Texas Basketball 2022-23

[Cairn Horn88 8262]

1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Woof, crowd might suck

Advantage Bears

[Hookem2147 21207]

28 minutes ago, HookEm said:

But anyone arguing he is up to par with Beard isn't worth arguing with.

This isn't directed specifically at you, but I haven't seen one person argue that Terry is just as good as Beard yet everyday on this board people act like this is actually a thing and start an argument about it with.....no one.

Now, I have seen people argue that this team could still win games in the tournament despite having Terry instead of Beard because of a variety of other factors, which is a separate argument in itself. Every year great coaches get knocked out early in the tournament before they should and dudes who are the definition of mediocre somehow find themselves coaching on the second weekend. It's why we call it March Madness.

 

Edited January 30, 2023 by Hookem2147

[HookEm 2467]

2 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

This isn't directed specifically at you, but I haven't seen one person argue that Terry is just as good as Beard yet everyday on this board people act like this is actually a thing and start an argument about it with.....no one.

This is exactly my point. I don't think this is a divisive issue among anyone that even casually follows the program.  

That said, I was talking with some non-Longhorn family members this weekend and they were like "Are you guys hiring Terry?".  I told them "I doubt it".  And they were surprised.  "But he is doing so well!!!!"

I'm sure everyone has friends and co-workers like this.  Can we all just agree that these people are clueless and don't represent the people on this board?

[Hookem2147 21207]

3 minutes ago, HookEm said:

This is exactly my point. I don't think this is a divisive issue among anyone that even casually follows the program.  

That said, I was talking with some non-Longhorn family members this weekend and they were like "Are you guys hiring Terry?".  I told them "I doubt it".  And they were surprised.  "But he is doing so well!!!!"

I'm sure everyone has friends and co-workers like this.  Can we all just agree that these people are clueless and don't represent the people on this board?

It will work itself out. What a great first-world problem it would be to have Terry lead us to the elite 8 and performed well enough for there to be a discussion.

Everything he does between now and March is just a build up to what actually matters. He could win the Big 12 regular season title and if he bows out the first weekend of the tournament he isn't even going to be seriously considered.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Hookem2147

[shadow_operative 15932]

10 minutes ago, HookEm said:

This is exactly my point. I don't think this is a divisive issue among anyone that even casually follows the program.  

nobody has said that terry is as good as beard, but plenty of people here (prior to the tennessee game) have been vehemently and even angrily insistent that the team has been no worse under terry than they were beard, and that our ceiling/goals have not changed now that RT is in charge. and that if we have been maybe slightly poorer under RT it's only because the Big XII is so tough. those people have been quieter since tennessee, but their loud, annoying, incessant chastising towards every post/poster who believes the above was omnipresent for the last couple of weeks, at least. so yeah, it's been a pretty divisive topic.

Edited January 30, 2023 by shadow_operative

[shadow_operative 15932]

for example @Hookem2147 shouted me down and claimed i was using "shock value" when i said that shaka smart is a better coach than rodney terry, which he is. we can't even have an actual conversation about this team's newly lowered ceiling because of the hostile and bombastic responses to all suggestions that this team isn't as good as it was under beard and now has a lower ceiling. it's pretty stupid.

how anyone can fail to see the difference in this team under beard vs this team under rodney is beyond me. that these people have been so argumentative and belligerent about this fact is just inexplicable. 

Edited January 30, 2023 by shadow_operative

[Hookem2147 21207]

6 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

for example @Hookem2147 shouted me down and claimed i was using "shock value" when i said that shaka smart is a better coach than rodney terry, which he is. we can't even have an actual conversation about this team's newly lowered ceiling because of the hostile and bombastic responses to all suggestions that this team isn't as good as it was under beard and now has a lower ceiling. it's pretty stupid.

how anyone can fail to see the difference in this team under beard vs this team under rodney is beyond me. that these people have been so argumentative and belligerent about this fact is just inexplicable. 

I have no desire to get into a back and forth on this topic. I would sure hope that the head coach at Marquette has more skins on the wall than an assistant coach at Texas. Rodney Terry is a better coach than an assistant at Houston Christian if that’s the scale of the comparison game we want to play.

No one gives a rat ass about Shaka Smart anymore. He sucks and isn’t my measuring stick for anything remotely related to being a basketball coach. Shaka’s win % at Texas was a whopping 2% better than Terry’s win % at Fresno flipping State so I guess we should give Shaka props on that.

[shadow_operative 15932]

Just now, Hookem2147 said:

I have no desire to get into a back and forth on this topic. I would sure hope that the head coach at Marquette has more skins on the wall than an assistant coach at Texas.

really? two or three days ago you were completely incredulous that i would make such an assertion, denounced said assertion, and claimed that i used it for shock value. now today you're flippantly on the exact opposite side of that very argument. okie dokie.

