The Texas Longhorns men’s basketball team wrapped the regular season with a huge win over Oklahoma to earn its spot as The Dallas Express‘ Team of the Week.
Texas was dominant on Saturday in its final regular season game as a member of the Big 12 conference. Texas is heading to the SEC next season along with Oklahoma. Saturday’s impressive 94-80 win over the Sooners sends the Longhorns to the Big 12 Championship, with a match against Kansas State scheduled for Wednesday. Texas locked up the seven-seed with the win and earned a first-round bye.
The Longhorns got strong performances from several stars, including a career performance from Tyrese Hunter, who put up 30 points on 9-of-13 shooting. Dylan Disu, who played after a knee injury last Monday, scored 16 points to help propel the Longhorns to the win.
“First of all, it’s March, you got to come up with wins in March,” Hunter said postgame.
Hunter was asked if he discussed staying in and trying to hit his career numbers with coaches. Hunter said his coaches didn’t bring it up. “I’m getting 30,” he said.
Dillon Mitchell scored 14 points, and Max Abmas added 11 for Texas. Abmas was recently named DX‘s Player of the Week.
Longhorns head coach Rodney Terry said the energy at Moody Center helped keep the Longhorns exhilarated throughout the game and added to the adrenaline of the match.
“We were really just trying to go at it hard ourselves,” Terry said. “The hardest thing to do in this league is to try and go five-on-five against the defenses you face in this league every night. Tyrese set the tone. Everybody is going to talk about his 30 points, but he took the initiative, he told the guys, ‘I’ve got to have a defensive mindset.’ When he has that kind of mindset, he has had great scoring nights.”
The Big 12 Tournament opens Tuesday, March 12. Both Oklahoma and Texas begin their journeys on Wednesday, March 13. Oklahoma will face TCU at 2 p.m. CT, while Texas will meet Kansas State at 6 p.m. CT. The winner of the TCU-Oklahoma game will face No.1 seed Houston on Thursday.
