Important February Stretch - Texas (1)

The toughest part of the schedule is now over as Old Army heads into a big February stretch run that features 4 of their next 6 at home.

I thought the Aggies played great in the 2nd half on Saturday in Austin, unfortunately it just wasn't enough to overcome their marginal 1st half effort and poor 1st half shooting.

Hopefully they can carry their 2nd half momentum into this week's big games.

They laid down some nasty (literally) numbers in the first half going 1 of 7 (14%) from behind the arc and 4 of 11 (36%) from the charity stripe. They came out looking a little tentative and it showed in their effort.

Texas, as big and physical as they are, took it straight at A&M and methodically built up a 18 point lead with 5 minutes to go before halftime.

The Aggies were able to cut it to 13 at the half, but UT came right back out of halftime and pushed it to 18 on two different occasions. That's when the big fella went to work.

Joe was awesome again on Saturday pouring in a hard earned 31 points on 11 of 16 shooting against one of the best front court lines in the nation.

Buckman/Aldredge/Tucker didn't have an answer for #30 all day long. Joe was also great as usual from the line going 9 of 11.

He netted points 30 and 31 on a little jumper just outside of the lane at about the 4 minute mark to cut the Texas lead to 6.

Joe fouled out on the next trip down the floor and that was all she wrote.

(I could go on and on about the Buckman flop, but it won't change anything - Buckman is a pasty-white piece of crap that gets away with that stuff all the time. It should be pretty obvious at this point that I don't care for him much.)

Some quick hits:
- This game was a heck of alot closer than the 13 point final margin indicated.

- Martellus played some quality minutes and was OUTSTANDING on the defensive end of the floor in helping to neutralize (or at least slow down) PJ Tucker.

- Pompey was more-or-less horrible again. With the exception of the 2nd OU game he has not been a factor in Big XII play.

- Walker took a nasty elbow from Martellus late in the game and was bleeding all over the floor. Looked like he got it right above the eye. He was a non-factor in playing only 16 minutes. His minutes have come off significantly over the last two games, 15 and 16 respectively, this after averaging almost 24 in league play.

- Carter played 34 minutes on Saturday, easily his most of the season. He struggled shooting the ball in going 2 for 10 (0-5 from deep).

- Beau Muhlbach and Edjuan Green both made late appearances, that was strange.

Pompey Foul Update - Marlon keeps finding new and creative ways to foul out.

This time he did it in 20 minutes with 0 points and 0 rebounds. The streak is now at 4.

Bizarre Rotation of the Game - Antanas Kavaliauskus played 2 minutes going 1 for 1 and 2 points.

Bizarre Stat of the Game - A&M had 32 fouls to UT's 19.

OK - We always had this one at Texas chalked up as a loss, time to move on.

I will, however, say that I am much less pessimistic about the March 1st rematch now than I was before Saturday. We'll see what happens between now and then.

Looking Ahead

The boys in maroon have two MUST WIN games at home this week if they have any shot of making the tournament. Colorado on Wednesday (6:00 FSN) and OSU on Saturday (2:30 ABC regional).

Colorado beat K-State in Boulder mid-week before getting blasted in Ames last night trailing by ~20 for nearly the entire game.

OSU lost to Nebraska in Stillwater mid-week and then turned around and won in Manhattan by 2 on Saturday after a 9-0 run to close out the game.

Carry on.
-sb