November and December, the first two months of the college basketball season, are not the most entertaining games for a casual viewer — unless blowouts are your thing.
While Texas men’s basketball toys around with squads like Lafayette or Rider in the non-conference portion of its season, these teams serve a greater purpose than just wins in the record books. It’s an opportunity for a new roster to mesh before a taxing conference schedule.
Unlike in previous seasons, the Longhorns, led by a new head coach and multiple new pieces in the starting five, did not have a cupcake warm-up to open the season, facing then No. 6 Duke in its backyard of Charlotte.
Texas was unable to build upon its competitive first half, falling by 15 points to the Blue Devils in the season opener. Despite the loss, Texas head coach Sean Miller found some relief in playing such a tough opponent to start the year.
“The good part about playing a team like Duke in that environment is you really have a chance to learn a lot about yourself,” Miller said. “I thought we did, in fact, learn a number of valuable lessons that can help us improve our team moving forward.”
Two areas that affected the Longhorns in the inaugural Dick Vitale Invitational were committing 25 fouls and 16 turnovers, both could be attributed to side effects of Texas’ lack of a preseason scrimmage in a loud environment.
While Miller acknowledged that “Lafayette’s not Duke,” the Longhorns improved in both areas, accumulating just nine turnovers and 15 fouls. Miller noted he liked the improvement he saw from games one and two.
“Taking care of the ball, playing single-digit turnovers and less undisciplined fouls. So I feel like that’s good feedback,” Miller said. “That’s something to grow and build from, and moving forward, that’s going to be really important to our team.”
There was more cohesion within the team against Lafayette, a massive improvement from the Duke game. Texas had 21 assists compared to the six put up against the Blue Devils. Still, the Longhorns were not perfect in their first win of the season.
Miller wanted more, feeding the ball to sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis, who put up his second career double-double with 14 points and 8 rebounds in the home opener.
“The more he can catch it, the more we can hit him close to the basket, the more of a factor he is, the more fouls the other team is going to get, the more high percentage shots (he’s) going to get around the basket. That’s a big part of offense,” Miller said. “So all of us learning him, him learning our system. There’s nothing more important to our improvement in November.”
Outside of the Maui Invitational, Virginia and No. 3 UConn, the quality of opponents for Texas men’s basketball for the next two months will not be the most competitive. But the lessons learned and camaraderie built during this time will serve Miller’s group in the long run before a tough Southeastern Conference slate.
“We have to be ready, game in, game out, and then at the same time, the obvious other part of it is you want to want to improve, especially in our case, because we’re so new,” Miller said.
