Awaiting No. 4 Texas (10-1, 4-0) after a thrilling road win at No. 13 West Virginia is a home matchup Wednesday night against No. 15 Texas Tech (10-3, 3-2), a team that’s suddenly found some excellent form on offense. Life in the Big 12.

Unfortunately, life in college basketball currently includes a daily reminder about the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this morning, a report stated this week’s No. 2 Baylor vs. No. 13 West Virginia game would be cancelled due to WVU having COVID-19 protocol issues inside its program. Obviously, that’s particularly noteworthy for Texas because it just played in Morgantown, West Virginia Saturday.“

That's the scary thing about this is… every game, the day before the game, or the day of the game we get a text, and hopefully that text says everyone was clear. Everyone was negative on the test. We're good to go. And we've got a couple of texts that didn't say that. And those are games earlier this season that were canceled. But just because you get that text, and just because five minutes before the game, ‘Okay, we get to go do this we get to go play.’ That doesn't guarantee that everything is 100% safe,” responded Smart about the report of West Virginia having COVID-19 protocol issues inside its program. “And that's the complexity of this whole time period and the existential question of should we be doing a lot of the things that we're doing, which I'm not weighing in on that. I'm just saying. It's complicated.

"And so, to answer your question when something like that happens the medical people communicate with each other. You know the first thing they do is they look at close contacts. The way that's defined. And they look and see what close contacts occurred. Everyone in the big 12 is using this technology KINEXON, which I'm sure you've heard of that kind of tracks how many minutes and seconds you're within six feet of the other person. So, everyone in their group, everyone in our group had those connects on devices on so that kind of gives you some feedback on how close, how much time people are in close contact.”

Given the delicate nature COVID-19 team news is treated, Smart didn’t provide many specifics, but it obviously raises the anxiety level some. Both programs’ medical staffs communicate about the specific protocol issues and track all the close contacts to determine if there’s anything they need to pay especially close attention to or change moving forward.

--- As for Texas Tech, and will dive into it more before Wednesday’s game, I think this could be UT’s toughest matchup in terms of personnel. As Smart noted on today’s Zoom conference, the Red Raiders are very good at trying to eliminate the middle and the ball getting into the paint on offense. But while Chris Beard is known for his defense, Texas Tech’s offense has really caught fire of late.“

They have a really unique team from a standpoint of personnel and different lineups that they can put in the game,” said Smart before adding Texas Tech basically plays a bunch of big guards with Mac McClung and big Marcus Santos-Silva.

Smart knows Texas will need to defend the ball better against Texas Tech, and against anyone moving forward. The Longhorns were much better on defense the second half than the first half at West Virginia, and played uneven defensive halves against Iowa State too...

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