At full health and peaking late, Texas faces Xavier in the First Four

After a tense 48 hours following their SEC Tournament departure, the Horns earned 40 minutes dancing and a chance for Tre Johnson to shine.

When the Texas Longhorns were revealed as one of the First Four teams in the NCAA Tournament during the Selection Show on Sunday, earning a Wednesday matchup in Dayton against the Xavier Musketeers, the celebration at the team’s training facility had a different tone than in previous seasons.

The reveal was one of the most dramatic in modern program history with Texas in the rare position of sitting firmly on the bubble, which the team clawed back onto thanks to two wins in the SEC Tournament after the team’s tournament odds had cratered with seven losses in the last nine conference games.

It left some players on the verge of tears as they fulfilled lifelong dreams — despite the extensive college experience of many Longhorns players, a handful were dancing for the first time, including Indiana State transfers Julian Larry and Jayson Kent and Oregon State transfer Jordan Pope.

“When I seen everyone start cheering when our name popped up, I almost teared up a little bit,” Pope said. “This is what I dreamed for, this is what I came to Texas for. That was part of my decision in leaving [Oregon State]. I wanted to be part of March Madness and get my chance to be on that stage. And now that we have the opportunity, I’m just grateful.”

In regards to the team’s overall narrative, that opportunity was perhaps most important for star freshman guard Tre Johnson in his lone season of college basketball.

“It means a lot to me because it’s something that you dreamed of playing in the tournament, watching all the big, historic moments happen in the tournament,” Johnson said.

If Texas is going to create any big, historic moments in this NCAA Tournament, Johnson will be one of the primary architects after leading the SEC in scoring at 19.8 points per game and winning conference Freshman of the Year honors.

Johnson’s star power is arguably one of the reasons for the Horns to receive this opportunity, along with the historic quality of the SEC, which received a record 14 bids.

But Texas is also peaking at the right time, having survived the rugged crucible of conference play, emerging as healthy as the Longhorns have been all season with the return of junior guard Chendall Weaver and peaking with senior wing Tramon Mark successfully taking over primary ball-handling duties in the SEC Tournament, which head coach Rodney Terry is framing as something Texas couldn’t do in conference play with Weaver almost the entirely of it.

“He actually played a lot of possessions earlier in the season, some at point — not exclusively like we did there in the tournament —but there was a lot of thought process in terms of wanting to do that earlier. But for the sake of our rotation, we weren’t really able to do that,” Terry said on Tuesday.

“I thought it was much more functional for us when we got Chendall Weaver back in our lineup because Chendall is really good at execution. He’s a great ball mover, and he’s a guy that already has a feel for what we’re doing and how we do it. When you have another guy out there that can execute along with Kadin [Shedrick] that knows what you’re trying to get done and now you’re putting the ball in Tramon’s hands, it makes things flow a lot easier for us.”

The improved offensive flow is reflected in the positive trajectory of the team’s adjusted offense over the three games in the SEC Tournament even as Mark took a knock to his lower back in the loss to Tennessee.

Mark is healthy and ready to go against Xavier, making Texas a dangerous team that started to mitigate some of its flaws after having every player available for just two regular-season games.

And even though a handful of players are experiencing their first NCAA Tournament, Shedrick, Mark, and Creighton and Kansas State transfer Arthur Kaluma all have experience in the Big Dance.

“Today we practiced earlier over at a junior college, and I said, guys, the teams that have success this time of year are teams that have tremendous juice and energy, and they’re excited about this opportunity,” Terry said.

“Sometimes it’s not the best team that wins this time of year. For 40 minutes, you’ve got to be the team that comes in and puts your will on that team for 40 minutes in terms of how you’re going to play. But really the non-negotiables are you’re coming in, incredible energy, activity. You don’t have to play perfect, but you’ve got to play hard and you’ve got to play selfless and you’ve got to play together.”

On Wednesday, Texas faces Xavier for the fourth time in the postseason in the last 21 years, including a Sweet 16 loss in 2004, an overtime win in the NIT in 2019, and an 83-71 win in the Sweet 16 two years ago as Terry led the Horns to the Elite Eight as the interim head coach.

Only one player remains from the Musketeers team, but Larry and Kent have some familiarity with Xavier star guard Ryan Connell, who spent last season at Indiana State.

The sharpshooting guard enters the tournament red hot after scoring 20 or more points in his last five games, including a career-high, 38-point effort against Marquette in a two-point loss in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals that ended a seven-game winning streak for Xavier.

Conwell is a remarkable 27-of-41 shooting from three (65.8 percent) over those five games for a Musketeers team that ranks No. 42 in adjusted offensive efficiency by shooting 38.8 percent from beyond the arc, eighth nationally.

At fourth nationally in assist rate, Xavier moves the ball efficiently and converts opportunities at the free-throw line, ranking eighth in the country at 79.4 percent and getting to the charity stripe frequently with the No. 60 free-throw rate.

So the combination of elite three-point shooting and the ability to get to the line and convert those opportunities are concerns for a Texas team that doesn’t attempt a high number of threes and has experienced some massive struggles in defending without fouling.

Keeping the Musketeers off the glass shouldn’t be a huge concern for the Longhorns because head coach Sean Miller doesn’t ask his players to battle for offensive rebounds like the Aggies, but Xavier is dangerous nonetheless.

The playing style of Miller’s team reminds Johnson of Vanderbilt and Shedrick of Kentucky.

“Their style of defense, their up-tempo, their speed up and down the court. Just their size, how their players are all interchangeable, and stuff like that. It kind of reminds us a lot of Vanderbilt,” Johnson said.

Shedrick thought the offensive sets run by the Musketeers remind him of actions that Wildcats head coach Mark Pope likes.

“They like to do a lot of the zoom dribble handoffs that Kentucky likes to do,” Shedrick said, referencing an action that runs the three out of the corner off a down screen by the four into a dribble handoff by the five at the top of the key.

If Texas can get past Xavier, the Horns have a favorable path to the Sweet 16, but that requires winning a game against an evenly matched opponent that has a 56-percent win probability, according to BartTorvik.com, and is a 2.5-point favorite on FanDuel.

Tip is at approximately 8:10 p.m. Central on truTV at UD Arena.