Christian Bishop helps muscle Texas into Big 12 title game

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI – Christian Bishop must want to make his homecoming last as long as possible.

Bishop, who hails from Lee’s Summit on the southern edge of Kansas City, helped muscle Texas into Saturday’s Big 12 championship game with a 66-60 win over TCU in a Big 12 semifinal Friday at T-Mobile Center. With the victory, Texas (25-8) will face regular-season champion Kansas for the tournament title Saturday at 5 p.m.

Bishop scored 15 points on a variety of thunderous dunks and gritty putbacks before about 20 of his friends and family. Along with his tag-team partner up front in Dylan Disu, Bishop proved too much for a TCU team that suddenly seemed to miss big man Eddie Lampkin Jr., who recently left the team in controversial fashion.

“You just always got to put on for the city whenever you're in town, so that’s what I was trying to do whenever I got out there,” Bishop said with a grin.

But, Christian, is it the burnt ends, pulled pork macaroni and cheese or some of the other barbeque delicacies that this no-nonsense Midwest city is proud of?

“It ain’t the food, man,” he said. “It’s all me.”

Bishop, Disu, Donovan Mitchell and Brock Cunningham – the four forwards in the rotation with starter Timmy Allen sidelined for a second straight game with a leg injury – certainly had it cooking all night. That quartet of players combined for 40 points on a cumulative 15-of-21 shooting.

Disu matched Bishop for team-high honors with 15 points and added eight rebounds while helping Texas beat TCU on the boards. The Longhorns needed that muscle up front, since the starting guard trio of Marcus Carr, Jabari Rice and Tyrese Hunter combined for just 22 points.

But the production from the front court was also part of interim head coach Rodney Terry’s plan, said Disu.

“Coach talked to us before the game and said we would have a heavy dose of putting the ball inside,” Disu said. “And he told us that he trusted us and believed in us to just take our time and score, and so that's exactly what we did.”

Disu, who scored in double figures in both regular-season matchups with TCU, keyed the Longhorns’ dominance in the paint early in the game. He had 12 points on 6-of-7 shooting before the break and helped Texas outrebound the Frogs 40-38.

“And then, when I got in foul trouble, CB (Bishop) went in and picked up right where I left off and dominated,” Disu said.

More:As Texas, OU get close to departure, Big 12 commissioner says, 'We're in a great place'

Board work helps Longhorns fend off Frogs

The Horns’ performance on the boards contrasted sharply with their last meeting with TCU (21-12), when the Frogs pounded Texas on the glass 46-28 in a 75-73 win March 1 in Fort Worth.

TCU coach Jamie Dixon seemed almost puzzled by the Longhorns’ edge on the glass, which he said was one of the critical factors in the game that the Horned Frogs never led.

“I didn’t see that coming,” he said. “We got more aggressive down the stretch, but our execution wasn’t good enough to come back from an 8-point deficit (at halftime). We had to outrebound them, and we didn’t.”

By negating TCU on the boards and limiting the Big 12’s most dynamic transition game to just two fast-break points, the Longhorns overcame the absence of Allen as well as some off games from their leading scorers. Rice struggled for the second consecutive game while starting in place of Allen and has now made just six of 25 shots in his two games at the Big 12 tournament. Carr remains mired in a scoring slump after scoring 10 points on 3-of-15 shooting.

More:What's at stake in this Big 12 men's basketball tournament for every conference team

But Terry, who seems to strengthen his case to remove the interim tag with each victory, says his team’s ability win in different ways bodes well as the NCAA Tournament approaches. Carr had five steals and stellar on-ball defense against TCU star Mike Miles while playing a team-high 37 minutes, and Rice pulled down seven rebounds.

“They're big-time, prime-time players,” Terry said. “I thought, again, they gave us great leadership down the stretch. Even though they weren't scoring it, they were guarding and really just following the game plan offensively and defensively. They’ll shoot the ball much better than what they have shot to this point right now, and hopefully they'll start tomorrow night.”

More:Texas men hope to translate regular-season success into postseason tournament wins

Up next? Rock chalk Jayhawk

The semifinal between Texas and TCU may have been anticlimactic for many of the fans that swarmed the restaurants and shops of Kansas City’s Power and Light District throughout the week. The Big 12 tournament has been on this border town between Kansas and Missouri for more than two decades, and it serves as an annual rendezvous for hoops fans from throughout the Midwest. Saturday’s first semifinal between Kansas and Iowa State featured the tournament’s two most rabid fanbases and a battle between historical conference rivals separated by about four hours of prairie.

In comparison, the Lone Star State rivalry between Texas and TCU usually ends with the football season. There may not have been many fans presenting their purple or bearing burnt orange, but they knew the stakes. While TCU looks like a No. 4 or No. 5 seed, Texas seems almost locked in as a No. 2 seed for the upcoming NCAA tournament. However, a tournament championship may just allow the Longhorns to claim their second Big 12 tournament title in three years leapfrog their way into a No. 1 seed.

And it will also give Bishop some bragging rights back in Lee’s Summit, where the Jayhawks rule the roost of basketball fandom.

“You know, they're a really well-coached team, a lot of good players, and so it's always a great opportunity to play against a team like that,” he said. “That’s why I came to Texas in the first place, to have an opportunity like that.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Christian Bishop helps muscle Texas past TCU, into the Big 12 title game