Against Baylor on Monday night, Texas' defense struggled to stay in front of the Bears' athletes, especially the guards, who each possess an extremely quick first step. In the no-middle defense that Texas runs, taking away blow-by opportunities off the dribble are crucial. This boils down to lateral quickness, which the Longhorns do not possess in abundance.

Watch below how Baylor point guard James Akinjo takes Timmy Allen off the dribble. He uses a hesitation dribble to flip Allen's footwork, from which he is unable to recover when Akinjo starts his drive to the basket. He gets him just a tad bit out of position, which is enough for Akinjo to take him to the rack without time to re-adjust.

Watch the quick pick and roll action in the following clip. Akinjo, Flo Thamba, and Kendall Brown are all involved in this set. Before this GIF starts, Kendall Brown takes a back screen around the outside of of the ballhandler (Akinjo), taking advantage of Texas' switch-everything defense by forcing a three-man switch at the same time. In this scrum, Thamba sets a screen for Akinjo, who dribbles around the top of the key. This creates a mismatch when Marcus Carr leaves his man for the help defense. Thamba has several inches on Carr and easily dunks it home.

Here's another example of Baylor's taking advantage of Texas' switching to find a mismatch. Akinjo (you're gonna hear this name a lot) uses Thamba's presence in the paint to travel halfway into the lane unabated. With Dylan Disu out of position and only Ramey and Askew left in position to defend, it's an easy feed to Thamba, who lays it in for two.

In this clip, Kendall Brown takes the ball from beyond the arc and blows by Brock Cunningham off the dribble. Cunningham played only five minutes against Baylor, and this is why. He's simply not athletic enough to guard an NBA-caliber player like Brown, who not only hits the shot, but draws the contact and gets to the foul line for an and-one.

Another possession, another blow-by from James Akinjo. There is no dribble trick, no clever ball screen action; Marcus Carr just isn't fast enough to keep up here, and number 11 just does what he does. Two points for the Bears.

Even with the bobble here, James Akinjo is still able to take advantage of the mismatch on the switch, causing Bishop to stumble with his dribble moves, forcing Bishop to reach for the ball, which is unsuccessful. Akinjo has the edge on this possession and is able to put it up without my contention from Bishop after his dribble move. Another two for Baylor.

Adam Flagler here is too quick, even for a great defender in Courtney Ramey. Flagler fakes him out and gets him to bite on the fake before taking two dribbles and setting himself up perfectly for a midrange jumper, which he nails.

Here's another one of Flagler's buckets, just two of his 19 points on the outing. He puts the moves on Timmy Allen here. Allen does a decent job of staying in front of him, but once Flagler picks up his dribble, he's strong enough to finish through Allen's defense.

James Akinjo completely dominated this game. Watch his dribble moves below as he takes on Marcus Carr. He heads to the lane with Carr in front of him before he throws a behind-the-back dribble to throw Carr off balance. Once he has that small opening, it's enough for him to drive to the rack, hesitate, then spin off and hit a little floater over the heads of the defense.