[HookEm 2467]

39 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

plenty of people here (prior to the tennessee game) have been vehemently and even angrily insistent that the team has been no worse under terry than they were beard

If that is the case I haven't seen it. Maybe I'm just not sensitized to it. The board has seemed pretty aligned to me, which is why it always surprises me when you make these very aggressive counter arguments. I'm just not sure who you are arguing with.

Oh well, I agree it will work itself out within 2 months.

[Fletch 5800]

11 hours ago, Hookem2147 said:

I have no desire to get into a back and forth on this topic. I would sure hope that the head coach at Marquette has more skins on the wall than an assistant coach at Texas. Rodney Terry is a better coach than an assistant at Houston Christian if that’s the scale of the comparison game we want to play.

No one gives a rat ass about Shaka Smart anymore. He sucks and isn’t my measuring stick for anything remotely related to being a basketball coach. Shaka’s win % at Texas was a whopping 2% better than Terry’s win % at Fresno flipping State so I guess we should give Shaka props on that.

 

11 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

really? two or three days ago you were completely incredulous that i would make such an assertion, denounced said assertion, and claimed that i used it for shock value. now today you're flippantly on the exact opposite side of that very argument. okie dokie.

Can you two just fuck already?

[South Austin 52463]

1 hour ago, Fletch said:

Can you two just fuck already again?

Fixed.

[Armybrat 40832]

RIP Al Almanza 86

[ztejas 43418]

34 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

RIP Al Almanza 86

Damn - he was a good one. Regular fixture at my church growing up and has a grandkid my age. 

[Js1 85307]

On 1/12/2023 at 8:22 AM, Js1 said:

We have to almost start 7-2 or 8-1 because our toughest road games are in the back half, plus hosting Kansas and ISU. 

 

Hey good job on 7-2, Texas! 

[hornbri 1396]

1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Hey good job on 7-2, Texas! 

And in first place!

Basketball is fun.

[Valmy77 13226]

Logic would suggest we come back from this road trip 7-4 but it would be much cooler if we could come back 8-3 or 9-2.

[Underdog 28611]

1 hour ago, hornbri said:

Basketball is fun.

 

[Valmy77 13226]

First place baby! Kick K State while they are down!

[shadow_operative 15932]

some guy on reddit does a simulation of the ncaa tourney each time lunardi releases his bracketology, and his latest simulation is this board's wet dream:

•1 seed Tennessee loses 65-48 to 8 seed Clemson

•3 seed Marquette loses 85-77 to 14 seed Princeton

•3 seed Texas wins a nail biter 82-79 over E Washington before easily handling Maryland, UVA, and ISU on our way to the Final Four, where we lose a close battle with Purdue (again). plenty of other crazy shit in there too:

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by shadow_operative

[Js1 85307]

Lol 3 B1G teams in the final four? They’ve only had 6 combined semi finalists in the last 10 years. Underachieving conference 

Yes I know it’s a simulation. I wouldn’t bet on that. I’d be more surprised if they had a single team go past the Sweet 16

[Pancho 44757]

Indiana will be nowhere close to a 5 seed

[ztejas 43418]

12 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Indiana will be nowhere close to a 5 seed

They'll also be nowhere close to the national championship game. 

[Rockethorn1978 6077]

That guys simulation is terrible. 

[Hookem2147 21207]

Really, really, really, really good article from The Athletic:

Spoiler

The phone rang on the nightstand next to Marcus Carr’s bed. He ignored it. It was nearing 8:30 in the morning, hours before he had anywhere to be. It rang again. He ignored it again. Then came the buzz of a text message. Finally, more out of annoyance than curiosity, Carr glanced at the screen and read a message from his personal trainer back home in Toronto. “Call me.’’ Fully awake and now aware, Carr returned the call. As his trainer unspooled the news he needed to share, Carr started screaming to his roommates/teammates, Timmy Allen and Christian Bishop. “I just hear him yelling, ‘Get up. Wake up. You gotta get up,’’’ Allen says. That’s how Dec. 12, the day grad student Brock Cunningham now refers to as the “longest Monday,’’ began for the Texas men’s basketball team.

It is now more than six Mondays later. Brock Cunningham, Carr, Allen, Bishop, Sir’Jabari Rice, Dylan Disu and Tyrese Hunter are seated at a round table in a private room at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Knoxville, Tenn. It is the night before Texas’ showdown against Tennessee in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, and the Longhorns, who always eat well on the road, are enjoying an especially sweet dining treat. Rice swears his strip steak is still sizzling on Ruth’s Chris famous hot plates.

