Texas Longhorns Basketball Tip-Off Event Set for Tonight

I have an odd affection for a particular Denny's menu item — I love the Moons Over My Hammy. For those who have never had it, Moons is essentially a grilled cheese sandwich with ham and scrambled eggs. It weighs in at 780 calories, half of which come from fat. It is the best. Give me one of these puppies with a side of hash browns, a bunch of hot sauce, and a quantity of coffee that can only be described as discouraging and I am about as happy as I can be.

There are other menu items at Denny's that are decent, but none are really like the Moons Over My Hammy. Pancakes and Grand Slams are fine and I guess in a pinch they will do (but be careful, while it seems similar to Moons the Grand Slamwich is a disgusting mess of a thing filled with fake maple flavoring).

An intrasquad basketball scrimmage is a lot like being told that after not eating Denny's for months, you won't be allowed to eat Moons Over My Hammy for a few more weeks, but in the meantime you can tide yourself over with a Belgian Waffle Slam — and you know what, it will do; it will do just fine.

Tonight at 6:30 p.m. CDT, we get the chance to tide ourselves over with the Texas Tip-Off, Texas Basketball's (now) annual preseason intrasquad scrimmage event. Like the past two years, this event takes place at Gregory Gym, and for the second season in a row it will air on the Longhorn Network.

Shaka Smart brings a somewhat different looking squad when compared with last season's group, and hopefully will get different results to go with it. Three of the likely five starters on the team will be new this year, with freshmen Mohamed Bamba and Matt Coleman and junior transfer Dylan Osetkowski all slated for major roles this season.

Tonight this won't matter, as squads will be split to produce more or less even teams and everyone will see some action. For Andrew Jones, Kerwin Roach, James Banks, Jacob Young, and Eric Davis, this will be the first chance stateside to play publicly in a while as they work to put last season behind them. For a full freshman class that in addition to Bamba and Coleman includes Jericho Sims, Jase Febres, and Royce Hamm, tonight will be a first chance to play in front of Texas fans. We might even get a first look at Elijah Long, a transfer from Mount St. Mary's who is sitting out the year due to NCAA rules.

If you have a chance to get out to the event it will be a nice opportunity to see the team up close; Mo Bamba is really tall and Jericho Sims or Kerwin Roach might throw down some sort of crazy dunk. For the rest of us, the Longhorn Network has us covered.

So tonight, relax and watch the scrimmage. And when you are done and are hungry for more information on the team, consider pre-ordering Smart Texas Basketball 2017, available via Amazon Kindle or Apple iTunes.