By the final whistle, United Supermarkets Arena was nearly empty.
After students spent days camping out in anticipation of the Texas Longhorns traveling to Lubbock to face the Texas Tech Red Raiders for the final time as Big 12 opponents, the Longhorns put the game away early by taking a 25-point halftime lead and cruised to the finish in the 81-69 win, robbing opposing fans of the opportunity to storm the court 18 months after Texas football players were assaulted on the Jones AT&T Stadium field following a Texas Tech win.
Red Raiders fans set an ugly but predictable tone early in the game when Longhorns senior guard Max Abmas needed medical attention after being elbowed in the forehead by an Texas Tech player, chanting, “He’s a pussy” while Abmas was down bleeding on the court.
“It’s not fun to hear those words sometimes,” said Texas senior forward Dylan Disu. “Obviously, Max probably didn’t love to hear it when he was bleeding, but when you hear the crowd saying things like that and the energy that they have, that means you’re doing something right and I think that being at Texas we’ve learned to embrace that.”
The game turned even more ugly in the second half in the wake of a physical foul by Texas senior forward Brock Cunningham on Texas Tech guard Darron Williams going after a loose ball when fans began throwing objects onto the court, including targeting the Longhorns bench. Cunningham was assessed a flagrant two foul and ejected as the Red Raiders fans were given an administrative technical.
“We wanted to pride ourselves tonight on winning the 50-50 ball. In terms of any loose ball, any opportunity, we were going to try to be on the floor first to the loose ball,” said Texas head coach Rodney Terry.
Texas Tech head coach Grant McCasland was forced to address the crowd directly as security ejected some of the worst offenders.
“Everybody listen. Hey, right here. Everybody listen,” said McCasland over the public address system. “Everything that gets thrown on the floor, we’re going to get a technical foul. Listen to me. It’s gotta stop. It’s gotta stop. Nothing else on the floor. Am I clear?”
Terry was worried enough about protecting his team that he considered taking them into the locker room until some semblance of order was restored.
The poor fan behavior obscured one of the best performances of the season by Texas to break a three-game losing streak in Lubbock and send Texas Tech to its first home loss under McCasland.
Terry credited the response to Saturday’s blowout loss to Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse.
“We won this game on Sunday — we got back from a tough loss in Lawrence and we came back the next day and laced them up and had probably our most physical and hardest practice of the year,” said Terry. “I thought guys played that way tonight to set the tone and start this ballgame. I thought we really came out and guarded really hard, competed at a very high level and really set the tone for the game.”
Even without knowing that Texas Tech forward Warren Washington was going to miss the game due to injury, the game plan for Texas was to attack the paint by getting the ball into the post to Disu and senior forward Kadin Shedrick.
As the Longhorns raced out to a 14-4 lead early, Disu scored in the paint and Shedrick had a dunk and two layups in a strategic shift for Texas offensively. Going away from Abmas as the primary ball handler because Texas Tech was blitzing the pick-and-roll, Terry used Abmas coming off of off-ball screens and sent Disu into the post to initiate offense.
The plan worked as the Horns scored 32 paints in the paint, led by 21 points by Disu on 9-of-16 shooting with only two three-point attempts and 18 points by Abmas, who bounced back from the worst slump of his career with the previous three opponents holding him to 20 points combined.
Starting senior guard IT Horton in place of sophomore guard Chendall Weaver gave the Texas bench a boost in outscoring Texas Tech 32-13 as Weaver tied his season high of 15 points on 9-of-11 shooting from the free-throw line while adding eight rebounds and two assists. Finally looking more healthy after suffering a back injury in the Big 12 opener against the Red Raiders, senior forward Kadin Shedrick added 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting with six rebounds.
The Texas defense deserves significant credit for the huge first-half lead and comfortable finish — Texas Tech never lead in the game and shot 24.2 percent over the opening 20 minutes with star guard Pop Isaacs missing all 10 of his shot attempts.
The fifth Quad 1 win for the Longhorns this season pushed Texas back away from the bubble and increased the team’s odds of making the NCAA Tournament up to 98.6 percent, according to BartTorvik.com.
Texas returns to the Moody Center on Saturday for a game against Oklahoma State.
