Eleven years after the Texas Longhorns fired Rick Barnes, the Longhorns program has been wandering in the wilderness heading into Tuesday’s matchup against the program’s longtime head coach, now leading the No. 21 Tennessee Volunteers.
It took seven years and another coaching change to win an NCAA Tournament game and even the Elite Eight run the following year, was marred by scandal and leveraged athletics director Chris Del Conte into settling for removing Rodney Terry’s interim tag, a decision that resulted in one tournament win and wasting Tre Johnson’s one year on the Forty Acres before Terry’s firing, the third head coach to fail at Texas since Barnes was let go.
How are things going with the fourth head coach, Sean Miller, whose pinnacle of success came a decade ago in a college basketball landscape that no longer exists?
Well, Texas is 9-4, may struggle to finish over .500 and has tournament odds that dropped more than 20 percent after Saturday’s overtime loss at home to Mississippi State in what was tied for the most winnable game left on the schedule, producing an unusually candid post-game press conference from Miller, even by his standards.
The overarching metaphor was of a parent repeatedly telling their child not to cross the street, only to see their child cross the street and get hit by a bus. It’s an apt metaphor for a Longhorns team that regularly commits what Miller terms as “stupid basketball plays” like allowing the opposing team’s best player to use a basic move to produce the game-deciding three, fouling a three-point shooter 27 feet from the basket (“That’s the guy you want to play against. That’s not the guy you want to have on your team.”), regularly lose effort plays, and prove unable to capitalize on the built-in advantages produced by the basic pick-and-roll coverages that Texas runs.
It’s a bleak view of a team that Miller admitted isn’t talented enough to have any margin for error in those categories and a clearly frustrating reality for a head coach whose initial roster build forced compromises like bringing back a senior point guard in Jordan Pope whose idea of defensive effort is fouling a three-point shooter 27 feet from the basket at the end of the shot clock and a graduate guard in Tramon Mark whose idea of effective offense is dribbling the air out of the basketball before settling for a contested jump shot.
Neither player was able to hit a critical shot at the end of regulation to win it and Mark missed the game-tying free throw in overtime.
Attempts by Miller to hold players accountable looks like benching Mark, in his sixth season of college basketball, for lazy effort after a made basket that resulted in an easy layup, only to result in junior guard Simeon Wilcher, who played two seasons for Rick Pitino, turning the ball over on an entry pass from an awful angle, have a layup blocked, not only give up a layup, but commit a weak foul on it that produced a three-point play, and commit another turnover before leaving the game.
When Miller substituted Wilcher out again, he also had to substitute Mark out for taking a trademark contested jump shot off the dribble. It missed, as the those shots tend to do.
The consistent bright spot for Miller is junior wing Dailyn Swain, a recruiting find for Xavier out of Columbus who has developed physically over three years playing for Miller, culminating in Swain’s career-best performance against Mississippi State by scoring 34 points on 10-of-18 shooting and making 12-of-15 free throws while adding 14 rebounds, three assists, and a steal.
When Swain fouled out with 1:42 remaining, Texas was up by seven points, only to blow that lead in regulation thanks to questionable shot selection, illustrating the extent to which the Horns have become reliant on Swain’s playmaking — the 6’9, 225-pounder doesn’t have much shot credibility from distance, but he has an explosive first step, a good crossover, and the ability to finish through contact, as well as the court vision to make plays for his teammates, leading Texas with 48 assists, 10 more than Pope.
The team’s only other player worth watching, force of nature sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis, remains in a more developmental stage even as he sits second on the team in scoring (16.1 points per game) and rebounding (6.6 rebounds per game) while almost single-handedly help Texas rank second nationally in free-throw rate because he draws fouls so frequently.
Defending without fouling, taking advantage of the defensive rebounding opportunities afforded by playing drop coverage on ball screens, consistently hitting free throws, and making smart, quick decisions passing out of double teams remain areas for growth for Vokietaitis. Oh, and he’s also hot-headed — his physical maturity currently outstrips his emotional maturity by a meaningful distance.
After a slow start in Knoxville, Barnes has made two Sweet 16s and consecutive appearances in the Elite Eight, the type of consistency that once defined the golden era of Texas basketball. This season, Tennessee is 10-4 after playing a challenging non-conference schedule and dropping the SEC opener to Arkansas, 86-75, in Fayetteville on Saturday.
For the first time since the 2020-21 season, Barnes doesn’t have the presence of his sparkplug point guard Zakai Zeigler, bringing in Belmont and Maryland transfer Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who has posted an astronomical 32.2 assist rate this season. Tennessee also makes up for weaknesses on offense like its turnover rate, questionable three-point shooting, and issues getting to the free-throw line by relentlessly attacking the offensive glass — the Volunteers are the best offensive rebounding team in the country at 45.1 percent, led by forward JP Estrella and bruising Vanderbilt transfer Jaylen Carey, who abused the Longhorns frontcourt last year as a Commodore.
Defensively, Tennessee profiles like a Barnes team — solid across the board and slotting 12th in adjusted efficiency.
The win probability from BartTorvik.com sets the expectations for the game at 86 percent for the Vols. Tip is at 8 p.m. Central on ESPN2.
