Texas Longhorns host Long Beach St. 49ers on hardwood
With the Texas football team taking the spotlight with its game vs. Alabama for the BCS Championship, it's easy to forget about the Longhorns on the basketball court.
After all the talk about Colt McCoy and the offense, It was defense that kept the Texas football team close enough to win the Big 12 Championship game on Saturday. Defense has been doing the trick all season for the Longhorns on the basketball court.
"We did the things that we talked about doing," Barnes said after his squad moved to 6-0 on the season last week with a 69-50 win at home over USC in the Big 12-SEC Hardwood Classic.
Texas will get a chance to move to 7-0 on Monday at their home arena in Austin when it hosts the Long Beach St. 49ers. The Niners come into this one 4-3 straight up and 4-2 against the spread, 3-0 to the 'over.'
But they will be overmatched tonight. Texas has won each game by at least 16 points, that margin coming against highly regard Pitt on Nov 24 as eight-point chalk in the CBS Classic title tilt in Kansas City.
The 'Horns have missed just one cover so far, that coming against the Trojans this last week when the 19-point gap at the end missed the closing number of -21 on UT.
The tendency when looking at player stats is to check out the offensive numbers, and that might work with a lot of teams. Not Texas, however. The game starts on defense with the Longhorns.
The team will not give you many second chances on your possessions, ranking 13th in the nation on the boards with 42.8 per game and 33.0 of those coming on the defensive end. Damion James leads the team with an even 10 per contest. Dexter Pittman clogs the middle with six boards and 2.8 blocks each trip to the floor.
And the guy fast emerging as a huge spark plug and force for this team is Turkish-born Dogus Balbay. With Varez Ward having been lost for the season with an injury in that win over Pittsburgh, Balbay has stepped in and become Mr. Everything. He is first on the team in assists with 4.2 per game, third on the team in rebounding with 4.7, tossing in 1.2 steals and almost a block per game.
Long Beach State won't be quite the cakewalk for Texas as Western Carolina and UC Irvine was to open the year. The 49ers beat UCLA, no, trashed UCLA 79-68 in their most recent game to close the two teams' participation in the 76 Classic out in Anaheim on Nov 29.
LBSU was a four-point dog against one of the worst Bruins teams in a long, long time, with the 'over' 134 ½ paying off. That marked the fourth time in its last five games that LBSU brought hoime the dough.
Though you might not think there would be much history in this series, there is with the six previous meetings dead-even at three apiece. The last meeting was almost 20 years since last meeting when Long Beach St. pulled off an 89-87 win in Austin.
The game tips at 9:00 p.m. (ET) on ESPN with Carter Blackburn and Stephen Howard at the microphones.
With the Texas football team taking the spotlight with its game vs. Alabama for the BCS Championship, it's easy to forget about the Longhorns on the basketball court.
After all the talk about Colt McCoy and the offense, It was defense that kept the Texas football team close enough to win the Big 12 Championship game on Saturday. Defense has been doing the trick all season for the Longhorns on the basketball court.
"We did the things that we talked about doing," Barnes said after his squad moved to 6-0 on the season last week with a 69-50 win at home over USC in the Big 12-SEC Hardwood Classic.
Texas will get a chance to move to 7-0 on Monday at their home arena in Austin when it hosts the Long Beach St. 49ers. The Niners come into this one 4-3 straight up and 4-2 against the spread, 3-0 to the 'over.'
But they will be overmatched tonight. Texas has won each game by at least 16 points, that margin coming against highly regard Pitt on Nov 24 as eight-point chalk in the CBS Classic title tilt in Kansas City.
The 'Horns have missed just one cover so far, that coming against the Trojans this last week when the 19-point gap at the end missed the closing number of -21 on UT.
The tendency when looking at player stats is to check out the offensive numbers, and that might work with a lot of teams. Not Texas, however. The game starts on defense with the Longhorns.
The team will not give you many second chances on your possessions, ranking 13th in the nation on the boards with 42.8 per game and 33.0 of those coming on the defensive end. Damion James leads the team with an even 10 per contest. Dexter Pittman clogs the middle with six boards and 2.8 blocks each trip to the floor.
And the guy fast emerging as a huge spark plug and force for this team is Turkish-born Dogus Balbay. With Varez Ward having been lost for the season with an injury in that win over Pittsburgh, Balbay has stepped in and become Mr. Everything. He is first on the team in assists with 4.2 per game, third on the team in rebounding with 4.7, tossing in 1.2 steals and almost a block per game.
Long Beach State won't be quite the cakewalk for Texas as Western Carolina and UC Irvine was to open the year. The 49ers beat UCLA, no, trashed UCLA 79-68 in their most recent game to close the two teams' participation in the 76 Classic out in Anaheim on Nov 29.
LBSU was a four-point dog against one of the worst Bruins teams in a long, long time, with the 'over' 134 ½ paying off. That marked the fourth time in its last five games that LBSU brought hoime the dough.
Though you might not think there would be much history in this series, there is with the six previous meetings dead-even at three apiece. The last meeting was almost 20 years since last meeting when Long Beach St. pulled off an 89-87 win in Austin.
The game tips at 9:00 p.m. (ET) on ESPN with Carter Blackburn and Stephen Howard at the microphones.
