Texas Basketball: Cold-Shooting Longhorns Fall in Finale
Texas shot just 35% from the floor, including a paltry 17% from three-point land in an 81-59 loss to Oklahoma State.
The Cowboys took it to the Longhorns from the opening tip, jumping out to a 20-3 lead and holding Texas to just one field goal for the game's first seven minutes.
Winners of five straight coming into the game, the Longhorns were never able to recover from the early run as the Cowboys led by double digits through the rest of the contest.
"Today, I felt like we were the opposite of who we've been the last five games," Texas coach Shaka Smart said.
Cameron McGriff and Thomas Dziagwa scored 19 points apiece in the dominant Cowboy victory.
Andrew Jones scored 20 and Matt Coleman had 18, but the rest of the team shot a combined 5-for-29 from the floor.
The Longhorns weren't just cold shooting the ball, they were dominated in the paint as well. The Cowboys won the advantage on the boards 36-19. It was also more points than Texas has allowed since an 81-52 loss to Iowa State on Feb. 14.
"I think the last five games we won in a row, no team has scored 60 points on us," Jones said. "They did kind of early in the game."
The Longhorns came into the game with an opportunity to claim the No. 3 see in the Big 12 Tournament with a win, but instead, find themselves at the mercy of the tiebreaker rules in a tie with West Virginia, Texas Tech and possibly Oklahoma in the league standings.
The loss is damaging to a team that was balanced precariously on the NCAA Tournament coming into the game.
ESPN now projects Texas as one of the last four teams in, a position that would find the Longhorns heading to Dayton to participate in a play-in game early next week.
Texas will get another chance at impressing the NCAA Tournament committee next week in the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City. A decent run would certainly improve the Longhorns' tournament chances.
There are eight days until Selection Sunday," Smart said. There are two categories of teams, there's teams that are still playing, and there are teams that are done playing. As long as we're in that first category, our mentality is got to be to help ourselves."