The Texas Tech Red Raiders and Texas Longhorns will lock horns on Wednesday night in front of a raucous Austin crowd, and by raucous, I mean just as wild as it was last year when Texas Tech went to Austin, and by that I mean pretty much empty.

Ryan Mainville of The Daily Toreador reported yesterday that officials in Austin had scaled back the attendance policies heading into the game against Texas Tech amidst a growing number of COVID-19 cases in Big 12 programs.

I'm mostly joking about this being usual for Texas to not have any fans, though their home average ranked 5th in the Big 12 last season with just over 9,000 fans per home game compared to the 14,000 that Texas Tech averaged. This year, Texas Tech has been operating at a 25 percent capacity, which has been a definite change of pace for the Red Raiders.

Last year, the crowd in Austin seemed pro-Red Raider at times during a victory for Texas Tech, which could be part of the reason for the cutback in attendance. Surely not though, right?

Here's the Longhorns arena just before tip-off last season:

As much as we can joke about the Longhorns caring more about the current offseason of football than the basketball team, Shaka Smart has his team playing at a really high level. It's difficult to not respect the team going into tonight's matchup.

The roster is full of guys who have battled adversity and stuck it out in the program. It's also sprinkled with fresh new talent. Courtney Ramey, Matt Coleman and Andrew Jones are three guards with extensive Big 12 experience.

Ramey is the sharpshooter of the bunch; Coleman can slash with the best of them; and Jones is a scorer, too. Jones also might be the best story in the Big 12, surviving and battling back from cancer while on the Longhorns roster to return to the best Texas team of the last decade.

Those guards are bolstered by three big men in Greg Brown, Kai Jones and Jericho Sims. The trio averages 27 points and 20 boards a game along with a solid interior presence defensively, especially from Brown.

Texas has not lost since December 6th against Villanova and is undefeated against Big 12 teams having beaten both Kansas and West Virginia so far.

Tip-off is tonight at 8 p.m.

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