the four position this season after sophomore Nic Codie opened the season in the first five before being replaced by junior Camden Heide. Traore finished with four points, five rebounds, four fouls, and three turnovers in 13 minutes, finishing plus-three in a game that Texas won by 26 points.
“In addition to just working at it, we might have to make some changes, which includes playing players who play better defense and maybe some guys that aren’t playing defense as much. It’s where we’re at. I mean, it’s simple,” Miller said.
What isn’t as simple, according to Miller, is which players to bench because of up-and-down performances from game to game by multiple players, but rugged freshman forward Declan Duru is one player who could see his playing time increase moving forward.
“Declan Duru, who’s 6’8, who sometimes in six to eight minutes can have more deflections than somebody that’s playing 20. Declan can defensive rebound. He gives us the gift of size. He’s a young player, that means he’s got a high ceiling. He has a lot to learn, but he can get better. Getting him more minutes could make us bigger, tougher, more pressure defensively, things like that,” Miller said.
With a Defensive Box Plus Minus of 3.1 on the season, Duru is already an effective defender whose foul rate is lower than some of his teammates at 3.7 per 40 minutes, but the young German finished minus-nine against Southern in his eight minutes, getting a steal, but also turning the ball over once and missing his only shot attempt.
A player the Horns simply need to improve is Vokietaitis, who would average more than 23.2 minutes per game if he wasn’t regularly in foul trouble by averaging 5.7 fouls per 40 minutes, a marginal drop from 6.1 fouls per 40 minutes as a freshman at Florida Atlantic last season.
“Matas is a young player. He has a lot to learn on the defensive end. He’s trying hard,” Miller said before launching into a discussion of undisciplined fouls.
“When I talk about fouls, I’m not talking about 10 per game. I’m talking about two per half, five for the game, that are just undisciplined — you can’t commit that foul. You add those up. I mean, it’s like death by inches. It’s two free throws, again, in the bonus early. Some of those fouls, by the way, are happening with five seconds on the clock where you play good defense for 20 seconds, and one guy breaks down. So we’re going to work hard to get better at that area. And then just what is it that we can do to improve our defense? Man, it’s not good.”
