Even before Texas jumped out to a 33-5 lead in the first quarter against the Texas Woman’s University Pioneers, it was clear to those watching around Moody Center that the scoreboard result would not be the defining takeaway of Monday’s exhibition.
The Longhorns went on to defeat TWU 108-54, getting point contributions from nine different players. But, most importantly for head coach Vic Schaefer’s Longhorns, the contest marked the team’s final opportunity to tune up its performance before the real deal begins.
And Texas played with an intensity that both created and dismantled opportunity.
Schaefer’s five on the court kept up a blistering type of pressure, trapping Pioneer ball-handlers in tight spaces, causing five-second calls on inbound plays and producing chance-creation the other direction with active hands. The Longhorns forced TWU into 27 turnovers and earned 26 fouls from their opposition.
“Coach’s main thing in the locker room today was play hard (and) play your guts out, so that’s what we went out there and did,” junior forward Breya Cunningham said postgame.
Yet, the flip side to Texas’ intended physical approach was self-inflicted errors through overaggressiveness and bailouts. This could be seen specifically with fouling, as Texas stockpiled 11 in the first half to give the Pioneers extra offensive possessions and 10 attempts from the strip.
While a concerning habit to standardize, Cunningham – who scored a game-high 25 points – knows it’s something that the Longhorns can iron out with time.
“(We’ve) just got to be more disciplined as a team on that,” Cunningham said. “But I think we’ll get better at it. Right now, we’re just trying to get into the flow of games, playing with each other before our season opener. Hopefully (in) these two (exhibition) games, we got all of that out before.”
Against TWU, the Longhorns extended their lead in spurts. In fact, those spurts primarily came in the first and third quarters. Texas won by a combined 50 over the opening 10 minutes of each half. But in the second and fourth quarters, the Longhorns outscored the Pioneers by just a total of four.
To Schaefer, that signaled issues in personnel combinations.
“One of the big things we always talk about is continuity through substitution,” Schaefer said postgame. “We did not have that tonight, so we’ve got to get better there.”
With getting out on the run offensively being a key part of his team’s two-way identity, Schaefer also viewed Texas’ efficiency and decision-making on transitions as another department in need of improvement.
“You get eight to 10 points a game off of three-on-twos and two-on-ones,” Schaefer said. “We’ve got to be way better in that area, and we’re just not very good right now.”
The Longhorns will look to improve in these aspects of their game the next time they take the court on Nov. 3, hosting Incarnate Word in their regular-season opener.
