In a game where first-year head coach Chris Beard really saw the six-seed Texas basketball leave everything on the floor, the Longhorn Trei should be proud of that team. Texas took on a tough opponent in the three-seed Purdue Boilermakers, who were the No. 1 ranked team in the AP poll for much of the regular season.
This was nothing easy for the Longhorns to take care of, but they still struggled until the end.
Texas got big outings from Redshirt Senior Shooting Guard / wing Andrew Jones and Senior Guard Marcus Carr en route to an unfortunate 81-71 loss to the Boilermakers tonight. Carr, however, was the real star of the night for the Longhorns.
Carr had a solid night for the Longhorns, where he recorded a game-high 23 points on 8-of-18 shots from the field, 4-of-8 from over the arc, and 3-of-5 from the free-throw line. . . He also gave Texas a game-high seven assists with just two turnovers.
Jones was also an offensive sparkler for the Longhorns in this one, as he came in with 17 points on 6-of-13 shots from the field, 2-of-7 from over the arc, and 3-of-4 from the open. – Throw a line. Jones also gave Texas two rebounds, one assist, two steals, and two turnovers.
You have to give a lot of props for the efforts of Jones and Carr, including for the Longhorns tonight.
The problem Texas faced, however, was not being able to get over how to play Purdue’s great men. With that, Purdue came into the game on the free kick line with an almost record volume in this game.
Purdue got 46 free throw attempts on Texas ’12, which is the biggest discrepancy in the NCAA tournament in the last decade. Purdue was also just the third team to line up at least 46 times in an NCAA Tournament game since 2010.
Texas Basketball could not work past a major free kick discrepancy in the loss against Purdue in the round of 32
FT differences in the tournament so far:
1 Purdue +34 vs Texas
2Purdue +21 vs Yale
3Arkansas +15 vs NMSU
4Michigan +15 vs CSU
5Kentucky +14 vs St
6LSU +13 vs. Iowa State
7Murray State +13 vs San Francisco– Hook’em Headlines (@HookemHeadlines) March 21, 2022
The last thing about this:
Purdue 46 FTs are third most in a tournament game since 2010. This was also the largest FT discrepancy of any tournament game in the last decade.
– Hook’em Headlines (@HookemHeadlines) March 21, 2022
If the Longhorns just do not get as much free as their opposition, it will be incredibly difficult to pull off the victory. Texas also had some bad offensive droughts, which led to them stopping far too often. It was a stretch of that game at one point in the first half where Texas went on for more than nine minutes without making a single field goal attempt.
That’s hard to do when you’re trying to set up a team as good as Purdue in March.
Moreover, there are a lot of talking points from this game. It’s just hard to look past the discrepancies and free throws when they came in this large volume for the Boilermakers.
However, Beard and the Longhorns have a lot to look forward to with a program that has shown just a ton of fighting in the NCAA Tournament. This was more fighting and competitiveness from Texas men hoops in the postseason than we have seen in more than a decade.
This should only continue to provide a positive momentum for Beard and the Longhorns, who are returning this program from the players and via the Recruitment Path / NCAA Transfer Portal. Texas fans should be optimistic for a few better days ahead of this men’s hoops program.
Following this loss to the Boilermakers in the round of 32 on March 20, Texas ended the 2021-22 season with a record of 22-12 (10-8 Big 12) with their first NCAA Tournament victory since 2014. Purdue will now be moving to the Cinderella 15-Seed St. Peters am Séiss 16.
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