For Rodney Terry, the Longhorns began playing March basketball several weeks ago
As the clock hit midnight and Tuesday night became Wednesday morning, the calendar turned to college basketball’s most important month.
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For many teams, March Madness has already begun, with several low- and mid-major conference tournaments already in progress. For the power conference teams, the first week of March contains the last few regular season games before the win-or-go home portion of the 2022-23 campaign gets underway.
Even though the Texas Longhorns haven’t reached the elimination portion quite yet, interim head coach Rodney Terry has attempted to nurture an elimination game mindset within his team.
“I mean, we’ve played March basketball for the last two weeks,” Terry said Monday. “Every game in the Big 12 last I checked and we checked with our guys this morning, every game has been a real game. We haven’t had an opponent where we can say ‘hey man, we can’t bring our A-game.’ No different than we’ve approached Big 12 play the entire time.”
That March mindset will be critical for the Longhorns during its final stretch of games, the first on Wednesday night at TCU and the second a senior night Saturday contest in the Moody Center versus Kansas. It isn’t win or go home, but rather win or lose a chance at the program’s first Big 12 regular season title since 2008.
Kansas has at least clinched a share of the conference championship after defeating Texas Tech on Tuesday night in Lawrence, Kan. The Jayhawks sit at 13-4 in league play with just one game left. Texas is by itself in second place at 11-5, a half-game ahead of Baylor.
In order to make the Longhorns’ 18th and final game of the regular season have major implications, Terry understands the 17th game has to be a win. If not, the final contest will still be important toward Texas’ resume-building efforts but will lack the effect of altering the Horns’ Big 12 standing.
“It’s the next game on our schedule, and it’s a big 40 minutes,” Terry said. “We’re going to approach it the same way we have all season long. We know we have an 80-minute Big 12 Conference race left.”
TCU is the top team in the conference in KenPom’s adjusted tempo, averaging 70.4 possessions per 40 minutes, adjusted for opponent. The only other Big 12 team in the 70s is Kansas State, who sit right at 70.0. Texas has a mark of 69.8 in that metric, so Wednesday’s game could feature plenty of end to end action.
Completing passes and grabbing rebounds will be key to gaining an advantage in transition.
“They cause a lot of problems with their active hands,” Terry said. “They have active hands and in game one they got their hands on a lot of balls. They turned a lot of those turnovers into points. They can quickly convert those.”
Game one featured a significant comeback effort by the Longhorns. Texas trailed TCU by as much as 18 points in the first half and 12 with under 10 minutes to go before mounting a furious comeback to win 79-75.
While the result was a positive, the process to get there was hardly sustainable when viewed through the lens of creating postseason success. Terry is looking for improvement in that process as college basketball’s premier month begins Wednesday with Texas’ penultimate game of the regular season.
“We’re about to embark on March,” Terry said. “March is going to be about finishing and advancing. You have to finish halves. You have to finish cuts. You have to finish possessions. The teams that embrace that get a chance to advance deep into March.”
The Horns and Horned Frogs face off at 8 p.m. in Schollmaier Arena on Wednesday night. The game will be televised on ESPN2.
