Texas Basketball: Double-OT win over TCU a catalyst for rest of season

Texas basketball received devastating news concerning one of the team’s players on Wednesday. With heavy hearts, the Longhorns got a huge win against a ranked TCU.

On morning of Jan. 10, the family of Texas sophomore guard Andrew Jones announced that he had been diagnosed with Leukemia and is currently going treatments to help deal with the disease.

Basketball matters aside, it’s incredibly tough to see anyone go through this, as I along with many others have known someone who has dealt with something like this. The basketball community has responded with prayers and well wishes, from teammates, fans, opposing teams to just regular people. It’s moments like this that truly puts what really matters in life into perspective.

On the court, it’s a huge loss for the Longhorns, as before the illness and wrist injury suffered a month earlier, Jones was the leading scorer of the team and the only player who could consistently hit a perimeter shot. He averaged 13.5 ppg, while shooting 48% from deep.

Wednesday was a tough ask for Shaka Smart and the players, having not only to deal with the tragic news, but have to get emotionally ready to take on the No. 16 TCU Horned Frogs, with the loser starting out league play 1-3. It was even more important for Texas, who up to this point has been on the bubble in terms of March.

With the team dedicating the game to Jones and fans all over the arena showing their support, the Longhorns raced out to a 18-5 lead to start out the game. Playing on nothing but emotion, the added effort made the already athletic team even harder to deal with on defense.

But emotion or not, Texas is still a very flawed offensive team, and TCU took advantage of that, slowly cutting into the deficit before finally taking the lead with six minutes to go.

At that point, it looked like Texas was running on empty, but led by Dylan Osetkowski, the veteran of the team and now emotional leader, the team stayed the course and forced two overtimes. The Tulane transfer was a tremendous all night as a leader. He scored 20 points and played all but one minute in the game.

https://twitter.com/hardwiredsports/status/951314247207870464

After freshman Jericho Sims made the go-ahead free throw to take a 99-98 lead, Jaylen Fisher of TCU had an easy layup as time expired, but as if a supernatural presence came in at the moment, the shot failed to go in and Texas survived 15 made threes by the Horned Frogs for the double-overtime win.

This was a huge win for many reasons, but basketball-wise it gave a big win for the Longhorns for their tournament resume, as gave additional confidence for the underclassmen on the team.

But this game meant more for Texas 11-5 (2-2) than any other game this season, regardless of how far the team may go in March. Despite the adversity the players faced, they came together for a cause bigger than themselves.

Next: Where is Texas in latest Big 12 rankings?

To be clear, this is a team that still struggles to shoot and gives up a lot of 3-pointers themselves. But they have the athletes, coaching, and defense to be a force in the Big 12, and now have a new motivation to succeed this season. No matter what they do from this point on, the college basketball world has a new sentimental favorite for the 2017-18 season.