Tonight, Texas takes on Houston Christian, the artist formerly known as Houston Baptist, at 8pm tonight on the Longhorn Network. Before we start any kind of analysis on the game, however, we need to recognize the loss of their star guard, Darius Lee, who was murdered in his hometown of Harlem this summer. Lee, who was 21 at the time of his passing, was the statistical leader for the Huskies in scoring and in rebounding (18.1 points, 8.3 rebounds).

All of that is secondary to his off-the-court reputation: "My heart breaks for his mom, his sister and his entire family, and for our basketball team... As great of a basketball player as he was, he was an even better person," said his coach, Ron Cottrell (quote courtesy of ESPN). Sometimes, things are bigger than basketball; this is one of those times. Hopefully, he is honored at the game tonight.

The Huskies are an uptempo team who finished 39th in overall pace last season, and also run a similar defense to UTEP, which hinges on ball pressure. The problem with running this kind of pace offensively is that it often tires out players, making their defense somewhat ineffective: they scored 75.5 points per game, which ranked 56th in the nation, but they also gave up 76.6 points per game, which ranked them 330th. After finishing 11-18 overall and 6-8 in the Southland Conference, it's obvious that their defense is a glaring issue. They gave up 77 points in their season-opening loss to Florida International, though they scored 66 themselves behind a stellar performance from guard Brycen Long, who had 31 on 9/12 from deep.

Here's their starting lineup:

Texas themselves played a bit more uptempo, though they're still 253rd in the nation in possessions per game. Now, this is skewed due to the amount of offensive rebounds they gave up to UTEP, but still, seeing Texas run in transition against the Miners was indicative of how they can play that style.

The stars of the show for the Longhorns last game were their two transfer guards, Tyrese Hunter and Sir'Jabari Rice, who combined for 32 points on 10/14, 11 rebounds, and three assists. Hunter had 18 of those points, most of which were on drives to the basket where he'd either finish at the rim or pull up from mid-range. He had the defense completely stumped on how to stop him due to his foot speed and vision. He was making things happen all across the court, even without the ball, on cuts to the rim.

Here's the Longhorns' starting lineup.

Keys to the game:

• Rebounding.

UTEP killed Texas on the glass in game one, out-rebounding them on the offensive end 12-5 and outscoring them in second-chance points 17-4. Houston Christian has a bit of size with Bonke Maring, who is 6'10, but outside of that, they only have one player above 6'7. This should be a redemption game for the Longhorns when it comes to the boards. Hopefully for their sake, their leading rebounders won't be their guards this time around. The bigs need to come through here and show that they can get boards as well, considering Texas' top two rebounders were Hunter and Rice.

• Turnovers.

Texas turned the ball over 15 times against UTEP, four of which were on Tyrese Hunter in the first half, the only real flaw in his otherwise outstanding performance. Texas cleaned it up majorly in the second half, only turning it over five times, three of which were in the last few minutes when the game was essentially sealed. Hunter is a scorer, but also a distributor, so it'll be interesting to see if another ball-pressure defense gets to him this time around. It can't be denied that there is a major talent gap between UTEP and HCU, so it should give Hunter some more confidence moving the ball around and gaining some confidence before the Gonzaga game.

• Pace.

As I mentioned earlier, HCU likes to play uptempo, high-paced basketball that nets a lot of points, but also tires out their defenders. It will be interesting to see how Beard handles this – will Texas play HCU's game and push the pace as well? Or will they try to muddy it up and play the rock-fight style we're used to seeing out of them? Either way, Texas shouldn't have trouble with this matchup, winning last year's contest 92-48. It should be a game they coast to victory in, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Beard try a few different things.

Record against the spread: 0-1

Prediction: Texas -37

Over 141