Resilience got Sean Miller’s team to the NCAA Tournament, and desperation has helped them win two games.
As the No. 11 seed Texas Longhorns try to cement their status as a First Four success story by advancing to the Sweet 16 for the second time since 2008 with a win over the No. 3 seed Gonzaga Bulldogs, the Horns need more desperation to keep their run alive.
It was a missing element for Texas down the stretch, veering from a five-game winning streak in February to dropping five of its last six games,
including a disappointing overtime loss to Oklahoma at home to close the regular season and a one-and-done appearance in the SEC Tournament thanks to an uncompetitive defeat by Ole Miss.
As far back as early February, Miller pointed to that need for desperation when discussing the up-and-down play of senior guard Jordan Pope.
“Guys at this time of year, the best of the best guys who are never coming back to college again, they rise because they’re desperate. This is it — I want to win. I have two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, and that competitive spirit shines,” Miller said.
Now Pope is down to those final moments with the help of an iconic three with 1:29 remaining against BYU on Thursday to extend the Texas lead to seven.
The big triple enabled him to sit at the podium in Portland on Friday with two of the team’s other avatars of desperation — graduate guard Tramon Mark, whose six seasons of college basketball are coming to end, and junior wing Dailyn Swain, a potential first-round pick in this year’s NBA Draft who could be playing professionally next season.
Mark has flashed his own desperation, hitting two trademark contested mid-range jumpers to push past NC State on Tuesday in the First Four, then setting a career high with four blocks and four made free throws after Pope’s three to seal the win over BYU.
The defensive effort by Mark, often missing from the team as a whole this season, was emblematic of the desperation the Longhorns have put on display in the Big Dance with two of the team’s best defensive performances of the season.
“On that end, aside from desperation, not wanting to go home, I think just our discipline,” Pope said. “We’re playing really, really hard with a lot of effort compared to a couple games in the past, making sure we’re on the same page. We’re all connected on one string, whether that be we’re in gaps, we’re in the right coverage, we’re executing coach’s game plan. In the last two games, we did a good job in displaying that, and I think if we keep doing that it’s really tough to beat our team in any game if we’re able to execute like that on defense.”
As much as Texas uses deflections and kills — back-to-back-to-back defensive stops — as barometers of effort, Miller pointed to the team’s rebounding against BYU as the biggest stat from that victory.
The Cougars entered the game rebounding 34.3 percent of their misses, but the Horns were able to secure a 40-31 edge on the glass with the help of limiting BYU to eight offensive rebounds, a rate of 25 percent. The rebounding efforts extended to the other end of the court, where sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis grabbed nine of the 16 offensive rebounds by Texas, leading to a 16-10 edge in second-chance points in the eight-point win.
“If you really look at the outcome of the game, that’s probably the key area that we were successful in,” Miller said.
To upset Gonzaga, which has a 74.8-percent win probability, according to ESPN, the newfound defensive intensity by Texas will have to extend to the defensive glass once again because the Bulldogs rank 11th in defensive rebounds per game and 18th in defensive rebounding rate, in addition to grabbing 35 percent of their own misses.
“I would say the same thing about Gonzaga — although the faces change the one key element for them is, they really pound the glass. They limit your second shots. They work hard to get second shots. And I think rebounding is always a key statistic playing them, and we’re going to have to be every bit as good as we were last night against them tomorrow,” Miller said.
Tip at the Moda Center on Saturday is at 6:10 p.m. Central on TBS.
