The Horns are in desperate need of stopping a three-game losing streak.
Punch drunk, reeling, and bleeding, the Texas Longhorns have lost three straight games and three of the last four with yet another ranked opponent looming in the heavyweight SEC as the Kentucky Wildcats trip to Austin on Saturday.
The slide has pushed the Horns to the NCAA Tournament bubble — in the latest edition of Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology, Texas is the last bye with BartTorvik.com putting the team’s NCAA Tournament odds at 69.1 percent following Wednesday’s blowout loss to No. 2 Alabama at the Moody Center.
At the root of that disappointing performance were the team’s injury issues as senior forward Arthur Kaluma only played 11 minute before departing due to the left knee injury that has lingered for weeks, sophomore wing Devon Pryor was ruled out prior to tipoff due to a right calf strain, and junior guard Chendall Weaver remains out indefinitely due to a hip injury.
The injury woes have put into perspective the team’s lack of frontcourt depth. Injuries have exacerbated the issue, but the larger issue is the team’s roster build, a failure of program management by head coach Rodney Terry.
So when senior forward Kadin Shedrick went 3-of-10 shooting against Alabama, scoring eight points in 29 minutes, at least he was getting shots up. Termed a “connector” by Arkansas head coach John Calipari last week, the Virginia transfer has done too much connecting and not enough scoring or rebounding for a Texas team that needs both.
Senior forward Jayson Kent stepped in for Kaluma in scoring a season-high 19 points on 6-of-9 shooting, but even that outburst couldn’t keep the Longhorns competitive as Kent turned the ball over three times and failed to secure a defensive rebound while finishing minus-12 in 25 minutes.
And while Texas hasn’t gotten much out of Kent this season, perhaps impacted by a wrist injury that caused him to miss a long stretch of non-conference play, senior forward Ze’Rik Oneyma has once again looked mostly unplayable in the SEC, just like he did in the Big 12 last year.
Against the Crimson Tide, Onyema was minus-18 in 10 minutes after coming off three straight scoreless performances in which he went 0-of-5 shooting in 32 minutes.
Freshmen Nic Codie and Jamie Vinson are both still developing — even without suffering a season-ending knee injury last year, Codie probably wouldn’t be physically ready to compete in the SEC and Vinson is so raw that it’s difficult to project when or if he’s going to become a contributor on the Forty Acres.
It’s a marginal frontcourt in ideal circumstances and these are not ideal circumstances more than halfway through the grind of conference play.
Compounding the issues are the backcourt inconsistencies. Senior guard Julian Larry moved into the starting lineup against Alabama in place of junior guard Jordan Pope, but Larry now has a turnover rate higher than his assist rate and Pope has struggled to do what he does best — score — while failing to earn the coaching staff’s trust defensively in key moments.
From a roster build standpoint, neither of those developments are especially surprising. Larry had a turnover rate of 27.7 percent as a sophomore at Indiana State, almost identical to his turnover rate of 27.4 percent this year, and Pope needed a usage rate of 26.3 percent and almost 14 shots per game to average 17.6 points per game on a bad Oregon State team last year. He also arrived in Austin with the understanding that Terry and his staff would ask him to play harder defensively than he ever has in his life. Perhaps Pope has reached that threshold, but it hasn’t made him a viable defender in late-game situations.
More disappointing has been the inconsistency of senior guard Tramon Mark, who has battled a right shoulder injury. Against Alabama, Mark was abysmal, scoring six points on 2-of-12 shooting while finishing a team-worst minus-23 in 37 minutes. Throughout conference play, Mark has ricocheted between solid outings to poor performances, going scoreless against Arkansas after notching 18 points against LSU, which followed a six-point performance in the loss to Ole Miss. In losses to Auburn and Texas A&M, Mark scored eight total points in 47 combined minutes.
Desperately needing to protect home court at the Moody Center, Texas faces a Kentucky team that needed consecutive home wins against South Carolina and Tennessee to go over .500 in conference play despite entering Saturday ranked No. 15 in the AP Top 25 poll.
Such is life in the SEC.
Much like head coach Mark Pope’s BYU teams, Kentucky is an offensively-driven group that ranks No. 3 nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, just behind the Alabama team that scored 1.5 points per possession against Texas on Tuesday.
The Wildcats don’t play as fast as the Crimson Tide, but they rank 33rd in adjusted tempo and shoot the three-point ball better, a scaring proposition considering that Alabama shot 58.6 percent from beyond the arc and Kentucky is No. 16 nationally at 38.4 percent.
With a turnover rate of 14.3 percent, 17th in the country, the Cats don’t beat themselves by giving the ball away, but also struggle to force turnovers or defend inside the arc. By holding opponents to 28.7 percent from three, however, they can quickly create big margins in that head-to-head category.
Oklahoma transfer guard Otega Owen is the breakout player for Kentucky, leading the Wildcats in scoring at 15.9 points per game as part of a guard-heavy attack for Pope that likes to keep the middle open for cutting and driving, making it difficult to stop dribble penetration and keep Kentucky from taking open threes.
So the win probability for Texas is only 51 percent heading into the game with FanDuel slotting Kentucky as a 1.5-point favorite. Tip is at 7 p.m. Central on ESPN.