Line Texas -28.5, O/U 130.5

To all of you guys joining me after the West Virginia game - sorry.

Texas basketball (no. 8, 3-1) takes on San Jose State (1-2) tonight at 5PM on the Longhorn Network as part of the Abe Lemons Classic.

First-year HC Tim Miles and his San Jose State Spartans have one win and two losses on the year, with their lone victory coming against CS-Fullerton, 78-76. They lost their next two to Stanford (76-62) and to Cal-Baptist (67-66).

Last year, the Spartans finished last place in the Mountain West, going 5-16 overall including 2-12 in conference play in what would be the last season for coach Jean Prioleau, who never went better than 7-24 in any season at SJSU. In total, their program has been struggling for years now, but this influx of transfers seem like they could possibly turn the tide (six three-star transfers from various P6 schools). Still, right now, they're not at Texas' level, and the Longhorns should cruise today.

F Omari Moore leads the Spartans in scoring with 14.5 PPG, but they rank 253rd in the nation in team PPG at just 68.7. Despite this, they shoot threes at a high clip, averaging 40.6% per game.

A note about their starters: Simmons starts, but is eighth in the team in minutes, and they use an eight-man rotation for the most part. F Tibet Goerner plays 31 MPG and averages 11 PPG, 4 RPG, 1.5 APG, and 1 SPG off the bench. G Alvaro Cardenas-Torre plays 25.3 MPG and 7.7 PPG, 2.3 RPG, and 3.3 APG.

For the Longhorns, look for Tre Mitchell to make his return to the starting lineup, as he got his first start last game against Northern Colorado. The starting lineup should look like this.

I brought up the struggles with the Texas offense on my last episode of Keep Austin Beard with Ari Temkin. Take out that HBU 92-point game, and their offense is averaging 68 PPG, which would rank them behind the Spartans who are, as I mentioned previously, averaging 68.7 PPG. Lots of possessions involve their guards sort of aimlessly driving to the rack, dribbling around, finding nothing, then returning back to the top of the key with 12 less seconds on the shot clock and no new prospects for a shot. Either that, or they kick out to a guy that isn't a great three-point shooter.

Texas is not a good three-point shooting team at this juncture. 4/18 against Northern Colorado will tell you that. The threes were not falling down the stretch, and as Ari mentioned in our show, a couple of those threes were hit in garbage time. The shooting and guard play have to improve before conference play, and ideally, before they take on Seton Hall on Dec 9th.

The defense has been hit or miss. They're giving up a lot of shots near the basket, which is an indication of the problem with this team that was most prominently projected coming into the year: lack of a post presence. There is no Jericho Sims on this team to clog the paint and make it difficult to score. I think Dylan Disu's return will make a big difference there (he should be back on the court in the next couple of weeks; he's been cleared for contact in practice, but they're taking it slow, as they should. They've been vague about it in media availabilities).

We'll see if they can get it going on offense today.

@KeenanWomack_OB