The next day, Tennessee will throw a bucket of cold water on the Longhorns’ fun, with a dominating 11-point win. But now, blissfully unaware of what is to come, the players and staff enjoy their Friday night meal and each other’s company, their chatter and laughter filling the room. At this particular table, the players skip around all sorts of random topics. There is a conversation about eating habits. Somehow Rice can eat hot chips before tipoff, while Arterio Morris practically subsists on Gushers. “I’m over here with like five grapes,’’ Carr says. They debate who on the team has the best one-footed leap. Freshman Dillon Mitchell is the consensus. And they resume what is clearly an age-old argument as to who is at fault for a fender-bender involving Rice and Hunter. Rice, who backed into Hunter, says it’s Hunter’s fault for trailing him so close. Hunter blames Rice for not looking. At one point, Rice grabs an imaginary steering wheel and demonstrates how he carefully backed up to adjust into a parking space and into Hunter’s car because Hunter, bumping to his blaring music, didn’t give Rice time to finish parking. Arguing, head shaking and more imitating ensues.

The mood is light. Texas is happy. There is good reason to be. Even after the comeuppance the next day against the Volunteers, the Longhorns are 18-4, rank 10th in the nation, ninth in the NET and at 7-2 stand alone atop the incredibly deep and difficult Big 12.

It would be a good year under any circumstances; it is a remarkable year considering that interminably long Monday.

Carr’s relayed news that December morning was that the Longhorns head coach, Chris Beard, had been arrested and charged with third-degree felonious assault for allegedly strangling and biting his fiancée during a domestic incident. Initially suspended by Texas, he has since been fired and is still awaiting a hearing.

The Longhorns are 11-3 since that day. On the one hand, the players insist it is because they had no other choice. “What were we supposed to do?” Bishop says, eyebrows raised and incredulous. “Fall over? Honestly, just lay down and give up? ‘Oh the season is over.’’’

Yet on the other, they’re succeeding because they made a choice. Six days after the arrest, Texas beat Stanford by 10 in Dallas. As the final seconds ticked down, Carr and Allen came together. “I remember just saying to him, ‘This is our s—. This is our team. This is our year. We control it,’’ Allen says. “That’s the message. That’s what this is about. That’s all this is about. It’s about us.’’
 

Carr swings around the table, pointing from player to player, explaining why this particular team is unusually built to handle this strange load. “Twenty-four, 22, 23, 23, 23,’’ he says, sharing the ages of Cunningham, Disu, Allen, Rice and Bishop (Hunter is 19). The Longhorns are the seventh oldest team in the country, per KenPom.com, older than everyone in the Top 25 save Virginia and Iowa State.

There is experience at this table, and not just the sort assorted with a birthday. Only Cunningham began his career at Texas. Disu spent two years at Vanderbilt. Hunter left Iowa State after one season and Allen transferred from Utah following three seasons. Rice is a grad transfer from New Mexico State, Bishop spent three years at Creighton and Carr is on his third stop, after one season at Pittsburgh and two more at Minnesota.

More meaningful and perhaps even more critical than their basketball experience is their life experience. Allen lost his mother, Elise, to breast cancer when he was a junior in high school. Hunter’s father, Brian, died of sudden cardiac arrest when Hunter was 6, and his mother Ida died of kidney failure when he was 12. His grandmother, Annie Williams, and his older brother, Brian Jr., raised him. Carr has a 14-month-old daughter. Every single one of them played through the pandemic. “We’ve all had our fair share of life,’’ Carr says. “We’ve been through some stuff.’’

Nothing like this, of course. Coaches get fired all the time, sometimes midseason. Usually that’s for not winning. Unsettling, no doubt but hardly with the same unexpectedness and public scrutiny that a felony arrest brings. Yet from the minute they heard the news, the Longhorns took back their season. Player-led program is a favorite coaching cliche. Around Texas, the now-former coach had the adage plastered on signs around the facilities and in the locker room after his arrival in 2021. Beard routinely asked and challenged his players to take ownership of their team. The irony is not lost on anyone that they realized the goal because he left them with no choice. “It got thrust on us,’’ Carr says. “But we built a culture here. A coach might establish it, but it’s up to the players to live by it. It’s our standard.’’

Equipped only with the little information they’d read on social media, the older players summoned the entire team to the apartment of Carr, Bishop and Allen. “We knew the younger guys would have questions,’’ Cunningham says. “They did. We didn’t know the answers to a lot of them — what’s going to happen to Coach Beard? Will he come back to the team? Hard questions. They were hard questions. But we also knew we had to get everyone together.’’ They instructed everyone to not post anything on social media about the arrest — how you feel, what you’re thinking, what you’ve heard or what you’ve been told. Do not retweet or like anything.

