AUSTIN — Almost midway through the second half of Wednesday night’s game between No. 13 Texas and Texas State, the Bobcats had the Longhorns on their heels.
The maroon and gold trailed by 13 at halftime. But with 12:58 left in the game, junior guard Mason Harrell drilled a jumper to cut the lead to 42-32. Texas senior guard Andrew Jones was fouled on the next possession, making one of his two free throws, but junior forward Nighael Ceasar cashed in on a post look at the other end to bring the lead down to single digits.
Longhorns senior guard Matt Coleman III’s layup attempt was swatted by sophomore guard Addison Wallace and Texas State finished off a fastbreak with an alley-oop pass from senior guard Shelby Adams to senior forward Isiah Small. Suddenly, the orange and white’s lead had shrunk to 43-36 as Texas head coach Shaka Smart called timeout with 11:26 to go.
Shelby Adams finds Isiah Small for the alley-oop and #TXST has Texas' lead down to single digits, 43-36, with 11:23 on the clock @smdrsports pic.twitter.com/GWxP7t7Qm7
— Drew King (@drewking0222) December 10, 2020
But that’s as close as the Bobcats would get, as the Longhorns found their range and pulled away for the 74-53 win inside the Frank Erwin Center.
“We wanted to compete,” Texas State interim head coach Terrence Johnson said. “We knew it was gonna be a heavyweight fight. And we just wanted to fight to the end and see what happened, you know, if we were able to fight and claw and continue to put pressure on them on both ends — and I thought that we did that at times.”
The visitors struggled to adjust to the Longhorns’ long limbs and springy bounce early on. The Bobcats (3-2) could get to the rim but often had their shots swallowed up by the hosts’ bigs or were pressured into misses. Texas State whiffed on nine layups in the first half, with two of them counting as blocks for Texas (5-1).
The Bobcats’ defense adversely had trouble protecting its basket. Nine of the Longhorns’ 12 made field goals in the first period were credited as dunks.
“We got our hands on some balls, got some deflections, and just were unable to finish,” Johnson said. “You know, the ability to finish is so important in basketball when you have these opportunities, especially against a Big 12 and one with this kind of length and athleticism.”
Johnson and Smart are close friends. Johnson was the head coach of the Texas PRO 17-U AAU team while Smart was trying to recruit one of his players, future Texas standout Jarrett Allen. Johnson said he and Smart talk “almost every day.”
It made Johnson want to see his team compete that much more.
Texas State abandoned the long-range shot after halftime, taking just two and missing both. Instead, Johnson had his players run more “Horns” actions — in which the Bobcats’ bigs set ball screens on both the left and right sides — to find more paint touches. The visitors’ field goal percentage jumped from 28.1% in the first half to 44.8% in the second half. The maroon and gold also got to the free-throw line more often, going 7-9 at the stripe in the second after missing their only attempt in the first.
The adjustments lent themselves to Texas State’s comeback attempts, chipping away at the lead while preserving the clock.
“The goal was to try to get in the bonus as early as possible so we could try to score without the clock movement. So, you know, I thought we did a pretty good job of post-feeding right there. Certainly, these guys are big and strong and sometimes we're pushed out a little bit further than what we would have liked to be. But at the same time, I thought our bigs did a good job of battling and fighting down there.”
But after Small’s alley-oop layup, the Longhorns lit up the Bobcats for five 3-pointers. Johnson emptied his bench with two minutes to play, allowing junior forward Mason Hix, coming off a dislocated toe, to step on the court for the first time this season but also ending any hope of an upset and handing the Bobcats the 74-53 loss.
Harrell led the team with 14 points, followed by Adams and Small with eight each. Texas State grabbed 13 offensive rebounds against the hosts, which Johnson was encouraged by — “I mean, if we've gotten 13 offensive rebounds against this team, we shouldn't have any problem offensive rebounding in our league.”
The Bobcats return to Strahan Arena on Saturday to host Our Lady of the Lake (0-1) at 4 p.m. Johnson plans to give his players a break to finish up their final exams before looking at how the team can build on the positive signs they showed against one of the top teams in the country.
“You know, it's college basketball, so we don't have much time to lick our wounds,” Johnson said. “We're gonna use this as a learning experience and hopefully the things that we did well here, we can keep it going, and the things we didn't, we can change for certain.”
