Abilene Christian brought Texas down.
Number 14 of the Wildcats forced 23 turnovers in Texas in a 53-52 victory to take the Longhorns out of the NCAA tournament in the first round for the fourth consecutive time.
Longhorns’ Andrew Jones got it right in three minutes, with 14.7 seconds remaining to put Texas in 52-51. But Abilene Christian’s Joe Pleasant was knocked down in an offensive attempt to rebound 1.2 seconds from the end of Texas, Matt Coleman. Pleasant – a pitcher of 58.5% of free throws – hit both free throws to win.
ACU’s victory means that three teams seeded in 13th place or worse – ACU, Ohio, North Texas and Oral Roberts – won first round games in the 2021 NCAA tournament. The Wildcats advance to play in 11th place at UCLA in the second round on Monday in the Eastern Region.
If Abilene Christian defeats Texas, it would be the first time that four teams ranked 13th or less, each winning a game in the round of 16.
– Chris Fallica (@chrisfallica) March 21, 2021
It is the first NCAA tournament win in the school’s history for Abilene Christian. The only other participation in the school’s NCAA tournaments was in 2019, when it was a seed 15 and lost in the first round.
Texas hasn’t won a tournament game since 2014
The Longhorns are now in a streak of five winless tournaments, despite entering the tournament after winning the big 12 tournament. Texas has been eliminated in the opening round in four consecutive tournament appearances since winning their first round game in 2014.
Two of those losses were painful. Jones’ shot seemed to propel the Longhorns into the second round on Saturday night. And Texas lost in the first round in 2016, when Paul Jesperson hit a half-court move to northern Iowa to upset the Longhorns.
Texas’ last victory in the NCAA tournament came in 2014, when the Longhorns beat Arizona State 87-85. Rick Barnes was the team coach at the time. Current coach Shaka Smart did not win an NCAA tournament game in his time in Austin. Is this satisfactory for a school that has shown this fall with its football team that it is willing to make a prominent coach change when good is not enough?
Abilene Christian is one of five of the 32 teams in the second round of the Texas NCAA tournament. And his players immediately knew how to throw the “horns down” gesture as soon as the game was over.
This was an ugly victory for Abilene Christian
Abilene Christian entered the game forcing more than 20 turnovers per game. And they really needed all those twists in Texas that they forced on Saturday night to get the win. The box score is horrible.
The Wildcats were just 20 of 67 out of the field and a porous 3 of 18 out of three on Saturday night. An underdog usually marks a turn with a few shots from three hot spots. But no ACU player hit more than three and Pleasant and Coryon Mason were the only two double-digit ACU players.
Texas hit 18 out of 40 field shots and hit 35 percent out of three. But the Longhorns made 27 shots less than ACU, and the Wildcats’ two extra shots thanks to all those twists in Texas ended up being the difference.
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