The Texas Longhorns are playing Russian Roulette with this 2024 basketball season and it behooves them to figure out what ails the team when playing at the swankiest new spot in college basketball.

More: Manor's Jamal Shead didn't earn a Texas offer, but 'Houston is home for me' now | Golden

Iowa State will present a solid challenge on Tuesday, but the Horns should be able care of business in the first of four remaining home games. More important is an opportunity to grab an important rung in their climb up the conference ladder. The last thing Texas wants is to be one of several similar teams in the country’s top league battling for one or two spots in next month’s NCAA tournament.

The rebound can start in the 512 at a place that’s the opposite of the previous home base. Moody Center has everything from great restaurants, some suite sweets, a champagne bar that drew compliments from Houston coach Kelvin Sampson and some great music courtesy of DJ Mel and a sweet court.

All that said. the team has had its struggles in Rodney Terry’s first full season as head coach. After going 17-1 in their debut season at the $375 million venue, the Horns have sputtered here of late with three losses in four Big 12 home games, including an inexcusable collapse against Central Florida after leading by 15 points in the second half.

More: Hey Texas, can you spare a golf course? Austin's Lions Municipal depends on answer | Bohls

Unlike the cavernous Erwin Center, which rarely took on the look of a beehive, the Mood’s intimate layout has helped provide one of the best home atmospheres in the country even if the team hasn’t delivered lately.

Thankfully, the Horns are solid road warriors, becoming the league's only team with three road wins after Saturday’s 77-66 win over TCU that kept their postseason hopes alive. That gladiatorial spirit has served them well away from home, but they must bring those same kind of results to their Colosseum lest they will be hosting postseason games (gulp, NIT) at Moody for a fan base that will be in no mood to watch meaningless hoops.

“We've got to obviously do our point in terms of coming in and compete at a very high level and put ourselves in position to try to win these highly competitive games in the Big 12,” Terry said.  “The thing I've tried to echo to our guys is that in order to be consistent in life, you’ve got to do you know what you do every day, you know, and you have to be really big into your routine, and, more importantly, really hone in on the details. You’ve got to be sharp in everything we do.”

More: Former Texas player Richard Hightower rising up the NFL coaching ranks at Shrine Bowl

At this point, every win counts

Must-win Tuesday: The Iowa State game is a must win for Texas because the Big 12 remains the toughest league in America and teams that don’t hold serve at the house will eventually find themselves on the outside looking in.

The Cyclones came within an eyelash of winning at Baylor Saturday, but a last-second 3-point bank shot was overturned because it came after the buzzer.

Texas is in pretty good shape. The Horns are ranked 26th on KenPom.com but six Big 12 teams are ahead of them, including the Cyclones, who are 15th. ESPN Bracketology has the Horns as a No. 9 seed who would open up against No.8 Michigan State in the East Region in Brooklyn.

If Texas can even up its league record and add to the momentum from the big TCU win, there’s plenty of time improve that seeding and avoid that NCAA bubble.

Texas women embrace Schaefer's challenge

On the rise: Vic Schaefer doesn’t make excuses. He prefers to find solutions.

One week after the Texas women’s basketball coach struggled to make sense of how the Horns could play so poorly defensively in a 91-87 home loss to Oklahoma, he vowed to get back to work and produce a better product on the court.

More: Three days after beating Baylor, Texas takes out No. 2 Kansas State to narrow Big 12 race

“(Schaefer) has challenged us every day to prove we are tough,” forward Aaliyah Moore said after Sunday’s huge win over Kansas State.

Moore & Co. have gotten the message and I’m sure it came after some gut-burning practices. The Horns improved to 21-3 overall and 8-3 in the Big 12 — now two games behind first-place Oklahoma in the loss column —  and are back in the top-10, five spots up from No. 12, after a road win over No. 13 Baylor and Sunday’s defensive stopper at Moody.

Schaefer reads the daily paper and is probably up on what was being said about his team on social media. It’s part of what makes him and his team a fun watch. They wear their emotions on their collective sleeve and aren’t afraid to show joy and pain, whichever comes. What we’ve witnessed over these last two games was a call to action and a terrific response from a tough-minded bunch.

“All they’re doing is proving that they’re good enough,” Schaefer told reporters Sunday. “We’ve got to acknowledge that. No excuses. Be accountable. We’ve got a great opportunity in front of us.”

They will a great chance to creep ever closer to the top of the standings with a road wins over TCU and Houston —  teams with sub .500 records in the league — before a Feb. 17 home game against fifth-place Iowa State. They’re already getting early 2-seed consideration on Charlie Creme’s ESPN bracketology.

Short rotation is getting it done

While Schaefer has had deeper teams, he has masterfully dispatched his chess pieces in a season where the Horns are missing star point guard Rori Harmon.

While starters Madison Booker — the best freshman in America —  Taylor Jones, Shay Holle, Aaliyah Moore and Shaylee Gonzales are getting most of the press clippings, the Longhorns are stalking a Big 12 title and No. 1 seed because Schaefer is getting contributions from all over.

Notice that OG Deyona Gaston is slowly starting to provide some needed for Moore and Jones inside while sophomore guard Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda has made some big shots lately. The rotation is actually shorter than it was three weeks ago because Schaefer has found some consistency of late in these smaller numbers.

The ghost of Oklahoma is behind them now and the Horns could make some real noise over these next two weeks.

Remembering Carl the great

RIP, Carl Weathers: Years before he dazzled on the screen as Rocky Balboa’s chief-rival-later-turned-best-friend Apollo Creed in the iconic boxing movie series, Carl Weathers was a defensive back for Don Coryell’s San Diego State team that went 11-0 in 1969 before he played eight games for the NFL’s Oakland Raiders in 1970 and 1971.

Weathers died in his sleep on Thursday at age 76, bringing to a close a long distinguished career that spanned over six decades and included appearances in 75 films and movies.

None were bigger than his larger-than-life Creed character, a great satirical takeoff on the legendary Muhammad Ali. Rocky never would have become a cultural phenomenon had it not been for the perfect antagonist played by Weathers.

"I never could have accomplished what we did with Rocky without him,” an emotional Stallone said in a social media video post. “He was absolutely brilliant. His voice, his size, his power, his athletic ability, but more importantly, his heart, his soul. It's a horrible loss."

I’ll never forget that night in 1985 when my brothers Steve and Joe Prud’homme had to physically restrain me from leaving the theater in Tyler after Ivan Drago killed Apollo in "Rocky IV." I had always been a Creed fan. He reminded me of Ali with his good looks, imperviousness to a booing crowd and that unmistakeable charisma. He was a terrific heel because there was a humanity smoldering underneath all that bravado, as evidenced by his reluctance to continue to pound a bloodied and battered Balboa late in the first fight.

It crushed me to see the character killed, especially after the iconic ring entrance with the Godfather of Soul James Brown serving as his Vegas hype man. I brooded through the rest of the movie and was lukewarm happy when Rock knocked out the Russian at the end. It was a crusher to someone who actually cheered for Creed in the first Rocky movie. I count Rocky III as my favorite. The two rivals teaming up to take down Mr. T’s wrecking machine Clubber Lang was just perfect cinema.

Weathers will be missed. He made Creed iconic. Sure, he was great in "Action Jackson," "Predator" and, later, "Happy Gilmore," but I’ll always remember him as the Dancing Destroyer, the Master of Disaster, the King of Sting and the Count of Monte Fisto.

Rest well, Mr. Weathers.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas basketball has to reverse home losing trend to make NCAAs