Texas Survives Comeback Bid, Advances to Round of 32
by awiggo on Mar 18, 2011 1:51 PM CDT
in Texas Longhorns Basketball
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PrintThe No. 4 seeded Texas Longhorns advance to the third (really second) round of the NCAA tournament behind a solid, 85-81, win over the Oakland Golden Grizzlies. The five point margin was maybe not satisfying, but a win in the NCAA tournament should never be taken for granted. Texas advances to play the winner of Arizona and Memphis on Sunday.
The Longhorns led by eight points at the break and stretched the lead to double digits for much of the second half. Oakland's Reggie Hamilton led the comeback bid with some driving buckets but it was too little, too late. Some late turnovers by Texas helped aid the upset bid as well. However, at the end, it was Texas, particularly J'Covan Brown, who sealed the Texas victory from the free throw line.
Texas was led by Tristan Thompson and Jordan Hamilton, who both contirbuted double-doubles. Longhorn fans may not want to hear this but TT made himself some NBA money with a solid performance against 6-11 Keith Benson. Thompson was three blocks short of a triple-double: 17 points, 10 boards, and six seven blocks
Hamilton was also really good--attacked the basket off the dribble, moved well without the ball, and helped control the defensive glass. Jordan went 8-for-17 from the floor, only 0-for-3 from deep, for 19 points, 11 boards, and three assists.
J'Covan Brown was at his best today and was an instant sparkplug off the bench. He was smart with the ball and a clutch 12-for-12 from the free throw line.
PB may be around later for a more complete review. For now, it's a win: survive and advance.
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I'll chime in later
Anyone who shows up to complain about this win goes immediately to my ‘Ignore’ list.
Great win today, against an Oakland team that really, really played well. So did we.
Hook ’em!!!
You ain't hurt...
Yeah I'm surprised by the complaints
considering how we had legitimate reasons to be shitting our pants when we found out we’d be playing Oakland in the 1st round. Will gladly escape with a win.
by goingforthecorner on Mar 18, 2011 1:55 PM CDT up reply actions
I couldn't make the in-game open thread
Were there really a bunch of complaints? What game were they watching?!
We're going to play like we're in a bad mood.
didn't watch the game either
but I checked the play by play and we must have sucked bad at the end
by goingforthecorner on Mar 18, 2011 2:03 PM CDT up reply actions
I would disagree
They have a real scrappy team that knows how to win. They won 18 of their last 19 or something like that. They just didn’t fold like some other schools.
"I live in the tower with Coach Brown." -Bevo
by run Bevo run on Mar 18, 2011 2:05 PM CDT up reply actions
Oakland is no joke
I was happy with the result, happy with the play of J’Covan and Hamilton, very unhappy with the poise and game management down the stretch.
Raise your hand if you thought Texas free-throw shooting would be the difference — in a positive way.
If your hand is up, you’re lying.
Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. - Charles Bukowski
by windycityhorn on Mar 18, 2011 2:00 PM CDT up reply actions
We're more than capable of being a great free throw shooting
especially if the players getting the most attempts are Brown, Hamilton, and Wangmene (even Gary on his good days).
by goingforthecorner on Mar 18, 2011 2:02 PM CDT up reply actions
When 12 of them are taken by J'Covan
that’s a good sign. I really loved his game today, the bad drives and questionable shots were minimal. I liked his attitude and the was NAILS from the line.
but a 3-4 line at the stripe from Jordan Hamilton makes me smie, too.
Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. - Charles Bukowski
by windycityhorn on Mar 18, 2011 2:05 PM CDT up reply actions
smile
that is.
Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. - Charles Bukowski
by windycityhorn on Mar 18, 2011 2:05 PM CDT up reply actions
Fantastic win.
My one complaint, what’s with all the tricked up camera angles during play? Save those for replays.
Deloss sat 2 feet behind Barnes today. Safe to say Barnes has a stronger advocate than any statistics we can dig up there.
"I live in the tower with Coach Brown." -Bevo
by run Bevo run on Mar 18, 2011 2:01 PM CDT up reply actions
now THAT I'll complain about
All the new camera angles are a bit much
We're going to play like we're in a bad mood.
It's funny
but even though we only won by four I felt we played really well. That Oakland group was a solid team that fought for their tournament-lives at crunch time. It’s also obvious that as goes J’Covan, so goes our J’Tournament.
We're going to play like we're in a bad mood.
