Texas Basketball's Weaknesses Are Exposed In Loss To Baylor

The Texas Longhorns are one of the biggest teams in the Big 12; they have the highest rebounding margin and block the most shots in the league. They don’t shoot the ball well, but they tend to create second opportunities by dominating the glass and grabbing offensive rebounds. However, when the play other big teams, they aren’t able to create the same type of opportunities and their poor shooting comes back to haunt them. This was put on display in a blow-out loss to the Baylor Bears in which the Longhorns shot a dreadful 38 percent from the field and 19 percent from three.

The Bears were able to outmuscle the Longhorns inside the paint thanks to strong efforts from Royce O’Neale and Rico Gathers. O’neale tallied 20 points and eight rebounds, while Gathers brought down 15 rebounds. As a whole, the Longhorns were outrebounded 43-39. The Bears took away the Longhorns’ strength, thus exposing their weakness. Baylor made it obvious that the Longhorns are going to have to drastically improve their shooting in order to hang with other big teams.

The Longhorns started out the game with a rough 0-12 shooting stretch, as the Bears jumped out to a 12-0 lead. Starting out a game that cold makes it nearly impossible to get hot, but the Longhorns didn’t even get lukewarm. It isn’t even as if the Longhorns were dominated on the boards. In fact, Texas held the advantage on the offensive boards 18-17. However, Texas has shown that they need to hold complete control over the rebounding margin in order to win, and they simply can’t do that against teams like Baylor.

Isaiah Taylor was the only Longhorn who was able to consistently hit shots, but even he was 1-4 from three-point range. If the Longhorns are going to live up to the preseason hype and contend for a Big 12 title, Taylor and the other shooters are going to have to find a way to connect from long-range. If they don’t, they will continue to be vulnerable to the other big bodies of the conference.