Breaking Down the Horns

Let's go position by position to analyze this matchup.

PG: D.J. Augustin-- Alright, if you care at all about college basketball, you know who this guy is. Close to 20 points a game, deadly range, and great passing ability. An underrated part of his game, and of Texas's game in general, is that on offense they virtually never turn the ball over. (This is actually true in reverse for them defensively-- they don't turn people over much. I'd expect a pretty clean game tonight.) He's not an excessively efficient scorer (1.34 points per shot) but Texas's strong offensive rebounding game helps this out somewhat. He's unquestionably a great assist man-- 5.8 assists a game. Texas clearly has the edge here matchup-wise, and I'd expect to see Anthony Goods given Augustin as a defensive assignment.

SG: A.J. Abrams-- For a guy with as pure a stroke as this guy, you would expect him to post better than 1.20 points per shot. That's efficient enough, I guess, but it doesn't really seem to warrant the hype around him. He's not a slasher (60% of his field goal attempts are 3s) which will make him much easier for Stanford to defend than Jerel McNeal. Still, they can't give him open looks. This position is an edge for Texas, but not as much of one as one might think. Johnson, who lacks quickness but is otherwise a good defender, will probably man up with him.

SF/Wing: Damion James-- Justin Mason typically plays most of the minutes as the #3 guard. I don't think he'll be seeing a lot of action today, though, because Texas will have to put bigs on the floor to stop the Lopez twins. James is a dynamic rebounder, averaging a double-double. He's also a knockdown 3-point threat, making it the more odd that he can't shoot free throws. He's just 56% on the season. At 6-7, he'll have a height edge over Fred Washington, meaning that Fred's goal will be to push him to the perimeter rather than allow him to post up and collect misses. Definite edge to Texas here.

PF: Connor Atchley-- A guy who kind of came out of nowhere this year, Atchley is an efficient big who doesn't score or rebound a ton (9 points, 5 rebounds a game) but avoids turning the ball over. He's an excellent spot-up jump shooter, so he can probably pull one Lopez out of the paint if Augustin needs to drive the ball. Nonetheless, he doesn't have remotely close to Brook Lopez's scoring power and ability to take over the game. Huge edge for Stanford here.

C: By committee-- A group of guys including the big, big, big Dexter Pittman, the lanky but undersized Alexis Wangmene, and Gary Johnson (OK, some of these are not literally going to be playing the 5, but it's the best way to conceptualize the group). It's hard to characterize this bunch-- let's just say that they combine for about 10 points and 8 rebounds, which is decent, but are undersized. Big edge to Robin Lopez, who's developed his offensive game to go along with what should be a major defensive edge at this position.

Overall I actually like this game better from a matchup standpoint for Stanford than I did Marquette. Texas plays a lot of zone defense and doesn't force turnovers, meaning that Stanford should be able to get post entries to the Lopezes and rack up offensive rebounds, not to mention move the ball on the perimeter so that they can get open shots there. Texas is good at challenging shots but not particularly great at other aspects of defense, and since Stanford can't shoot anyway, their offense may not be overly affected by this.

On the defensive end, Texas has a lot more spot-up shooting than Marquette does-- Augustin is a great guard in all respects, of course, but Abrams is an outside guy and Justin Mason, their usual third guard, probably won't play as much as usual due to matchup issues. Atchley is hugely outclassed athletically by the Lopezes, so most of their frontcourt production is going to have to come from James. Overall I think the smaller number of threats enables Stanford to create pseudo-double teams (a guard and a Lopez) on inside shots without as much fear of Texas exploiting a mismatch somewhere else. Texas is not an up-tempo team, which really plays into Stanford's hands-- while not as slow as Stanford, Texas was below average in possessions per game this year.

However, let's not kid ourselves. Texas is a very good team and they're playing a semi-home game. The latter, plus the generally higher quality of Texas's players, certainly makes this game no easier to win than the Marquette game and probably a bit harder. Stanford is the underdog here, but not by as much, perhaps, as one might think.

Pac-10 note: Washington State fell yesterday; they were simply outclassed by North Carolina's scoring ability. I'd like to recognize just how good their senior class was this year. That program had nothing-- but nothing-- when Low, Weaver and Cowgill showed up. Their steady improvement and the great coaching of the Bennetts turned that program completely around. My hat is off to them.