Texas Longorns Basketball: Horns fall to Oklahoma State 87-74

Road wins are difficult for a reason. Oklahoma State shot 51 free throws in a game where 31 fouls were called on the Longhorns. The Cowboys won 87-74. Markel Brown scored 27 points, while Marcus Smart added 24 of his own, going 16-20 from the stripe. Demarcus Holland and Damarcus Croaker both led the Longhorns with 12 points each.

The parade of fouls started in the first half, but Oklahoma State struggled to find any offense other than what it got at the stripe. The Longhorns hung in, despite remarkable foul trouble; late in the first half Texas played lineups consisting of Holland at point guard, Connor Lammert at center, and three other perimeter players. Rick Barnes was just trying to get to half time without anyone fouling out.

At half-time, the score was 38-37 OSU. Oklahoma State quickly opened up a 10 point lead behind a parade of back-door cuts, layups, and lobs for dunks. The Cowboys would control the game the rest of the way, and after what was briefly entertaining and free flowing basketball, the game would once again bog down.

I hate to complain about officials, but there is no other meaningful story or take on this game that I can cook up after midnight, and after I have sat through what I just sat through. This isn't what basketball is supposed to look like. With 19 fouls called on the Cowboys and 31 on Texas, this game featured a foul call every 48 seconds, rendering the game a mostly an unwatchable mess. If an advanced race of aliens passes through our solar system at some point in the future, intercepts the transmission of this game, and bases their entire impression of the human existence on what they see, I sure hope they don't decide to just vaporize our planet and put us out of our misery. They would be well within their rights.

Notes:

1. Isaiah Taylor had an awful night for Texas. He finished the game with five turnovers while going 3-10 from the floor and 4-7 from the line. He was just out of sorts the whole game.


2. Cameron Ridley took an elbow to the forehead in the first half and finished the game with more stitches than points. He didn't have a bad game, necessarily, but to win Texas needed him to be a force. Oklahoma State is undersized, and Ridley needed to thrive for Texas to have a chance to win.


3. Cameron Ridley makes for a decent looking Shiva. Just, you know, for what it is worth.


4. OSU is very good defensively, and can do a lot of damage in transition. They have a couple of shooters. This is a really good team, but I wonder how a team that is both so small and with such little depth will hold up to the rigors of the conference schedule. Expect them to take a couple surprising road losses in games where they get screwed by the officials and have to guard their opponent's center with Marcus Smart, or engage in some similar bit of nonsense.


5. At one point in the game, I could have sworn that Marcus Smart was dropped by a sniper. But then he got up; he was fine.