Texas coach Steve Sarkisian’s dice roll worked. He bet the Longhorns’ receiving corps would be fine against Vanderbilt without the injured Isaiah Bond, and it was.

Granted, it wasn’t all that risky considering the receivers have strong depth. Still, no coach wants to go on an SEC road trip and leave his best receiver at home.

Isaiah Bond did not travel last weekend to stay in Austin and get ready for a healthy return against Florida on Nov. 9. Without Bond, the Horns got a one-handed touchdown catch from Matthew Golden and two scoring grabs from DeAndre Moore Jr.

“Hey, I.B. is a special player when he’s healthy,” Sarkisian said. “And I think giving him that time was good for him. I know he pushed through as well as he could in the Georgia game. And I just felt like, if I could give him three weeks to get healthy for the Florida game, that would be a heck of a lot better than two. So we went with it, and it worked out in our favor.”

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Sarkisian has noted several times that Bond has “elite” speed. Bum ankles tend to slow everybody down. Bond suffered the injury against Oklahoma when he was thrown to the ground by an OU defender. He had two catches for 11 yards and one touchdown against Georgia.

Texas coaches had a momentary scare during warm-ups against Vanderbilt. Receiver Ryan Wingo accidentally collided with a Vandy staffer on the field, and both went to the ground. Wingo was seen massaging his left knee, according to a report from Lone Star Live.

“It’s unfortunate, he had a little issue in pre-game,” Sarkisian said. “There was a little collision with one of their guys that kind of nicked him up a little bit, nothing serious, but I think affected him a little bit.”

Even Sarkisian admitted, “I was the one saying, ‘What happened?’” Wingo had three catches on five targets for 20 yards against the Commodores.

But the Horns got a tremendous boost early from Golden, who reeled in a 3-yard touchdown catch with his right arm early in the game. Moore followed with touchdown catches from 27 and 25 yards out.

Silas Bolden and Amari Niblack, who haven’t been used on offense much lately, both got into the mix and made solid contributions.

There’s more dry powder in the stockroom, too. The Horns can still activate sophomore Johntay Cook II, redshirt freshman Ryan Niblett and freshman Parker Livingstone.

“It’s been a deep group for us that has gotten tested some here recently,” Sarkisian said. “It'll be critical to get to get Isaiah back kind of healthy. It’ll be critical to get Johntay back going. So we need all those guys.

“Like I said, we’re only eight games into this thing. We got a long way to go. So to get all those guys back into the fold, I think would be good for us.”