Texas State is coming off a bounce-back win at home over UIW and for the first time in 6 years will head to Austin to face the Longhorns.
This was a yearly game once upon a time, but its a game I think former coach Danny Kaspar pushed to remove from the schedule. Between Kaspar’s exit and pandemic scheduling its back on the schedule at least for a year. Not great timing either if you ask me. I would’ve loved to play Texas at some point over the last 4 seasons, but of course once the game is finally scheduled again it appears TXST has possibly regressed significantly and for the first time in awhile it looks like the Longhorns may actually have gotten their act together.
TXST News
- The Bobcats have had a slight covid scare, and I’m guessing there’s a chance this game isn’t played at all. UIW guard Keaston Willis got a positive test result back the night of the UIW/TXST game. The players tested Tuesday morning, but I’ve yet to hear of the results. This game being played is likely gonna hinge on the results of those tests. From what I can tell nobody should be held out for contact tracing alone. It will take a positive test to keep a Bobcat player from playing.
- Texas State wasn’t exactly sharp the last time out. Trailing at the half as ~17 point home favorites, the Bobcats were able to pull it out in the 2nd half for a 72-64 win. One bright spot is scoring was pretty evenly distributed with 6 different Bobcats scoring 8 or more (Adams, Davis, Harrell, Ceaser, Sule, Small). This team is going to need multiple guys within a core of about 7 players to step up on any given night to have a chance to win in my opinion (add Asberry to that group above).
- Junior F Nighael Ceaser had his first double-digit scoring game as a Bobcat with 10 points and 4 rebounds. Ceaser has looked good against the weaker competition on the schedule so far but was completely ineffective against a better Mississippi State frontcourt. Texas will have easily the best frontcourt TXST has faced yet, we’ll see how Ceaser (and Nate Martin for that matter) are able to fare against a bigger, more talented, group of bigs.
Scouting Texas
Texas is off to their best start in some time and already has some impressive wins under their belt at 4-1. After a season-opening tune-up win at home over UTRGV they played in the Maui Invitational (which was held in Asheville, NC) and went 3-0 to win the tournament, beating #14 North Carolina in the championship game, 69-67. They beat Davidson and Indiana in their first two games of the tournament. They did lose their most recent game however, losing 68-64 at home to #6 Villanova on Sunday. Safe to say their strength of schedule has been a tad tougher than ours…
Texas went 19-12 overall last year and 9-9 in the Big 12, finishing in a 4-way tie for 3rd (Kansas and Baylor ran away with the league last year). A seemingly perpetual bubble team for the last half-decade or so they were firmly sitting on it when the season was canceled in March prior to their first Big 12 tournament game. They won the NIT championship back in 2019. They were picked to finish 4th in this year’s preseason poll, behind Baylor, Kansas, and West Virginia, in the 10 team league.
The primary guy to watch for Texas is 6’2″ Sr. G Matt Coleman. Coleman was named to the 6-player Big 12 preseason all-conference team after leading the Longhorns in scoring last year at 12.7 PPG while shooting 39.5% from 3. He’s upped those numbers to 16.4 PPG (6th in the Big 12) and 40.7% from 3 this year, he also hit the game winning jumper to beat North Carolina last week. Coleman has started 106 of 107 Texas games since coming to Austin and came into the season 32nd on Texas’ all-time scorers list. His 1.79 assist-to-turnover ratio is 7th best in program history and he’s out-pacing that so far this year at 1.9. His 4.6 APG are 5th best in the Big 12.
There are two primary scorers for this team, the other being 6’3″ Jr. G Courtney Ramey. Ramey was 3rd on the team in scoring last year at 10.9 PPG and has upped that significantly to 15.4 PPG this year. Just a so-so 3-point shooter last year, he’s shooting 40.9% this year. Between Coleman and Ramey they shoot a lot of 3s, and so far this season they are making them. Coleman and Ramey rarely leave the court, averaging 36.3 and 34.7 minutes per game, respectively. Nobody else on the roster is averaging over 24.5.
In the frontcourt the Bobcats will have their hands full with 6’11” So. F Kai Jones. Jones started the first game of the season vs. UTRGV and scored 14 points on perfect 6/6 shooting but has come off the bench since then. Still, given his size he’s going to be a huge matchup issue for TXST. Jones has 3 inches over the tallest Bobcat and a 4-inch, 18 lb advantage over TXST’s starting center (Alonzo Sule). Jones is averaging 10.0 PPG and rarely misses a shot he takes as he’s shooting 86.4% on the season. He’s also hit 4 of 6 3s. He only has 3 misses on the entire season and 2 are behind the arc.
A bit surprising to me, especially given their schedule, but Texas is 2nd in the Big 12 in scoring defense, giving up just 62.0 PPG. TXST is 3rd in the Sun Belt giving up 63.5 per game. I’d expect a pretty tough, grinding game offensively for TXST unfortunately. This is a tailor-made spot for those patented scoring droughts we all love so much to rear their ugly head given UT’s size advantage in the post and solid guard play. Texas is prone to those too though sometimes, so if the Bobcats can play solid defense they may be able to make this game ugly enough to be in it at the end. If the pace of this game starts to get fast at any point I fear a Texas blowout unfortunately. Much to the chagrin of my Longhorn friends and family UT can sometimes fall in love with the 3, and we love to defend inside-to-out (often giving up open 3s in the process). Best chance for TXST in this one is UT ignores to use their size inside, we clog up the middle, UT falls in love with the 3, and they just don’t go down tonight. They work us inside though, or if they’re hot from deep, this could get ugly.
Last meeting
Again, its been 6 years since Texas State and Texas have met. Kaspar effectively removed them from the schedule. Which I thought was the right move when he got here, but I thought we advanced the program enough from ’16-’17 – ’19-’20 to be able to start playing this game again. Unfortunately we never did and now we are back into rebuilding mode (and Texas is ranked in the top 15). Not great timing. Texas won an ugly, ugly game for TXST 59-27 back in 2014 (guessing we haven’t had a worse scoring game since). Texas State hasn’t beaten Texas since 1937 and Texas currently is riding a 26 game winning streak in the series. Ugly.
Odds/Time/TV
Texas opened last night as 19-20 point favorites. That’s now sitting at 17.5-19.5 depending on where you look.
Tip-off is set for 7pm from Austin and the game will be televised on the Longhorn Network.
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