Texas Longhorns Basketball: Inside the Numbers, Big 12 Tournament Edition

The Longhorns are headed to Nashville. Nashville is a cool town; kind of the Austin of Tennessee. As far as an NCAA tournament travel destination for fans, you could certainly do worse. I am tempted to knock off work on Friday and drive down to the game. Unfortunately, I have a pretty busy week ahead.

As an 11 seed, Texas draws Cincinnati. In many ways, Cincinnati is a lot like Texas, with similar strengths and weaknesses. Both teams share the characteristic of being good at offensive rebounding, but bad at defensive rebounding. Despite being an 11 seed, Texas actually has a somewhat higher rating than Cincinnati based on advanced rating systems such as the kenpom.com ratings or the SRS. The difference between these two teams is that during the season Cincinnati managed to win some of their close games against top teams, whereas Texas did not. Of course these wins matter, and Cincinnati has a higher seed as a result. But they probably aren't very useful in predicting what is going to happen in Nashville. This game is a coin flip, which after the season that Texas has had is about the best that you could hope for.

After the jump, I will recap Texas' games in the Big 12 tournament.

The Week In Review

Background information on the statistics is posted here and here.

TEXAS vs IOWA STATE

I write a lot about the value of earning extra shots. You earn extra shots by offensive rebounds and by avoiding turnovers. In a game of 68 possessions, Texas took 79 shots (as measured by FGA + 0.475xFTA), while Iowa State only took 64 shots. This 15 shot advantage more than made up for the fact that Texas had a terrible night shooting the basketball. How terrible was it? Texas shot 20% from three and 41% from two against Iowa State. And yet they still won the game by 6 points and averaged over 1 point per possession, thanks to all of those extra shots.

Texas only turned the ball over in 9% of their possessions. Generally, any turnover rate less than about 18% is considered really good for college basketball. Myck Kabongo had 0 turnovers. J'Covan Brown only turned the ball over in 8% of the possessions that ended with the ball in his hands. Julien Lewis didn't turn the ball over a single time, and Sheldon McClellan only turned the ball over once.

The shooting was pretty ugly for both teams. We should probably give some credit to both of the defenses for this. I normally recap the Points Above Median (PAM) leaders for Texas after each game, so I guess I will do it for this game. Jaylen Bond led all Texas scorers with a PAM of 1.1. The team as a whole shot significantly below the median level used in the PAM calculation.

Texas' shooting percentage was so low primarily because they only made 46% of their shots at the rim (their season average FG% on shots at the rim is 62%). Iowa State also did a very nice job of running Texas off of the three point line. Texas only took 22% of their field goal attempts from three point range. Texas ended up take 43% of their field goal attempts as two point jump shots, and hit 38% of these shots. Anytime a team ends up taking so many two point jump shots, it is very unlikely that they will end up with a good shooting percentage. The Iowa State defense deserves credit for limiting Texas' chances to get good shots.

Defensively, Texas played quite well, forcing Royce White to assume more of a scoring role, rather than a play-making role. Despite taking 27% of Iowa State's shots, White ended up with a PAM of 0.3. White was able to get to the rim, but he struggled converting layups, going 4 of 10 on shots at the rim.

The most important thing was that none of Iowa State's outstanding three point shooters hurt Texas significantly. Iowa State typically shoots about 40% of their attempts from three point range, but against Texas they only managed to shoot 30% of their attempts from beyond the arc.

TEXAS vs MISSOURI

Missouri has the best offense in all of college basketball. They protect the basketball, they attack the rim and convert there, and they shoot the lights out from three point range. All of these things were on display against Texas. Missouri only turned the ball over in 13% of their possessions. Missouri took 43% of their field goal attempts at the rim, converting on 68% of these attempts, and took 38% of their field goal attempts from three point range, hitting 45% from beyond the arc. As a result, Missouri ended up with a true shooting percentage of 0.632, and scored 128 points per 100 possessions.

For the second game in a row, Texas struggled to convert shots at the rim. Thanks to pulling down 50% of the available offensive rebounds, Texas took 47% of their field goal attempts at the rim, which normally should result in a very high true shooting percentage. Unfortunately, Texas only made 43% of their attempts at the rim. Clint Chapman really struggled to finish, going 4 for 11 on attempts at the rim. This ended up largely negating the good game he had on the offensive glass, where he grabbed 25% of the available rebounds while on the court. Additionally, Myck Kabongo was 1 for 3 at the rim, and Jaylen Bond was 1 for 4 at the rim. Myck Kabongo led all Texas scorers with a PAM of 1.3.

While it would have helped, converting more of these shots probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the game, as Texas was completely unable to slow down the Missouri offense. Kim English and Phil Pressey went off, with PAMs of 12.5 and 9.6, respectively. English only missed one shot the entire game.

It will be interesting to watch Missouri in the NCAA tournament. So far, even top defenses like Kansas have at best only been able to slow down their offense. The only team that has really defended Missouri well all year has been Kansas State. I would like to see what happens if they go up against a team that really defends. It turns out that their path to the Final Four could potentially involve several really good defensive teams. Missouri has a possible second round match up vs. Virginia, and could also face Michigan State or Louisville in the Regional Final.