Powerless to control much of anything, they agreed on the one thing they could control: their season, and the game against Rice in less than 12 hours. They insisted that the game be held. The Longhorns were ranked second in the nation, and they refused to be punished with a forfeit. “No one even thought about not playing,’’ Bishop says.

The Longhorns stuck to their schedule, reporting to the gym at 10:30 for shootaround, but the whole day unfolded in a bizarre parallel universe. Before shootaround, they saw Beard’s mugshot on social media; afterward, some players watched his bond hearing on Zoom, seeing Beard in a striped prison jumpsuit, his hands handcuffed in front of him. As they headed to the Moody Center to play Rice, there was Beard, suspended by the university, leaving jail, driven by a basketball staff member.

All the while, their own phones buzzed with messages, everyone sure they knew what was going on. “And we had no idea,’’ Disu says. “They’re all like, ‘Man, you must know.’ I had no clue.’’ The game against Rice went into overtime, with Carr making a pair of free throws to ice the win. Finally the endless Monday was over.

Cunningham reaches for a scoop of mashed potatoes and concedes the truth. “It sounds easy,’’ he says, “but it wasn’t.’’ For 24 days, the Longhorns played in a sort of suspended animation. Beard was suspended but not yet fired, while university administrators conducted their own investigation. Associate head coach Rodney Terry was named acting head coach, but with no finality to Beard’s situation, no one knew if that was for a handful of games or the rest of the season. In the interim, Beard’s fiancée, Randi Trew, issued a statement through her lawyer, saying she did not believe Beard was intentionally trying to harm her. Christmas break came and went, and the Longhorns played six games, and started league play at Oklahoma on New Year’s Eve.

Finally on Jan. 5, Texas announced it had fired Beard, saying he had engaged in behavior that made him “unfit” to serve as head coach.

It has been almost a month since Beard’s dismissal, a full six weeks since his arrest. The players still aren’t entirely sure how they feel. They are careful about what they say — and don’t say — about Beard. The only question the university’s staff has asked them not to answer, in fact, is whether they have been in touch with him. They admit to disappointment, but it’s more the frustrated version — that so much of their own accomplishments have been swept into the mess he created. “Felt like we kind of got lost in all of it,’’ Cunningham says. “The spotlight was definitely taken off us and the game.’’

It’s not the external noise that bothers them. They’re accustomed to Texas-hating crowds flashing ’Horns down signs at them. They were prepared for it to go to another level, which it predictably did. “West Virginia was the first place I saw his mug shot in the student section,’’ Rice says. They’ve seen signs hinting to domestic violence, too and a few prison stripes. Before the Tennessee game, the Jumbotron cut to a student holding up his phone, on which he’d written, “We want Chris Beard.’’

That right there, though, that’s the crux of it. At one point, of course, each and every one of these Longhorns wanted Beard, too. That’s what makes it all so complicated emotionally. Players rarely choose a school because of the school — “I did,’’ says Disu, who grew up in Pflugerville, just outside of Austin, as a diehard Texas fan. Everyone else came for Beard. Sure, they felt a kinship with players, and others on the staff, but the sales pitch came from Beard — his style, his success at Texas Tech, his vision, that was the draw. Beard arrived in Austin trumpeted as the man to galvanize Texas basketball. His coaching roots crisscross the Lonestar State, each stopped burnished with his success. In five years at Texas Tech, he took the Red Raiders to three NCAA Tournaments, including two Elite Eights and a run to the 2019 title game. Now in the state’s premiere college outpost, and backed by all that mighty UT has to offer, fans eagerly awaited the Longhorns’ transformation. So did the players, entering the portal and flocking to Austin in the months after he was hired. They believed in him and now what do they believe? Carr says he’s not angry but stops short of explaining exactly what it is he does feel. Allen tries to explain it. “You have to think about that,’’ he says. “It doesn’t sit well with me. But a lot happens. You don’t want to play the blame game. You don’t want to tear anyone down.’’

They are asked about the hypocrisy of some of it, of a recruiting pitch that includes caring for a player, helping him become a man, and how to reconcile the fact that the same man who constantly preached at them to mind their own behavior, to avoid situations that would get them in trouble, and to make sure they didn’t do anything to embarrass the university, did exactly that. They think a little bit. Allen, the deep thinker at the table, finally answers. “You just kind of have to let that one go,” he eventually says. “That’s out of your control, you know? The hypocrisy, it hurts, but you can’t do nothing about it and if you dwell on it, you’ll fail.’’

