Wednesday’s bad home loss to the Razorbacks increases the pressures on the Longhorns to secure an SEC road win against the Commodores.
Coming off the team’s most disappointing loss in SEC play, a 78-70 setback against the Arkansas Razorbacks at the Moody Center on Wednesday, the Texas Longhorns return to the road with a matchup against the Vanderbilt Commodores at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville on Saturday.
It’s another winnable road game for head coach Rodney Terry’s team following last week’s 31-point blowout victory over LSU in Baton Rouge, but Texas will have to apply some lessons from Wednesday’s loss in trying to break the 4-4 tie in the all-time series with Vanderbilt.
With small margins separating wins and losses in the nation’s best basketball conference, the bottom line for the Horns is that they need to make quality shots, the difference in the road loss to the Rebels in Oxford and Wednesday’s home defeat against the Hogs.
“To be honest, they missed a lot of shots that they normally make, but they missed them,” Arkansas head coach John Calipari said.
Texas shot 34.4 percent from the floor and 27.3 percent from three as freshman guard Tre Johnson went 6-of-22 shooting and senior forward Arthur Kaluma went 3-of-11 shooting. Around the rim, the Longhorns struggled with the length and athleticism of the Razorbacks, going 10-of-21 shooting on layups — some days jump shots don’t fall, but there’s less excuse for missing in the paint.
Arkansas was also the more desperate team and quickly got Texas out of rhythm offensively by playing aggressive defense, forcing the Longhorns to initiate offense close to half court on numerous possessions early.
“Coach Cal had his team ready to play an aggressive style defense early. They really came out, set the tone with their defense, really out-physicalled 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.
Not only did Texas miss seven of eight shots as Arkansas started to create separation early in the first half, the Horns had uncharacteristic turnovers, too, giving the ball away six times in the opening 9:05 despite entering the game averaging 9.5 turnovers per contest.
“Our point guards didn’t get us into our offense to where it was clean, to where we got a chance to move the ball. The ball stuck tonight and it didn’t get a chance to get side to side against a really good defensive team,” Terry said.
The defensive performance by Texas was lacking as well as Arkansas attempted 35 free throws, including 13 in the final 4:40 of the first half because of sloppy, unnecessary fouls committed by the Longhorns.
“When shots are not falling, we have to still be able to sit down and guard and try to play physical as well,” Terry said.
The Razorbacks finished the game plus-seven in made free throws, a disparity decreased by the Horns attempting 27 free throws in the second half as the offense became more aggressive getting downhill and putting pressure on the visiting team.
The late fight from Texas wasn’t enough to overcome a deficit that reached 23 points in the second half with the Longhorns never getting closer than five points down the stretch.
“If you give away a game in the first half and early in the second half like that, it’s gonna be hard to win. We’ve gotta learn from this, get better against the pressure, and try and grow against teams like that as we move forward,” senior forward Kadin Shedrick said.
Vanderbilt enters the game with three losses in the four games, but does have conference home wins over Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina — in typical SEC fashion, the Commodores are difficult to beat in Nashville.
Unlike a lot of SEC teams, however, Vanderbilt is better offensively than it is defensively, mirroring the Texas offense to an extent in limiting turnovers, but struggles to produce extra possessions with offensive rebounds and gets to the free-throw line infrequently. The defense has let the Commodores down in recent games, particularly defending the three-point line — opponents are shooting 37.1 percent from three this season, No. 334 nationally. Vanderbilt is opportunistic, though, forcing turnovers on 22.1 percent of opposing possessions, 14th in the country.
To pull off the road win, the Longhorns will have to slow down Commodores guard Jason Edwards, the team’s leading scorer at 17.6 points per game and second-leading three-point shooter in makes behind fellow guard Tyler Nickel, a three-point specialist. It’s a guard-oriented attack for Vanderbilt with only two forwards among the top nine scorers — 6’7 Dwight McGlockton and 6’8 Jaylen Carey.
Vanderbilt is a 2.5-point favorite on FanDuel and has a 57-percent win probability on BartTorvik.com. Tip is at noon Central on SEC Network.