NCAA Basketball: Buy or Sell preseason top 25 teams of 2021-22 after a month
5. Texas Longhorns
There was no bigger team mystery coming into this season than Texas, who brought in a bunch of highly talented transfers to join returning double-digits scoring guards, Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey. On paper, no team had more talent than the Longhorns, which as was they were placed in the top 5 in the polls.
Their first test came on the road at Gonzaga early in the season. Despite the newcomers in the frontcourt, they had no answer for Drew Timme and got blown out early on to the No. 1 team. But that was somewhat expected since the Longhorns were getting acclimated with one another. However, in the only other meaningful game of the season, the Big 12 program also lost on the road at Seton Hall, which is now ranked but isn’t a top 5 team.
So currently, Texas has zero wins against any good teams and is clinging onto the polls thanks to the preseason No. 5 ranking. The issue has been the lack of offense, particularly from Minnesota transfer Marcus Carr. He went from scoring 20 ppg to under 9.0 ppg and hasn’t looked anywhere near himself. That’s been the case for all of the newcomers outside of leading scorer Timmy Allen at 13.8 ppg. There is balance but not to the level Longhorn fans expected.
The hope is that Vanderbilt transfer Dylan Disu can provide some more production from the frontcourt, having missed the first month of the season due to injury. But this is a team without much size and chemistry among the guards. These are veterans that have a great history of production so maybe we have to wait until Big 12 play to see if come together. But right now, I can’t see this team as a real national title contender.