AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Longhorns are back at the Moody Center on Wednesday to host the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights, the second game in a four-game homestand for head coach Sean Miller’s team before
heading to Hawaii for the Maui Invitational.
It’s only the second all-time meeting between the schools following a 63-59 win by Texas in Austin in 1975.
FDU enters the game at 0-2 and ranked as the No. 362 team nationally in BartTorvik.com’s rankings following losses to Iowa State and Saint Peter’s. Two years after upsetting No. 1 seed Purdue in the NCAA Tournament, the Knights are now led by former assistant Jack Castleberry, who has produced diminishing returns over his brief tenure with evidence of further decline this season — Fairleigh Dickinson is bad offensively and defensively with especially pronounced struggles with turning the ball over at a rate of 24.9 percent and hitting just 56.8 percent at the free-throw line.
Four players are currently averaging double-digit points per game for the Knights, led by guard Noah Melson, who scored 16 points on 4-of-8 shooting from three in the loss to the Peacocks. As a group, FDU likes to shoot threes and plays at a quick pace — combined with the team’s poor defense, that’s a recipe for a high-scoring game for Texas after Saint Peter’s scored 93 points on Saturday.
With a 99-percent win probability, the goal for the Longhorns is to continue developing after showing signs of positive growth in Saturday’s 37-point win.
“I thought some of the lessons that we learned, we were able to kind of install, work towards. I just thought overall, we were a better group, our overall level of play, I thought improved,” Miller said on Monday. “Some of the things we talked about like pace and then just identifying roles, really allowing Jordan Pope to come into the lineup, play more point guard than maybe he has in the past, moving Tramon [Mark] away from that and putting him in that scoring role, I think it really free him up.”
After coming off the bench in the season opener, Pope started against Lafayette and responded with a team-high six assists and zero turnovers, a strong floor game that got his teammates involved, resulting in Texas jumping from six total assists in the season-opening loss to Duke to 21 assists on 33 made baskets.
Mark responded, too, bouncing back from a listless two-point, one-assist performance in the opener by scoring a team-high 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting.
“I thought the difference in Tramon between game one and game two is he was really freed up to do what I think he does best, and that is just play the game and be wired to score and not have that extra burden of trying to run the team and be an extension of the coach and be a quarterback,” Miller said.
The two players combined for 2-of-9 shooting from three, an area where Miller should surely like them to be more efficient, although the Longhorns shot 39.1 percent overall from three against the Leopards, led by a 3-of-4 effort from junior guard Simeon Wilcher and the first career baskets from freshman guard Anthon McDermott, who hit both of his three-point attempts in garbage time.
Moving Pope into the starting lineup allowed senior guard Chendall Weaver to come off the bench and he came up with an impactful performance, scoring 15 points on 5-of-9 shooting, hitting five three throws, and grabbing eight rebounds, four offensive.
“I believe that Kendall, because of so many good things on defense and on offense and his unselfish nature, that making him our sixth, allowing him to enter the game there shortly after the starting lineup is done, can really give us a spark and bring out the best in him,” Miller said.
Texas also got an efficient performance from sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis, who posted a double-double with 14 points on 7-of-9 shooting and grabbed 11 rebounds. After turning the ball over five time against Duke, Vokietaitis only had one turnover against Lafayette. The Florida Atlantic transfer’s two steals set a career high and his three blocks tied his career high.
Miller continues to emphasize several facets of the game with his team.
“We have to get to the point where we understand that playing at a faster rate doesn’t mean shoot quick, but playing throughout that 40 minutes and having more pressure on the defense, we want to improve there,” Miller said.
“The second thing is, just from an offensive perspective, just being sharper — we have a few segments in each game where one guy’s off the page and we don’t run the set play that was called like we should have. With the execution part of the game, November is a big month where you can develop from game to game in that aspect.”
Defensively, Miller believes that the Horns are starting to develop a hard-nosed identity.
“I think we have the makings of a team that can defend. We have size, we have versatility, we have depth, and we have to make that part of our identity where on a given night we can win a game because of our physicality and our defense, we’re not just relying on one side of the ball,” he said.
Tip on Wednesday is at 7 p.m. Central on SEC Network+.
