A bad loss for Texas basketball, but Rodney Terry believes Horns are NCAA-worthy | Golden

WACO — Texas has done enough this season for entry into the NCAA Tournament, but it didn't do enough to strengthen its case Monday night at Baylor.

Any team that wins eight games in the best league in college basketball deserves inclusion in the Big Dance, but the taste of defeat for the first time in three games will bully this team's taste buds for awhile.

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“Look at our body of work,” Texas coach Rodney Terry said after a gut-wrenching 93-85 road loss to No. 15 Baylor on Big Monday. “We probably played more Quad 1s than anybody in the country. Who do you want us to play? We’ve played 11 ranked teams for the first time in school history and we stood toe to toe. Have we had a stumble here or there, just like everybody in this league has? We’ve had that. But we’re one of the best teams in the country. We can play with anybody.”

Terry was visibly steamed after the Horns led for more than 32 minutes but let a 14-point second-half lead slip from their grasp due to a combination of missed shots, the loss of ailing leading scorer Dylan Disu to a knee injury, and if you ask the head coach, an unacceptable disparity at the free-throw line.

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The Bears could have opened up an Airbnb at the charity stripe in friendly Foster Pavilion. They doubled up the Horns with 42 attempts, 27 coming in the final 20 minutes. “I don’t know what these guys are ranked today, but they needed every call they could get today in terms of getting it done here at home,” Terry said.

Terry is usually pretty good at subtlety, but he intentionally left most of it in the visitors' locker room. After the Horns played as complete a first half against a quality opponent as they have all season — they led 48-40 on 56% shooting with just two turnovers — the frustration was noticeable and understandable.

Did they play well enough to win? Sure, but it’s difficult to close out games when you hit a scoring drought of nearly six minutes at crunch time. Baylor’s 11-0 run coincided with an ill-timed drought from the visitors who also lost Disu to a left knee strain and later Brock Cunningham to fouls.

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“There was a pretty good ebb and flow to the game, but that’s a bunch of free throws,” Terry said. “You start chopping the game up a little bit and you don’t get a good flow to the game. It  messes everything up. I’m not making excuses in terms of that, but it is what it is and there we go.”

A sizzling start, but cold finish

Most great heavyweight fights rarely go to a decision.

In their last Big 12 regular-season clash with their oldest conference rival, the Longhorns landed plenty of early haymakers, but the knockout blow never came. If a Texas fan could illustrate the perfect start in a road game against Baylor, he or she would likely go with, let’s say, the Horns making their first five field goals and running out to a 13-3 lead in the first three minutes.

Sound like a dream? It wasn’t. The Horns were a five-man inferno to start and Max Abmas, who has been aching for a breakout performance after this recent slump, was the man.

He and Baylor’s Jalen Bridges, who scored 32, engaged in a shootout reminiscent of the night Texas’ Kevin Durant and Texas A&M’s Acie Law IV put on a breathtaking scoring display at the Erwin Center in 2007. Law, who scored 33, twice hit 3-pointers to force overtime, but Durant, who scored 30, made some clutch free throws down the stretch to give Texas a 98-96 double-overtime win.

Abmas' 33 points went for naught and the Texas’ stay at .500 in conference played lasted exactly one game. The Longhorns (19-11, 8-9) will close out the regular season at home against Oklahoma on Saturday. Their No. 27 NET ranking and five Quad 1 wins along with eight wins in the top conference lends credence to Terry’s argument.

Still, they allowed one to get away. Somehow Texas lost despite making made 50% of its field goals, including a 9-for-23 clip on 3-pointers. The Horns finished with 15 assists and only five turnovers.

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Losing Dylan Disu really hurt, but for how long?

Adding to the late frustration was the loss of Disu, who powered through to start despite a stomach bug that made him a game-time decision. He played, but was clearly not himself. Worse yet, he crashed to the floor with a left knee injury with 11 minutes left and did not return.

To its credit, Baylor made some unconscious shots — most coming from Bridges — to stay breathing and when the time came, the Bears, rocked to their core early and facing certain embarrassment on Senior Night, reeled in the Horns in what could be the last regular-season game between the two programs for a long time.

And yes, there were some predictable “SEC! SEC!” chants coming from the stands in the final seconds.

Texas must address some key issues

As the Horns regroup for Saturday’s finale, there are issues that must be addressed moving forward. Among them:

1. If Disu is out for an extended time, they will need one of their second-tier scorers to take a large step forward. Post Kadin Shedrick is playing his best ball of the season, but it remains to be seen if he can log big minutes after battling back and shoulder problems the first half of the year. That will put the onus on the 6-foot-6 Cunningham to play more minutes at forward or maybe see an increased workload for little-used junior transfer Ze’Rik Onyema.

2. Guard Tyrese Hunter made two 3-pointers to start the game, but he finished with only six points on 2-for-11 shooting over the final 36 minutes. He has played more assertive ball lately but has to figure out when to attack the trees in the paint and when to defer or pull up for a short jumper in the forest. If Disu is out for a while, he will have to shoulder more of the scoring load.

3. Texas needs much more from athletic 6-foot-8 forward Dillon Mitchell, who has been largely invisible lately. He has made some positive strides this season but was held under double-figure scoring for the fifth time in the last six games and came up with a single rebound (on a tip-in) in 28 minutes. That doesn’t cut it for a player who actually declared for the NBA draft after last season before smartly changing his mind. Mitchell is too athletic to disappear when this team needs him most.

So, do they get in or don't they?

Terry made his feelings clear when it came to Texas’ tournament résumé.

Outside of games against top-five teams UConn and Marquette, the Horns played a forgettable nonconference slate but have more than made up for it with a treacherous Big 12 gantlet. They have actually played four games against teams that have been ranked No. 1 in the country at one time or another, losing to UConn, Kansas, and twice to current No. 1 Houston.

After Baylor coach Scott Drew served as the hype man in a postgame Senior Night love fest, I asked him if the Longhorns had done enough to make the tourney field.

“Oh yeah, that's not even close,” Drew said. “So the Big 12 hopefully is going to have 10 or 11 teams. I think there could be seven-win teams get into the tournament this year. What I really respect is across the nation, just hearing the media give kudos and respect to the Big 12 because we've been the best conference in the country now for seven or eight years.”

Texas can take solace in knowing a championship coach is giving them respect, but it won’t take away the anger and frustration of playing so well and coming up short in a game that was there for the taking.

It should have been a third straight win.

By knockout.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas basketball should still make the NCAA Tournament despite loss