Sean Miller’s Texas Longhorns play their final non-conference matchup at the Moody Center on Monday, hosting the Maryland Eastern Shore Hawks, one of the worst teams in Division I basketball.
Because Texas
hasn’t played since last Tuesday and won’t play against until hosting Mississippi State to open SEC play in 11 days, the Horns face a critical stretch of practice time to continue improving in hopes of making the NCAA Tournament.
Starting in the second half of the loss to UConn and continuing in a lopsided win over Le Moyne last week, Texas is showing signs of addressing its severe defensive deficiencies that include an inability to force turnovers, frequent fouling, and allowing opponents to shoot 34.3 percent from beyond the arc.
In the win over the Dolphins, the Longhorns forced season lows in points (53), field goals made (17), and field goal percentage (28.3 while holding Le Moyne, which entered the game shooting 38.3 percent from three-point range, to a 2-of-18 (.111) effort from beyond the arc.
The statistical profile for the Horns does also feature some positives — one of the best free-throw rates in the country thanks to sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis, strong rebounding on both ends of the court, and an opposing two-point shooting percentage of 45.3 percent that ranks 24th nationally.
Improved ball and playing movement offensively haven’t yet translated into the type of assist rate that Miller wants, however, sitting 300th in that category, and the lack of forced turnovers have hurt the team’s ability to get out in transition, a weakness exacerbated by other defensive struggles that allowed Virginia to average 1.419 points per possession in its dominant win over Texas earlier this month, which contributed to the Longhorns scoring just six fast-break points. It’s hard to play with pace, it turns out, when you’re constantly pulling the ball out of the basket and facing a pressure defense.
Given the team’s roster deficiencies, Miller and his staff are more likely to mitigate the team’s weaknesses rather than fix them outright, but Texas is averaging 87.4 ppg while shooting 49.6 percent from the floor through 12 games, the program’s highest scoring average since the 1994-95 season (92.9 ppg) and highest team FG percentage since the 1984-85 season (50.7). Playing a schedule currently ranked 166th has helped those numbers, as has allowing so many points at the free-throw line with the clock stopped — the adjusted tempo for the Longhorns is 175th nationally.
Led by second-year head coach Cleo Hill Jr., Maryland Eastern Shore is a bad basketball team with a bad defense and an abysmal offense that features only one player averaging in double digits, Australian forward Joseph Locandro, who averages 11.4 points per game and serves as the only effective three-point shooter for the Hawks at 43.1 percent. In fact, Locandro has made more than a quarter of the team’s threes.
Texas boasts a 99-percent win probability in the matchup, according to BartTorvik.com, with tip at 7 p.m. Central on SEC Network+.