J'Clutch
"I live in the tower with Coach Brown." -Bevo
by run Bevo run on Mar 18, 2011 2:03 PM CDT up reply actions
J'Houston bound
"If you think you can be stopped, this isn't the place for you."
by austintexasbaby on Mar 18, 2011 2:50 PM CDT up reply actions
I'm happy
I thought this game was going to be close. I was really impressed with the offense. I hope the D shows up soon!
Reflection of who we're playing.
Oakland has an amazing offense and a terrible defense.
now (periodically) tweeting @BZatBON
I know
Texas has played horrible offense against bad defenses before. I was glad to see them making some shots.
Oakland is legit
And they should also be upset about our seed as well; this is a team that probably should be advancing to the next round if they didn’t get matched up with an underseeded team like us. I’m happy with the win. That said, we need to put teams away when we can. It’s concerning to give up a massive run in the final five minutes. Taking nothing away from Oakland, but we did blow some chances to take the wind out of their sails and coast to a victory.
by TheElusiveShadow on Mar 18, 2011 2:08 PM CDT reply actions
did i just read that j brown was perfect at the line?!
12? Really?!! I hope we can keep that up during the tourney more than anything else. :)
by The Mack Attack on Mar 18, 2011 2:12 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
I'll go ahead and say it
Oakland was a more difficult challenge than what we’d face from Arizona.
Matchup wise, I like an easier game vs Arizona (or Memphis for that matter).
Arizona can’t pound the glass the way Oakland can (only 144th in off. rebounding % and 175th in effective height). Arizona is only ranked 71st in defense eff. but is 2nd best in 3 point defense. Not exactly useful against us. Our 3PT attempt to FG attempt ratio is ranked 318th in the nation. On the other hand, Arizona gives up an awful % of 2pt FGs (ranked #280) and are also below average in forcing turnovers, steals, and blocking shots.
Take a wild guess what Texas will be doing if they bothered scouting Arizona at all – pounding it inside to Thompson. Would love to see Hamilton posting up as well.
by goingforthecorner on Mar 18, 2011 2:12 PM CDT reply actions
What's
Hamilton’s size? 6’-2?
Meat? They're made out of Meat? Meat.
by ihavethemelody on Mar 18, 2011 4:05 PM CDT up reply actions
Wow. nt whills
"A lot of people look for the easy way to do anything, in swimming there is no easy way." - Eddie Reese
We played well....
It was a great team effort. Like seeing Lucas take care of the ball. J Brown won it at the FT line in the end. Game ball goes to him.
That said, I don’t want Gary to handle the ball anymore.
Who do we want to face next?
Arizona has size but Memphis looks like the more energetic team. I like our chances better against the Tigers but I haven’t studied either team at all.
Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. - Charles Bukowski
Memphis is starting 4 freshman and barely pose a threat to us
by goingforthecorner on Mar 18, 2011 2:24 PM CDT up reply actions
They're giving Arizona all they can handle
very entertaining first half.
Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. - Charles Bukowski
by windycityhorn on Mar 18, 2011 2:47 PM CDT up reply actions
I would think
that you guys can take arizona by 5 or 6, but a crushing 20 point win with a big FU to the committee for short shifting the big 12 would be nice.
Meat? They're made out of Meat? Meat.
by ihavethemelody on Mar 18, 2011 4:06 PM CDT up reply actions
I just wonder
How PB is going to send Cat her winnings over in Japan…her bracket is currently tied for first place with just a handful of others….unless it is an imposter.
"If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" - Vince Lombardi
Illogical
To praise Oakland and dis Big 10. They got whomped by Big 10 foes with the exception of Sparty where they lost by 1.
Note to Bill Byrne "Because you aren´t Texas and you´ll never be Texas"
espn box score says 7 blocks
so the typo was 6, not 3 blocks needed for triple double
by goingforthecorner on Mar 18, 2011 3:26 PM CDT up reply actions
Saw that too
Wasn’t sure whether Wiggo mistyped the blocks or the needed amount for a triple double. Either way, pretty freaking sick game for TT.
Great win
Oakland is easily the best 13 seed in the tourney and would have most likely advanced if it played the other 4 seeds.
We pretty much controlled the whole game. I think we match up really well against either Arizona or Memphis.
by jtdoes on Mar 18, 2011 2:52 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
I'm happy to win. Love extending the season.
I’ll reserve my judgment for our final four prospects after I watch some of the 1&2&3 seeds play tougher squads tomorrow.
From memory, it seemed like UConn and UCSB (squads about as good as us with decent 1st round opponents) crushed their opponents while we had the opportunity to crush and gave up the big lead.
You should log on to
The Louisville or Vandy blogs right now.
Bottom line is that we won. We won more handily than the final score indicated in my opinion.
