Below is each team's NET ranking and quadrant resumes. This is a quadrant 1 game for LSU at Texas as they are inside the Top 75 (vs. 1-75 away game is Quadrant 1). These results are as of 1/24/20.

#25 (14-4, 6-0 SEC) LSU
Quad 1 = 1-2
Quad 2 = 6-2
Quad 3 = 2-0
Quad 4 = 5-0

#67 (12-6, 2-4 B12) Texas
Quad 1 = 1-3
Quad 2 = 1-3
Quad 3 = 4-0
Quad 4 = 6-0

LSU as of recent
A perfect start to SEC play, 6-0. Another thrilling SEC win by 4 or less points (last 5 SEC games all decided by 4 points or less) over Florida. We were awful from 3 (2 of 14) but it didn’t matter. We overcame Florida’s height advantage in the front court by outrebounding them 15 to 8 on the offensive glass and shot 27 for 47 from 2 (57.4%). Marlon Taylor had a great effort going for 10 points, 11 boards (6 offensive) as 6 Tigers reached double figures scoring. Smart had an efficient 13 point, 7 assist to 3 turnover game. Emmitt, Skylar and Trendon all turned in good performances as well, with Darius picking himself up a tough game shooting with 4 offensive boards. While we had a 10 point lead with 1:19 left, and barely escaped a potential overtime, we just seem to refuse to lose a close game right now.

Texas as of recent
Texas had a very good OOC showing at 10-2 only to come into B12 play and stumbling a bit at 2-4 in the B12. They’ve only managed to beat B12 bottom feeders KSU and OSU in their first 6 B12 contests and are coming off a horrific 59-97 loss to WVU earlier this week. The team has to be deflated a bit, but they can respond by picking up a big home win against us and I’m sure they’ll be up for it. They had been playing very solid defense in B12 play right up until that WVU game. To understand how a game like that gets away from you so bad – Texas had 18 turnovers to WVU’s 8, 4 offensive rebounds to WVU’s 22. So WVU had 28 extra possessions over Texas from those 2 things. Texas has been very poor all season rebounding other team’s misses.

Texas projected starters
C (6'9, 240) JR. Jericho Sims
PF (6'9, 225) SO. Kamaka Hepa
SF (6'5, 195) JR. Jase Febres
CG (6'3, 185) SO. Courtney Ramey
PG (6'2, 185) JR. Matt Coleman III

Jericho Sims will be the only player we see that doesn’t fire up 3’s for Texas. He’s their main big and in 26 minutes per game this year is averaging, 9.3 points, 7.9 rebounds (3 offensive), 1.3 blocks and is 65.5% from the floor. He’s arguably their best player and likes to clean up a lot of their 3 point misses and get some easy ones inside. Sims has a 22.4 PER on the season which is best on Texas’ team.

Kamaka Hepa is a guy whose height shouldn’t fool you, he thinks he’s a 6’9 SG, so we’ll call him a very stretch 4. Of his 40 FG attempts this year, 32 have come from 3 and he’s 34.4% from there. He only averages 13 minutes per game, but his minutes have increased in B12 play as he’s picked up starting there. I hesitate to ever call someone this, but he’s a bit of a softie as he doesn’t bring much to the floor other than shooting 3’s when he gets it. To put that statement to the test, in 180 minutes on the floor this season he’s been to the FT line – 0 times. He has 5 total offensive boards in 135 minutes of conference play, so he’s not a very willing guy there despite being 6’9. His PER on the season is just 13.6.

Jase Febres is out there to shoot a lot of 3’s. He’s Texas’ longer wing/SG and he takes over 7 3’s a game and is 36% from there. In 32 minutes he averages 10.5 points, 2.4 boards, 1.1 at 37.2% total from the floor (almost 80% of his shots are from 3). You would think with his length he would be one of their better defenders, but according the stats he’s one of the worst defenders on Texas’ team who plays significant minutes. He has a 12.3 PER on the season.

Courtney Ramey kind of shares ball handling duties with Coleman as both have close to 4 assists per game on the season, and Ramey fires up about 4 3’s a game. Ramey in 31 minutes averages 10.7 points, 4.6 boards, 3.6 assists to 2.3 turnovers a game. His PER on the season is 14.2.

Matt Coleman III is similar to Ramey as he will also fire up about 4 3’s a game, and in 32.7 minutes averages 12.2 points, 3.3 boards, 4.3 assists, 1.6 steals to 2.2 turnovers. Matt Coleman has a PER of 17.8 on the season.

Texas top bench players
SG (6'4, 185) rSO. Andrew Jones
PF (6’8, 200) SO. Gerald Liddell
PF (6'11, 212) FR. Kai Jones

Texas actually likes to play about 10-11 guys off the bench but these are the 3 they use most. Expect to see a few others play like Hamm, Williams and Baker as well. A. Jones has had a heck of a journey at Texas suffering from a diagnosis of Leukemia back 2 years ago which sat him out most of that season and almost all of last season. Jones is by far Texas’ best bench player averaging 10 points on 37% from 3. Liddell is a skinny big who Texas had started a bit earler in the season but is averaging just 4.4 points and 3.3 boards per game in 18 minutes now. K. Jones could be a promising player down the road for Texas but still a developing young big for now, he can block some shots.

This Texas team has not been playing to their potential IMO and probably in a lot of their fan’s opinions. Just so understand how talented this Texas team is, out of the 11 guys they tend to play, all 11 of them are former 4 and 5-star kids with almost all of them I believe being former Top 100 overall players. So this Texas team is stacked with recruiting talent, but Shaka loves to shoot the 3, and they’ve never been very good at that. For whatever reason, Shaka refuses to adjust his style of play. Texas relies on almost 40% of their scoring from 3, just 49% from 2, and is one of the worst in the country at just 12% of their scoring coming from the FT line. Compare that to us who rely on just 24% of our scoring from 3, 57% from 2 and almost 20% coming from the line. When you aren’t lights out from 3 and rely on the 3 so much you’ll get a lot of inconsistencies. Recruiting so many 3 point shooters has made Texas a bit soft and they give up a ton of offensive rebounds (32.5% of opponent shots) and on the flipside don’t grab many themselves (27.9% of their misses). They also have a tendency to turn the ball over (237th in country per kenpom). In the end like many of Texas’ games it will come down to that 3 point shooting IMO.

If we stick to our game plan of driving for 2’s and hitting the glass hard, these really play to our favor against Texas. Texas doesn’t have 1 single guy that’s great, but they do have a lot of 3 point shooters and if we’re honest we just don’t defend it for long periods of time. So it could really come down to does Texas hit their 3’s at a high enough rate to keep up with our scoring and if so, can we consistently beat them around the rim. Kenpom has this as a nail biter, I think we can absolutely take this one as I think their weaknesses play to our strengths, however, we’ve not fared very well on the road in non-conference play either. Expect this one to be a fun one in Austin as we have a bit of an athletic rivalry brewing between the home/home football series last season and next and now this SEC/B12 challenge game.

Projected LSU Starting 5
PF (6'6, 230) SO. Emmitt Williams - #5
PF (6'6, 240) SO. Darius Days - #0
SF (6'9, 235) FR. Trendon Watford - #2
SG (6'4, 205) SR. Skylar Mays - #4
PG (6'4, 205) SO. Javonte Smart - #1

Main rotational players
SF (6'5, 210) SR. Marlon Taylor - #14
SF (6'5, 225) rFR. Aundre Hyatt - #15

Kenpom's Prediction: LSU 73 Texas 72