I keep thinking the University of Texas men’s and women’s basketball teams aren’t very good, and yet they keep winning. So don’t listen to me. I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about. But I talked to some sportswriters who do.
“Are either of these teams Final Four material?” I asked.
“When they play defense, yeah,” Mark Rosner of the Austin American-Statesman said of the men (28-6). “They’re not big inside, and they can stumble on offense. But in February, they had their opponents hitting only 36 percent of their shots. If they can do that in the NCAA, they have a chance.”
Shooting guard A.J. Abrams also needs to get hot again, Rosner added. In the last five games of the regular season, the junior went cold, hitting only 29% of his shots. “But the kid’s got guts,” Rosner said. “He’s not afraid to shoot.”
True enough, after going 1-13, Abrams hit two clutch jump shots to help UT pull away from Oklahoma State and win the Big 12 Conference title.
“D.J. Augustin is always going to be on,” said Natalie England from San Antonio’s Express-News of the squad’s point guard, perhaps the best in the nation. And Damion James is going to get the rebounds – he’s averaging more than 10 a game, second in the conference. But that won’t be enough. Somebody is going to have to step up offensively. “You’ve got to have somebody complementing D.J. He can’t do it alone.”
Center Connor Atchley is absolutely capable of being that player. At 6 feet 10 inches, he’s the best three-point shooter on the team. Against both Kansas and Kansas State he was a perfect six for six from the floor and not much worse against Tennessee back in late November. But like Abrams, when Atchley gets out of sync offensively, the Longhorns have struggled. Thanks to some lockdown defense from guard Justin Mason, they’ve won, but it hasn’t been pretty.
Fortunately, says Chip Brown of The Dallas Morning News and 1530AM ESPN Austin, the Texas men rise to the level of their competition. Or maybe that’s unfortunate: While they’ve played brilliantly against some of the best teams in the nation, they’ve struggled against average squads. “It doesn’t matter who they’re playing against, the toughest games of the tournament will be the first two” – i.e., against weaker teams. Win those, and they’ll be playing in Houston, where he likes the Longhorns’ chances.
And the women? A 19-11 team on the season, do they have any shot at a Final Four?
“Realistically? No,” said England. “They simply don’t have enough offensive weapons. But Coach G” – Gail Goestenkors, in her first year at UT – “is creating a culture of winning. Their backs were to the wall with three games left in the regular season. They could have gone in the tank, but they didn’t. They won their next five games and started to get that swagger.”
So who knows? Come the NCAA tournament, anything can happen. And usually does.
Gail Goestenkors
This article appears in March 21 • 2008.