Tough breaks and a little sloppy with the ball at the end, not to mention some impossible 3’s made by them with hands in their grills (shots we would crucify J’Covan, or J-Ham for taking btw). But I thought we played pretty well.
I LOVED that we worked more pick and rolls than we did in the Big 12 tourney. Seemed like we played VERY slow then, and tried to post on every posession whether it was there or not. Today I saw a lot more motion and more of us taking what they gave us.
PB – Can’t wait to get your take.
"A lot of people look for the easy way to do anything, in swimming there is no easy way." - Eddie Reese
North Colorado lost by double digits by every tournament team they played this year
while Oakland barley lost to Mich St. U and beat Tennessee. They were a better team than SDSU match-up.
ATX
Oakland is better
than Bucknell and Northern Colorado, by far. Oakland should have been an 11 or 12 seed and before I saw they were matched up against the Horns, I had them winning one, possibly two games in the tournament. Oakland was unlucky in the fact that they faced an under seeded Horns team. I think Oakland would have beat Louisville, Vandy, Kentucky, or Wisconsin. No one would have said that about Bucknell or N. Colorado going into the tourney.
by OminousPolaris on Mar 18, 2011 4:43 PM CDT up reply actions
Looks like
it’ll be Arizona on Sunday, that was a crazy ending to that game
I think if Memphis played like it was still a game at the 7 min mark
they could have won. Instead they chose to bleed the shot clock on 3 different possessions not even making a shot attempt.. In all 3 situations the ball was stolen/taken away….
For this team this was the perfect way to start March Madness
They played great while getting a valuable lesson at the end about letting of the gas in the NCAA tournament!
The NCAA Tournament plays a lot more like NBA ball in that “everybody makes a run” in almost every game. You have to withstand the charges of the opponent and get back the ball into the right hands.
Nice win I guess because the last part was cut off. So I missed the last 1:30
that was a pisser. I had to work so I taped the game. It was nice that TBS picked up the last part of the game but didn’t do much good watching a tape.
the first 38 30 was a good game to watch I guess Oakland didn’t have the juice to pull off a win.
That was very unsatisfying. How many of of all the tournament games will get the last 1:30 cut off?
Bad bad planning. why didn’t CBS just tape the 1:30 and play it after the Presidents speech?
Did you literally "Tape" the game
as in VHS tape?
Just curious. :)
"A lot of people look for the easy way to do anything, in swimming there is no easy way." - Eddie Reese
Arizona
Definitely does not guard very well… Memphis had good looks all day. I think Hammy and JCB will be open A LOT on Sunday.
So guards Williams? GJ?
by jtdoes on Mar 18, 2011 4:55 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
You're right
Arizona plays horrible defense and doesn’t help well at all. I’ll sacrifice a guaranteed good game to Williams by putting Johnson on him in favor of molesting Arizona’s interior defense/rebounding on the other end with Thompson (to avoid getting him in foul trouble, which he would against Williams).
Gary can easily hang with Williams on the perimeter and hopefully Thompson can get a few nice off-ball blocks since he won’t have to guard his guy very closely.
We crush the 'zona team that played today, don't we?
Thing is, will that team…or the GOOD one…show up Sunday?!
We're going to play like we're in a bad mood.
by JoeT63 on Mar 18, 2011 5:00 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
Tristan will have to play equally well
to neutralize Williams. Williams probably has 40 lbs on Tristan. A beast on the boards. We will need to pull him out of the paint. I like Tristan on the edge to make this happen. TT is very nimble and show great footwork. Horns by 4.
- follow me @ http:/twitter.com/TXStampede
Yea
I think GJ can guard Williams on the perimeter and our help D needs to just funnel him into TT all day.
’Zona got a ton of fast breaks off of Memphis turnovers too. Since we take better care of the ball and actually play D, I think Arizona will have a hard time scoring consistently.
by jtdoes on Mar 18, 2011 5:13 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
Yea
I think GJ can guard Williams on the perimeter and our help D needs to just funnel him into TT all day.
’Zona got a ton of fast breaks off of Memphis turnovers too. Since we take better care of the ball and actually play D, I think Arizona will have a hard time scoring consistently.
by jtdoes on Mar 18, 2011 5:14 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
And down they go
Big 12 down to 3 teams left.
Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. - Charles Bukowski
by windycityhorn on Mar 18, 2011 5:26 PM CDT up reply actions
Boom
Roasted!
Who are you?!
I'm Kick Ass!
by TexasGarcia37 on Mar 18, 2011 5:38 PM CDT up reply actions
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