And I immediately regret watching American Idol...
In my defense, I had a bunch of school work to do (chemistry is NOT a fun class) and after watching the first 5 minutes had to head off to do that. I forgot that the game was on and now, I have an empty feeling in my stomach that always shows up around this time of year whenever I miss a good game. I live for good college basketball games. Whenever I miss one, especially one that has impacts on the NCAA Tournament and seedings, etc. I'm there.
Anyways, let's get to why I posted this...
For those of you not following Big 12 basketball closely, Kansas and A&M were tied atop the Big 12 standings, setting up a share of the conference title. However, virtue of Acie Law's victory over us in AFH they would have received the #1 seed in the conference tourney, and in all reality were the conference champion even though we would have a banner in AFH commerating this season as a conference championship season. So now, it all comes down to doing what A&M couldn't do tonight. Stop Kevin Durant and Co.
Damion James exploded in tonight's game for 22 points and 9 rebounds and Durant had his usual dominating performance, playing 49 of the 50 minutes and scoring 30 points and pulling down 16 rebounds.
Now, like I said I am regretting that I chose Ryan Seacrest over this game so I can't comment on play, just on what the box score tells me. Here are the two things that stick out to me:
- Kevin Durant had 0 assists. He put up an amazing line (30 points 16 rebounds 5 offensive 3 blocks 8-17 FGA) but there is a big goosegg under the assists category. When you are as dominant as KD is, you are going to get double and even triple teamed. When that happens, there will always be people open because they can only put 5 bodies out there at a time. I'm not sure if their shooters like A.J. Abrams just weren't making their shots or what but you would think that KD would have AT LEAST a couple of dimes.
- They don't have much depth. At all. They played 9 different players and here are all of their minute totals:
They don't have a lot of depth, do they? The first five names are the starters, with Atchley being the clear cut 6th man on the team. After that, they don't get a lot of production from the bench (4 points) which will catch up to them sometime in the Tournament. I commend Rick Barnes for how well he has coached these few good players into a possible share of the Big 12 conference championship (if they beat us at AFH and A&M wins all 3 of us share it, A&M loses just us and Bevo split it) but they don't have the firepower to make a deep run into the Tournament.
More on UT - KU later on this week, for now let's just celebrate Texas' semi-upset of A&M (somewhat repaying for A&M's football upset of Bevo, although football is much more important to both schools) which will allow us the opportunity to claim the Big 12 outright for ourselves.
Rock Chalk!