MBB Opponent Watch: Texas (Jones diagnosed with leukemia) and LSU

Watched a bit of the Texas v TCU game tonight.  It was a crazy game in 2OT that Texas won 99-98 on a missed layup by TCU at the buzzer.

Texas is still playing without Andrew Jones (had an ankle injury when we played them) because he was diagnosed with leukemia, which is devastating.  Texas just announced it yesterday and played with a lot of emotion tonight.

However, Texas still looks terribly coached.  They don't really have an offense, and mostly stand around until someone tries to go one-on-one at the end of the shot clock.  While I was watching they made a lot of these tough late-clock shots, and that kept them in the game. The only thing that consistently worked well was posting up Osetkowski.  They're very long and block enough shots to make up for shoddy defensive positioning.

FWIW as a possible tourney opponent, TCU reminds me a lot of a typical Beilein team (I don't consider this year's team typical since we're better at defense than offense). They spread the floor and have 5 guys that are shooting 40+ percent from three.  They're very good at offense and mediocre at defense (they even busted out the 1-3-1 for a possession). Surprisingly, they don't shoot a high number of three typically, despite being so good at them.

LSU followed up their win at Texas A&M with a 21-point win at Arkansas (at team that was ranked last week).  LSU is up to 53rd in kenpom and would probably be in the tournament if the season ended today, which is big for our resume because they're our worst loss.

Interestingly, these two results and other events of the night shot us from 30th this morning to now 27th in kenpom.  That's a lot of movement for not playing a game.

Also, in today's RPI-makes-no-sense development, we dropped 12 (!!) spots for losing to Purdue. And they're ranked 10th so it's not like they're egregiously underrated (only slightly).