A second straight road matchup for the Horns is a rivalry game against a team it already lost to in Austin.
For all the teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble, Quad II losses only push a team closer to having that bubble burst — in the case of the Texas Longhorns, Saturday’s awful 84-69 defeat by the South Carolina Gamecocks in Columbia, the first conference win for the Gamecocks, meant a 20-percent drop in its odds, according to BartTorvik.com, a continued spot in one of the last four byes in Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology, and a No. 11 composite seed with appearances in 98 of 116 brackets tracked by BracketMatrix.com.
On Wednesday, the road trip continues for Texas with a road game in Fayetteville against longtime SWC rival Arkansas, a surprising 78-70 winner over the Longhorns earlier this month when the Razorbacks were trying to find their footing in conference play.
Saturday’s loss in Columbia and the prior result for Texas in Austin both bode poorly for the team’s chances on Wednesday, placed at a 35-percent win probability by BartTorvik.com and as 3.5-point underdogs at FanDuel.
Tip is at 8 p.m. Central on ESPN2.
The home loss to Arkansas was the second-worst game score of the season posted by Texas with last Saturday’s defeat by South Carolina surpassing the home loss to UConn as the season’s low point, sending the five-game trend line for the Longhorns diving.
The losses to the Hogs and Cocks had one huge commonality — Texas head coach Rodney Terry spending the post-game press conferences speaking in similar teams about his team getting push around badly enough early in the game that Texas was put into holes out of which it could not emerge with a win.
“Coach Cal had his team ready to play an aggressive style of defense early. They really came out, set the tone with their defense, really out-physicaled us in the first half. We didn’t do a great job of taking care of the basketball. I didn’t do a great job of having my guys prepared to handle the kind of pressure we were going to be facing right off the bat,” Terry said after the Arkansas game.
“Give a lot of credit for South Carolina. Tonight, [head coach] Lamont [Paris] had his team ready to play at a very high level. You come in knowing that these guys were a very physical team. Played really well at home with a lot of energy and activity. We knew their bigs were really good. We knew [Collin Murray-Boyles] is one of the top players in the league. He was going to be a handful to deal with and he was tonight. He played terrific. He was a really hard matchup for us. We really had no answer for him. I thought our guys battled in the second half, but this time of year, you can’t get out-physicaled in the first 20 minutes of the game,” Terry said, according to 247Sports.
It’s too familiar of a theme for the Longhorns even with any caveats about injuries because the roster looks poorly assembled, especially in developing the depth to overcome the physical grind of SEC play, and the effort and physically should be a non-negotiable even if Texas can’t practice as hard as they want.
How many teams in this conference can practice the way they want this time of year?
So ultimately the decision of Wednesday’s game happens within a larger context that athletics director Chris Del Conte will have to assess after the season, but is currently trending poorly enough to push Terry firmly towards the hot seat with the potential to force a decision if Texas misses the NCAA Tournament because they’re one of the several teams in the conference undeserving of that opportunity because they couldn’t beat the SEC’s worst teams when it really matters.
After last Saturday and that earlier loss to Arkansas and the four total losses in the last six games, is Texas basketball currently worth any deeper analysis than how unacceptable some of these performances have been, something that Terry has to wear professionally?