Everything posted by HookEm
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Texas Basketball 2025-26: It’s Miller Time
I'm willing to give Miller a couple of years before I fully judge him, but he is off to a pretty weak start. He is recruiting well, and those recruits will take some time to develop. Mainly I want to see improvement through the year, and from year to year. As long as that improvement continues, I can be patient. He has done a very poor job of building excitement among the fanbase though. Saint Beard is 6-4 at Ole Miss in year 3, so it isn't like he has built an absolute juggernaut there. I can agree that his first squad at UT looked better than this one, but that team had All Big-12 Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey returning, plus Febres who had 60 starts... which is vastly better than what Miller returned. And they still managed to lose 12 games and beat literally nobody better than Stanford in Nov/Dec. This year was a full rebuild and we added some decent upside multi-year players in Vokietaitis (SO), Wilcher (SO), Duru (FR) and John Clark (Redshirt). Heide (JR) should also return. And add to that: Austin Goosby, SG - #27 National Recruit - 4-star Bo Ogden, SF - #37 National Recruit, 4-star Joe Sterling, SG - #105 National Recruit, 4-star If he does well in the portal, we could have an improved squad. If he doesn't, then we will be bottom half of the SEC or worse. On the plus side, next year will be a good year to get better season tickets because interest in the program is absolutely dead.
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Texas Basketball 2025-26: It’s Miller Time
This is not a good defensive squad. Not good individually. Not good defensively as a team. It is staggering how bad our perimeter defense is in particular. Our guards don't play tight 1:1 defense, they don't fight through screens, and our bigs are basically worthless perimeter help defenders. Pope and Wilcher are particularly noteworthy bad defenders. Weaver provides hustle, but isn't really a very good individual defender either. Mark can play decent defense... when motivated. Half the time there is a 3, it seems to be in the face of Vokietaitis who is failing to close out. Add it all up and our 3P% defense is #287 in the country. And our ability to create steals and turnovers is #303 and #283 in the country. Horrid, horrid defensive work from our guards. When I hear Pope say that "we will do better", I want to see him start by putting in effort on the defensive end. Our guards are 6'2, 6'3, 6'4 and 6'5 and have plenty of athleticism. Weaver should be able to lock down the best opposing guard. Same with Wilcher. They should be smothering. Nope nope nope.
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Southern at Texas.. do we even care?
Had to turn it off because of Galindo. My goodness he is horrible.
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Texas Basketball 2025-26: It’s Miller Time
I can blame Miller for Traore. He recruited him from Xavier, so he knew what he was getting. And that is a one trick rebounding pony.
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Texas vs NC State- “8:30” on ESPN2
I like that Mark only played 17 min. Codie and Duru didn’t even get in the game. Love that Miller is confident enough as a coach to play the players most able to get us a win on a given night. When Heide fouled out, I felt certain we would replace him with Mark. Nope, here comes Wilcher. Awesome.
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Texas Basketball 2025-26: It’s Miller Time
Man, Traore with another 14 rebounds last night in just 13 minutes. The dude cleans the glass so well, but the rest of his game just isn't very good. Dude is averaging 21.4 TRB/40 min, which is insane.
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
- Texas vs the lesser Hurley's Sun Devils- 10:30 pm-ish on ESPN2
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Point and laugh at Shaka Smart
Lol. I made a single short post and then a follow-up. Relax.
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Point and laugh at Shaka Smart
All of that is fair, but it also seems like a lot of our fans are more interested in rooting against our former coach than learning about and watching our current team. This team has a shot to make some noise IMO and yet there is almost zero excitement around the new coach and team.
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Point and laugh at Shaka Smart
It annoys me that this thread gets more action than our actual 25-26 Texas thread, and that our game threads have 15 posts.
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Texas vs Rider- 8pm SECN
Agree on the lineup tinkering. This team has 10 players that are pretty much interchangeable outside of Swain and Mark (who should be in any starting / closing lineup). Those two can also play multiple positions, so there are a ton of lineups that could work. For me, Pope is the player who has been the most inconsistent and sloppy. Dude is averaging 0.271 FG% and 0.667 FT%. Horrid given this level of competition. And if he isn't shooting well, Pope doesn't add much else as he isn't a good distributor or defender. Wilcher on the other hand has been getting more comfortable, is more efficient and well rounded than Pope. He has much more upside IMO, plus he is just a junior and his development will pay longer term dividends. I would bump Pope down to ~18 minutes and bump Wilcher up to 26 and move him into the starting lineup. Last night was a career high for Cam Heide at 20 points. Good to see what he is capable of with the extra minutes. A starting lineup of Wilcher (6'4), Mark (6'5), Heide (6'7) and Swain (6'7) gives a good amount of size and the ability to play position-less basketball on offense and switching defense on the other end. (plus Vok / Traore at center). Or against some teams you could bring in Duru (6'8) as the 5th player in the lineup. I would love to see what Chris Beard would have done with all these forwards.
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Texas vs Rider- 8pm SECN
I like this team better playing small with Swain and Heide at the forward spots. That gives us so much more scoring and versatility than with Codie at the 4 and Swain at the 3. Codie didn’t play at all today. I think he will be a very key player next year, but this year I would rather see more minutes given to Vok, Traore and Swain. And probably Heide and Duru.
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Texas vs Who Cares, right now, some obscure channel
Traore with 11 boards, including 5 ORB In 23 minutes. Pretty good. I guess his minutes restriction is off? Vok got 25 minutes so I guess they played part of the game together?
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Texas vs FDU- 7pm SECN+
I think we actually go 10 deep. You could make a case that Cam Heide is our 10th best player, and he was a major contributor on a team that made it to the title game his FR year and then barely lost in the sweet 16 the next. Hopefully Miller can keep them all bought into the team concept because that is a lot of mouths to feed.
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Texas vs FDU- 7pm SECN+
Agree. I also think our depth is going to lead to some serious blowouts against the crap opponents we are playing. I'm not actually sure that our 2nd unit is worse than our starters. What would be the point spread in this matchup: Team A: Jordan Pope, Tramon Mark, Dailyn Swain, Nic Codie, Matas Vokietaitis Team B: Simeon Wilcher, Chendall Weaver, Camden Heide, Declan Duru, Lassina Traore If those two teams played 10 times, Team B might win 3-4 of them.