They have not failed. The actual business of basketball has been — if not easy because the Big 12 is the best conference in the country by some margin — manageable. Maturity has helped, but so, too, has the familiarity with Rodney Terry. Beard did not run a dictatorship. His assistants contributed to practice, their voices as much a part of the regular rhythm as his own. Terry might not have dug into the weeds of the nitty gritty details that a head coach handles, but it’s not like anyone asked, “Who’s this guy?” when he gave his first locker room speech. He might ask them to be at practice five minutes earlier — “so five minutes earlier than the five minutes early we were already expected to be,’’ Hunter says — but otherwise the inner workings of the team remain largely unchanged.

What Texas runs, how they play and the structure of practice remains almost entirely the same. Texas still blasts an eclectic mix of music — Willie Nelson to Drake to Bruce Springsteen to Miley Cyrus to Polo G — between drills, the byproduct of a democratic playlist where everyone gets to pick a song. Just as they did under Beard, the Longhorns segue from the quiet of scout work to high energy drills and back again, pausing to put one person on the free-throw line for a little pressure preparation (miss and everyone — head coaches down to the managers — does five push-ups). Other than the absence of a specific odd-man drill, no one can come up with any real difference in structure, and certainly not in message.

The only real change is how the message is delivered. “RT-isms,” Carr says with a laugh, as his teammates start listing the Texas-born Terry’s favorite colloquialisms. “Hay is in the barn,’’ Rice says. “Are you a grasshopper or an eagle?” adds Allen. “Meat and potatoes, or combo platter,’’ chimes in Disu, to which Hunter says, “I always want to ask if I can get some veggies with that.’’ They all bust up on “rinse it out,” remembering the first time Terry said it. “No clue what that meant,’’ Hunter says. Cunningham solves the riddle. “Hydrate,’’ he says.

In terms of X’s and O’s, this team was built with this season in mind. Everyone at the table, save Rice and Hunter, were in Austin last year, Beard’s first, and endured the scattershot results of a new coach, new players and new systems. They lost four of their last five games, but the win was in the first round of the NCAA Tournament — the program’s first win in the big dance since 2014. This year, with a better understanding and buoyed by the additions of Rice, Hunter (the 2022 Big 12 Freshman of the Year) and a sixth-ranked recruiting class, there is the critical three-ingredient stew for winning: experience, comfort and talent.

At the beginning of the year, the Longhorns set a goal, and they are not at all timid about speaking it into existence. “Win a national championship,’’ Cunningham says. They concede that, at some level, that’s always the goal but that some years it’s more of a wish than a realistic aim. This year Texas believes it is not a stretch. The chase of a championship has helped ground them amid the noise, refocused them on the rare occasion they wanted to dabble in a little self pity.

It begs the question, then, what if this season — after everything that has happened — they actually hoist a trophy on championship Monday? Amid the celebration, wouldn’t there be even the slightest temptation to wave it in the face of the people who doubted or questioned them? Hunter answers almost immediately. “Yes,’’ he says. “They ain’t gonna say it, but I am.” He goes back to the personal burdens that each of them carry, and the added weight that Beard’s arrest and subsequent dismissal added to it. “People talk about ranked teams, they never speak on us, unless it’s about the situation,’’ he says. “It’s like, the chief is gone, so how could we do it? So yeah, for me it is an F-U.’’

Heads nod in agreement but then Allen pipes up and says above the din in the room: “I disagree.’’ His teammates turn to listen to him, as he explains how just recently the team’s strength coach, John Reilly, challenged him to invert his perspective. Instead of considering Beard’s arrest as the obstacle for the team’s goal, view it as the opportunity. “What if this is the only way we could win it all?” Allen says. “Like God was like, he has to bounce so you all can win? It wouldn’t be an F-U to everyone else. It’s more a testament to us and our journey. Because this was never about anyone else. It’s always been about us.’’

For a half beat the table is silent and then Carr looks at his roommate, the one he woke up on that endless Monday, and nods his head. “Man, that is perfect,’’ he says. “That’s it. It’s always been about us.’’

 

[Hookem2147 21207]

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Hookem2147

[Js1 85307]

8 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

“What were we supposed to do?” Bishop says, eyebrows raised and incredulous. “Fall over? Honestly, just lay down and give up? ‘Oh the season is over.’’’

 

9 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

“I remember just saying to him, ‘This is our s—. This is our team. This is our year. We control it,’’ Allen says. “That’s the message. That’s what this is about. That’s all this is about. It’s about us.’’

 

9 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

“What if this is the only way we could win it all?” Allen says. “Like God was like, he has to bounce so you all can win? It wouldn’t be an F-U to everyone else. It’s more a testament to us and our journey. Because this was never about anyone else. It’s always been about us.’’

For a half beat the table is silent and then Carr looks at his roommate, the one he woke up on that endless Monday, and nods his head. “Man, that is perfect,’’ he says. “That’s it. It’s always been about us.’’

Again, how can you not love these guys? 

[SL Xpress 7513]

14 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

Really, really, really, really good article from The Athletic:

  Hide contents

The phone rang on the nightstand next to Marcus Carr’s bed. He ignored it. It was nearing 8:30 in the morning, hours before he had anywhere to be. It rang again. He ignored it again. Then came the buzz of a text message. Finally, more out of annoyance than curiosity, Carr glanced at the screen and read a message from his personal trainer back home in Toronto. “Call me.’’ Fully awake and now aware, Carr returned the call. As his trainer unspooled the news he needed to share, Carr started screaming to his roommates/teammates, Timmy Allen and Christian Bishop. “I just hear him yelling, ‘Get up. Wake up. You gotta get up,’’’ Allen says. That’s how Dec. 12, the day grad student Brock Cunningham now refers to as the “longest Monday,’’ began for the Texas men’s basketball team.

It is now more than six Mondays later. Brock Cunningham, Carr, Allen, Bishop, Sir’Jabari Rice, Dylan Disu and Tyrese Hunter are seated at a round table in a private room at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Knoxville, Tenn. It is the night before Texas’ showdown against Tennessee in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, and the Longhorns, who always eat well on the road, are enjoying an especially sweet dining treat. Rice swears his strip steak is still sizzling on Ruth’s Chris famous hot plates.

The next day, Tennessee will throw a bucket of cold water on the Longhorns’ fun, with a dominating 11-point win. But now, blissfully unaware of what is to come, the players and staff enjoy their Friday night meal and each other’s company, their chatter and laughter filling the room. At this particular table, the players skip around all sorts of random topics. There is a conversation about eating habits. Somehow Rice can eat hot chips before tipoff, while Arterio Morris practically subsists on Gushers. “I’m over here with like five grapes,’’ Carr says. They debate who on the team has the best one-footed leap. Freshman Dillon Mitchell is the consensus. And they resume what is clearly an age-old argument as to who is at fault for a fender-bender involving Rice and Hunter. Rice, who backed into Hunter, says it’s Hunter’s fault for trailing him so close. Hunter blames Rice for not looking. At one point, Rice grabs an imaginary steering wheel and demonstrates how he carefully backed up to adjust into a parking space and into Hunter’s car because Hunter, bumping to his blaring music, didn’t give Rice time to finish parking. Arguing, head shaking and more imitating ensues.

The mood is light. Texas is happy. There is good reason to be. Even after the comeuppance the next day against the Volunteers, the Longhorns are 18-4, rank 10th in the nation, ninth in the NET and at 7-2 stand alone atop the incredibly deep and difficult Big 12.

It would be a good year under any circumstances; it is a remarkable year considering that interminably long Monday.

Carr’s relayed news that December morning was that the Longhorns head coach, Chris Beard, had been arrested and charged with third-degree felonious assault for allegedly strangling and biting his fiancée during a domestic incident. Initially suspended by Texas, he has since been fired and is still awaiting a hearing.

The Longhorns are 11-3 since that day. On the one hand, the players insist it is because they had no other choice. “What were we supposed to do?” Bishop says, eyebrows raised and incredulous. “Fall over? Honestly, just lay down and give up? ‘Oh the season is over.’’’

Yet on the other, they’re succeeding because they made a choice. Six days after the arrest, Texas beat Stanford by 10 in Dallas. As the final seconds ticked down, Carr and Allen came together. “I remember just saying to him, ‘This is our s—. This is our team. This is our year. We control it,’’ Allen says. “That’s the message. That’s what this is about. That’s all this is about. It’s about us.’’
 

Carr swings around the table, pointing from player to player, explaining why this particular team is unusually built to handle this strange load. “Twenty-four, 22, 23, 23, 23,’’ he says, sharing the ages of Cunningham, Disu, Allen, Rice and Bishop (Hunter is 19). The Longhorns are the seventh oldest team in the country, per KenPom.com, older than everyone in the Top 25 save Virginia and Iowa State.

There is experience at this table, and not just the sort assorted with a birthday. Only Cunningham began his career at Texas. Disu spent two years at Vanderbilt. Hunter left Iowa State after one season and Allen transferred from Utah following three seasons. Rice is a grad transfer from New Mexico State, Bishop spent three years at Creighton and Carr is on his third stop, after one season at Pittsburgh and two more at Minnesota.

More meaningful and perhaps even more critical than their basketball experience is their life experience. Allen lost his mother, Elise, to breast cancer when he was a junior in high school. Hunter’s father, Brian, died of sudden cardiac arrest when Hunter was 6, and his mother Ida died of kidney failure when he was 12. His grandmother, Annie Williams, and his older brother, Brian Jr., raised him. Carr has a 14-month-old daughter. Every single one of them played through the pandemic. “We’ve all had our fair share of life,’’ Carr says. “We’ve been through some stuff.’’

Nothing like this, of course. Coaches get fired all the time, sometimes midseason. Usually that’s for not winning. Unsettling, no doubt but hardly with the same unexpectedness and public scrutiny that a felony arrest brings. Yet from the minute they heard the news, the Longhorns took back their season. Player-led program is a favorite coaching cliche. Around Texas, the now-former coach had the adage plastered on signs around the facilities and in the locker room after his arrival in 2021. Beard routinely asked and challenged his players to take ownership of their team. The irony is not lost on anyone that they realized the goal because he left them with no choice. “It got thrust on us,’’ Carr says. “But we built a culture here. A coach might establish it, but it’s up to the players to live by it. It’s our standard.’’

Equipped only with the little information they’d read on social media, the older players summoned the entire team to the apartment of Carr, Bishop and Allen. “We knew the younger guys would have questions,’’ Cunningham says. “They did. We didn’t know the answers to a lot of them — what’s going to happen to Coach Beard? Will he come back to the team? Hard questions. They were hard questions. But we also knew we had to get everyone together.’’ They instructed everyone to not post anything on social media about the arrest — how you feel, what you’re thinking, what you’ve heard or what you’ve been told. Do not retweet or like anything.

Powerless to control much of anything, they agreed on the one thing they could control: their season, and the game against Rice in less than 12 hours. They insisted that the game be held. The Longhorns were ranked second in the nation, and they refused to be punished with a forfeit. “No one even thought about not playing,’’ Bishop says.

The Longhorns stuck to their schedule, reporting to the gym at 10:30 for shootaround, but the whole day unfolded in a bizarre parallel universe. Before shootaround, they saw Beard’s mugshot on social media; afterward, some players watched his bond hearing on Zoom, seeing Beard in a striped prison jumpsuit, his hands handcuffed in front of him. As they headed to the Moody Center to play Rice, there was Beard, suspended by the university, leaving jail, driven by a basketball staff member.

All the while, their own phones buzzed with messages, everyone sure they knew what was going on. “And we had no idea,’’ Disu says. “They’re all like, ‘Man, you must know.’ I had no clue.’’ The game against Rice went into overtime, with Carr making a pair of free throws to ice the win. Finally the endless Monday was over.

Cunningham reaches for a scoop of mashed potatoes and concedes the truth. “It sounds easy,’’ he says, “but it wasn’t.’’ For 24 days, the Longhorns played in a sort of suspended animation. Beard was suspended but not yet fired, while university administrators conducted their own investigation. Associate head coach Rodney Terry was named acting head coach, but with no finality to Beard’s situation, no one knew if that was for a handful of games or the rest of the season. In the interim, Beard’s fiancée, Randi Trew, issued a statement through her lawyer, saying she did not believe Beard was intentionally trying to harm her. Christmas break came and went, and the Longhorns played six games, and started league play at Oklahoma on New Year’s Eve.

Finally on Jan. 5, Texas announced it had fired Beard, saying he had engaged in behavior that made him “unfit” to serve as head coach.

It has been almost a month since Beard’s dismissal, a full six weeks since his arrest. The players still aren’t entirely sure how they feel. They are careful about what they say — and don’t say — about Beard. The only question the university’s staff has asked them not to answer, in fact, is whether they have been in touch with him. They admit to disappointment, but it’s more the frustrated version — that so much of their own accomplishments have been swept into the mess he created. “Felt like we kind of got lost in all of it,’’ Cunningham says. “The spotlight was definitely taken off us and the game.’’

It’s not the external noise that bothers them. They’re accustomed to Texas-hating crowds flashing ’Horns down signs at them. They were prepared for it to go to another level, which it predictably did. “West Virginia was the first place I saw his mug shot in the student section,’’ Rice says. They’ve seen signs hinting to domestic violence, too and a few prison stripes. Before the Tennessee game, the Jumbotron cut to a student holding up his phone, on which he’d written, “We want Chris Beard.’’

