HOUSTON -- Calling the Lopez twins. You there? Hellooooo ...?
Did anyone see them in the second half against Texas on Friday night? Seven-footers, curly hair and, you know, twins and all?
|
|
| Brook Lopez does score 11 in the second half, but gets shut down on the boards. (Getty Images) |
Stanford has not one but two giants on its roster. They did some damage to Texas in the so-far-predictable South Region, yet at times against what should have been a much smaller Longhorns inside presence they were as hard to locate as Nate Newton's belly button.
If there was any game Brook and Robin should have dominated, it was this one, won easily by Texas 82-62. The big men for the Longhorns were ripe to be dunked on, yet instead of a crater, the Lopez twins left a respectable but unimpressive crack.
You knew the far quicker and athletic guards of Texas would dominate Stanford's, and they did. D.J. Augustin had a team-high 21 points and seven assists. None of the Cardinal guards even came close to his level of play.
"We just wanted to be aggressive on offense," said the Texas guard, who is the most boring quote in the tournament.
If you performed a chest X-ray on Augustin, instead of a heart, you'd see a crossbow and telescopic site.
In this game, the team with the better perimeter players won. It was almost that simple.
Almost.
The real story of the game -- one that some people probably didn't even notice -- is that for significant chunks of the contest, 6-7 Texas forward Damion James guarded one of the Lopez brothers, often Robin.
James gave up five inches and anywhere from 25 to 30 pounds and yet he was still able to guard them effectively. He was that much stronger.
Robin had difficulty guarding the quicker James. He picked up his third foul while trying to do so early in the second half.
