Texas and Big 12 Basketball Capsules: No. 2 Texas rolls over Texas-Pan American 104-42

AUSTIN — Texas freshman Avery Bradley had his third straight impressive game for the second-ranked Longhorns.

Bradley scored a season-high 18 points and had five assists to lead Texas to an overpowering 104-42 victory over Texas-Pan American on Tuesday night.

"My comfort level is definitely getting better," Bradley said. "I came out the second half and tried to let the defensive end get my offensive game going, and it did."

Bradley, who averaged 16 points on 13-of-26 shooting in the last two games, led the Longhorns (9-0) offensively, going 8 of 15 from the field while involving others with his timely passing.

Jordan Hamilton had 15 points for Texas, while Dexter Pittman controlled the low post with 14 points and seven rebounds, Gary Johnson added 12 points and Justin Mason had 10.

"We’re trying to build habits, and that’s what you’re searching for this time of year," Texas coach Rick Barnes said of Bradley. "I think he came out and he wasn’t as aggressive as he has been, but when we picked it up defensively he really came along."

Using the full-court trap, the Longhorns pressured Texas Pan-American into 21 turnovers in the game. Texas shot 53.3 percent (40 of 75) and was 8 of 20 on 3s.

The Longhorns are hoping to see Bradley and fellow freshman Hamilton keep up the production.

"They are playing fearless right now, and I think they have the butterflies out of them," Pittman said. "They are playing like men."

Texas broke from a 45-19 halftime lead by going on a 39-13 run over the first 10 minutes of the second half. Bradley, who reached double figures for the sixth time this season, scored 12 points in the run.

Luis Valera had 10 points for the Broncs (1-10), who finished 15 of 63 (23.8 percent) from the field, including 3 of 22 from 3-point range.

The Longhorns used a 17-7 run to take a 21-11 lead early in the first half. Hamilton hit two 3-pointers during the run, and Dogus Balbay added a 3 from the wing. Balbay finished with eight points, five rebounds and nine assists.

"I’ve gotten a chance to get a good feel of their program the last five years, and I think they are terrific and by the end of the year I think they’ll be marvelous," Texas Pan-American coach Ryan Marks said. "I’m not sure that this isn’t the best Texas team I’ve seen."

Marks coached at St. Edwards, a private university in Austin located about 5 miles south of the Texas campus.

The Longhorns outrebounded Texas-Pan American 34-13 in the first half. Pittman and Damion James combined for 16 rebounds and helped the Longhorns score 46 points in the paint. Texas closed the first half on a 24-8 run and held the Broncs to 6-of-30 shooting. It was the ninth-largest margin of victory in Longhorn history, and third-largest at the Erwin Center.

The Longhorns will play No. 10 North Carolina at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, on Saturday. For most of the players, this is the game they have been waiting for.

"This is a game I’ve dreamed of playing in since I was a little kid, and we’ll treat this like the national championship," Bradley said.

Added Pittman, "We’re playing against the best of the best, we’ll get a sense of where we’re at as a team. We’ll treat this like the national championship."

Texas too mighty a foe for UTPA

AUSTIN – Rick Barnes sat calmly on the bench the entire game.

There really was no reason for him to get up. His second-ranked Texas Longhorns did their thing again and made the University of Texas men’s basketball team look as if it really had no business being on the same court.

Broncs coach Ryan Marks called the 2009-10 Longhorns the best team under Rick Barnes’ tenure. It was arguably the best team UTPA has played in years.

“Knowing that a couple guys are missing tonight, I think they are terrific now, but by the end of the season, I think they are going to be marvelous,” Marks said.

Texas was without J’Covan Brown and Shawn Williams and gave Avery Daniel extensive experience at the point for the first time this season. It didn’t matter.

UTPA has played Missouri, an Elite Eight team from last season, and Mississippi State, which was ranked in the top 20 to start the season. But nothing compared to Texas.

“You just want to go out there and try and be competitive with a team like that,” Weiermiller said. “It is UT, they are a tough team.
“Obviously, they are superior athletes to us. They are bigger and faster guys. For us to win there were so many things that had to go right for us. Those things didn’t go our way.”

Weiermiller would be surprised if he wasn’t watching the Longhorns in the Final Four again.

“I know a lot of NCAA analysts would be shocked if they didn’t make it in there either,” Weiermiller said.

Texas improves to 9-0 with all wins coming by 15 or more points, including its 104-42 thumping of UTPA on Tuesday.

The scary thing is that Barnes is pushing for more improvement, especially on the boards. Texas, a much taller team, was expected to win the rebound battle Tuesday. The Longhorns, though, outrebounded the Broncs 64-31.

“For us it’s not about who we are playing and we’ve said that in every game that we have played this year,” Barnes said. “It is about what we are trying to build this team into. … The talent level is different, but in a game like this, we are trying to forget the score and play the game.”

Maybe No. 11 North Carolina and No. 12 Michigan will test their mettle during the next two games. As far as UTPA is concerned, the Longhorns were simply impressive.

“There is a reason why they are No. 2 in country,” Broncs post Luis Valera said. “We knew it was going to be tough for us. We tried.”

Peter Rasmussen covers UTPA athletics for Valley Freedom Newspapers. You can reach him at (956) 683-4448 or via e-mail at prasmussen@themonitor.com.

State Men

Baylor wins 90-60 over Jackson State

WACO — Tweety Carter scored 22 of his 27 points in the first half, and Quincy Acy put on a dunking exhibition in the second as Baylor beat Jackson State 90-60 Thursday night.

Acy had five dunks, including a pair of alley-oops assisted by Carter, during a 22-12 run midway through the second half. Acy finished with a career-high 20 points. Anthony Jones added 12. Baylor (8-1) earned its 200th win in the Ferrell Center since it opened in 1988.

De’Suan Dixon had 19 points for Jackson State (0-7), and Phillip Williams added a career-high 17 (surpassing his season total by three points).

Carter drained three straight 3-pointers as Baylor jumped to an 18-6 lead. He added 11 points in the final 3:30 of the half. Carter closed the half with five points in the final five-seconds, making a pair of free throws, stealing the inbound pass and nailing another 3-pointer at the buzzer as the Bears took a 49-31 lead into the break.

"That gave us a spark coming out of halftime," said Carter, who scored 27 for the third-straight game. "Then in the second half, our bigs picked it up tremendously."

Carter also had a season-high eight assists and four steals.

"Defensively, he really got us going in the second half," said Baylor coach Scott Drew. "Tweety’s one of those players who can do a lot more than shoot. He did a great job of getting into the paint and finding Quincy."

Baylor came into the game ranked second in the nation in rebounding margin at 12.6 per game, but was beat on the boards in the first half (18-12) before finishing with a 37-34 edge.

State Women

No. 5 LSU crushes Houston Baptist 93-31

BATON ROUGE, La. — Hosting the inaugural Sue Gunter Classic in honor of its late Hall of Fame coach, LSU took no chances in falling victim to an opening-round upset.

The fifth-ranked Lady Tigers picked a completely overmatched opponent and routed Houston Baptist 93-31 on Tuesday night.

LSU (8-0) started with a 16-0 run, added another 16-0 run before halftime and then widened the lead to as many as 65 points in the second half despite third-year coach Van Chancellor, himself a Hall of Famer, using his bench liberally.

"We should have won by that margin and we did," said Chancellor, off to his best start at LSU. "We did what we were supposed to do, and that’s good."

Houston Baptist (2-8) lost by 69 points to Duke and by 79 to TCU earlier this season.

"Coach (Chancellor) has been like another dad to me," said Houston Baptist coach Todd Buchanan, who became friends with Chancellor when the latter was coaching the WNBA’s now defunct Houston Comets. "I just wish Dad hadn’t whipped us so hard."

LSU advanced to Wednesday’s championship game against North Carolina A&T, which beat Louisiana-Lafayette 95-78.

Coming off a 57-33 win over New Orleans on Sunday when it shot just 35 percent from the field, LSU had few scoring lapses against Houston Baptist.

The Lady Tigers shot 53.4 percent and committed only eight turnovers, despite the fact that no LSU starter played more than 19 minutes.

Point guard Latear Eason had 12 points, five assists and three steals in just 17 minutes. She and forward Taylor Turnbow led LSU in scoring, as five Lady Tigers reached double figures and all 12 players who got in the game scored.

"Latear Eason was outstanding tonight," Chancellor said.

LSU’s defense was just as impressive as its season-high scoring output.

The Lady Tigers limited Houston Baptist to 26.5 percent shooting, forced 28 turnovers, had 21 steals and dominated the rebounding, 53-25.

"It was the most athletic, quick, lengthy team we’ve faced," Buchanan said. "Everyone on that team is an athlete, and that’s the thing we tried to simulate in our practices. Sometimes we’d play 6-on-5."

At times it looked like LSU had an extra player on the court.

For a few moments at least, Eason was thinking shutout.

"It’s hard to completely shut down a team. We knew they would score at some point," Eason said seriously. "We just wanted to come out and play hard."

LSU’s reserves gave a strong effort, led by 11 points from junior guard Erica Williams, a transfer from Southern Mississippi who scored her first points as a Lady Tiger. Backups Jasmine Nelson and Swayze Black each had a team-high eight rebounds.

Getting valuable minutes off the bench could prove even more crucial for LSU in the future.

Chancellor announced Tuesday that backup guard Taylor Booze, who injured her knee Sunday, is out for the season. Andrea Kelly, another reserve guard, has been sidelined with a nagging foot injury.

"Without Kelly and Booze we’re thin at certain positions," Chancellor said. "We’ve got to stay healthy. (Adrienne) Webb and others, like Williams and Lutley, have to be ready."

Gunter coached LSU from 1983-2004 and won 708 games in her 40-year career, just the third woman’s coach to win 700 games at the time. Coach of the 1980 Olympic team which did not play in Moscow because of a U.S. boycott, Gunter died in 2005 and was posthumously inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later that year.