That right there, though, that’s the crux of it. At one point, of course, each and every one of these Longhorns wanted Beard, too. That’s what makes it all so complicated emotionally. Players rarely choose a school because of the school — “I did,’’ says Disu, who grew up in Pflugerville, just outside of Austin, as a diehard Texas fan. Everyone else came for Beard. Sure, they felt a kinship with players, and others on the staff, but the sales pitch came from Beard — his style, his success at Texas Tech, his vision, that was the draw. Beard arrived in Austin trumpeted as the man to galvanize Texas basketball. His coaching roots crisscross the Lonestar State, each stopped burnished with his success. In five years at Texas Tech, he took the Red Raiders to three NCAA Tournaments, including two Elite Eights and a run to the 2019 title game. Now in the state’s premiere college outpost, and backed by all that mighty UT has to offer, fans eagerly awaited the Longhorns’ transformation. So did the players, entering the portal and flocking to Austin in the months after he was hired. They believed in him and now what do they believe? Carr says he’s not angry but stops short of explaining exactly what it is he does feel. Allen tries to explain it. “You have to think about that,’’ he says. “It doesn’t sit well with me. But a lot happens. You don’t want to play the blame game. You don’t want to tear anyone down.’’

They are asked about the hypocrisy of some of it, of a recruiting pitch that includes caring for a player, helping him become a man, and how to reconcile the fact that the same man who constantly preached at them to mind their own behavior, to avoid situations that would get them in trouble, and to make sure they didn’t do anything to embarrass the university, did exactly that. They think a little bit. Allen, the deep thinker at the table, finally answers. “You just kind of have to let that one go,” he eventually says. “That’s out of your control, you know? The hypocrisy, it hurts, but you can’t do nothing about it and if you dwell on it, you’ll fail.’’

They have not failed. The actual business of basketball has been — if not easy because the Big 12 is the best conference in the country by some margin — manageable. Maturity has helped, but so, too, has the familiarity with Rodney Terry. Beard did not run a dictatorship. His assistants contributed to practice, their voices as much a part of the regular rhythm as his own. Terry might not have dug into the weeds of the nitty gritty details that a head coach handles, but it’s not like anyone asked, “Who’s this guy?” when he gave his first locker room speech. He might ask them to be at practice five minutes earlier — “so five minutes earlier than the five minutes early we were already expected to be,’’ Hunter says — but otherwise the inner workings of the team remain largely unchanged.

What Texas runs, how they play and the structure of practice remains almost entirely the same. Texas still blasts an eclectic mix of music — Willie Nelson to Drake to Bruce Springsteen to Miley Cyrus to Polo G — between drills, the byproduct of a democratic playlist where everyone gets to pick a song. Just as they did under Beard, the Longhorns segue from the quiet of scout work to high energy drills and back again, pausing to put one person on the free-throw line for a little pressure preparation (miss and everyone — head coaches down to the managers — does five push-ups). Other than the absence of a specific odd-man drill, no one can come up with any real difference in structure, and certainly not in message.

The only real change is how the message is delivered. “RT-isms,” Carr says with a laugh, as his teammates start listing the Texas-born Terry’s favorite colloquialisms. “Hay is in the barn,’’ Rice says. “Are you a grasshopper or an eagle?” adds Allen. “Meat and potatoes, or combo platter,’’ chimes in Disu, to which Hunter says, “I always want to ask if I can get some veggies with that.’’ They all bust up on “rinse it out,” remembering the first time Terry said it. “No clue what that meant,’’ Hunter says. Cunningham solves the riddle. “Hydrate,’’ he says.

In terms of X’s and O’s, this team was built with this season in mind. Everyone at the table, save Rice and Hunter, were in Austin last year, Beard’s first, and endured the scattershot results of a new coach, new players and new systems. They lost four of their last five games, but the win was in the first round of the NCAA Tournament — the program’s first win in the big dance since 2014. This year, with a better understanding and buoyed by the additions of Rice, Hunter (the 2022 Big 12 Freshman of the Year) and a sixth-ranked recruiting class, there is the critical three-ingredient stew for winning: experience, comfort and talent.

At the beginning of the year, the Longhorns set a goal, and they are not at all timid about speaking it into existence. “Win a national championship,’’ Cunningham says. They concede that, at some level, that’s always the goal but that some years it’s more of a wish than a realistic aim. This year Texas believes it is not a stretch. The chase of a championship has helped ground them amid the noise, refocused them on the rare occasion they wanted to dabble in a little self pity.

It begs the question, then, what if this season — after everything that has happened — they actually hoist a trophy on championship Monday? Amid the celebration, wouldn’t there be even the slightest temptation to wave it in the face of the people who doubted or questioned them? