After the No. 6 Duke Blue Devils raced past the Texas Longhorns in the second half for a 75-60 win in Charlotte on Tuesday in the season opener for both teams, head coach Sean Miller makes his home debut with the Longhorns on Saturday at the Moody Center against the Lafayette Leopards.
It’s the first all-time meeting between Texas and the Patriot League program based on Easton, Penn. which has made four appearances in the NCAA Tournament, but currently boasts tournament odds of less than 10 percent from BartTorvik.com after starting the season 1-1 with a home win over Dickinson and a nine-point road loss to Saint Joseph’s. In the preseason Patriot League poll, the Leopards were picked to finish seventh out of 10 teams after returning eight players from last year’s 13-20 squad, including four contributors.
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For Texas, the focus turns internal for a four-game homestand against overmatched opponents — the Horns boast win probabilities of 97 percent, 99 percent, 98 percent, and 98 percent in those games, affording the opportunity to develop some team cohesion after graduate forward Lassina Traore and sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis both missed three weeks of preseason practice and both closed scrimmages.
Combined, the two players committed nine of the 16 turnovers by Texas in the loss to Duke. Vokietaitis, at least, recorded a team-high 10 free throws, making nine, but Traore struggled to make an offensive impact in 18 minutes, scoring five points.
“I know that part of our demise was their nine turnovers, but man, it’s tough to go from sitting out. In Lassina Traore’s situation, he did not play last year for us at Xavier, had a season-ending injury, so think about the last game that he played would have been against Arizona when he was at Long Beach State two tournaments ago,” Miller said after the game. “So it was just nice to have both of them out there. I think they gave us a physicality and inside presence, but also thought, tough to expect them to be a finished product.”
Miller left Charlotte happy with his team’s “competitive spirit” and effort against the Blue Devils, but unhappy with the lack of pace from the Longhorns, who only managed six fast-break points.
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“What we didn’t do, and I’m really surprised, is we played with no pace, and I think some of it is Duke, some of it is the first game, but we want to play a lot more pace and a lot more movement — six assists, 60 points, just the pace we played at, that’s not what I hope we become,” Miller said.
“We have to figure out who does what and do better. But there’s certain things that we’re much more capable of doing right now, and that is, we can run, we can play with pace. We practice that way. That’s part of what we do, and we’re going to be a more difficult team to defend when we play with pace.”
Texas needs more from its starting guards, graduate Tramon Mark and senior Chendall Weaver, who combined for five points in 39 total minutes. And while Weaver only played three minutes in the second half as Miller turned to senior guard Jordan Pope for his scoring ability, Mark played 12 minutes without taking a shot, only impacting the box score by recording an assist and a personal foul.
The Longhorns head coach credited Pope for keeping some semblance of contact with the Blue Devils by scoring 10 points in the second half, although he also didn’t have a deep impact on the box score with his two fouls the only other stats recorded by Pope.
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Pope was ultimately responsible for 15 of the 20 bench points for Texas as junior forward Cam Heide, junior guard Simeon Wilcher, and freshman forward Declan Duru all went scoreless in 30 total minutes.
Defensively, it was a story of two halves for Texas, which led by one point at halftime by holding Duke’s star freshman forward Cam Boozer scoreless by playing physical defense without fouling. In the second half, however, Boozer scored all 15 of his points as the Blue Devils forced the Longhorns to commit 15 fouls that turned into 18 made free throws.
“I thought our defense was intact for a majority of the game. Our effort was intact, but they put a lot of pressure on your defense, and eventually the undisciplined nature of our fouls, and just us getting spread out, they wore us down,” Miller said.
On Saturday, that shouldn’t happen as Texas looks to continue a streak of 23 straight wins in home openers — the Longhorns are projected to win by 25 points.
Tip is at 2:00 p.m. Central on SEC Network+.
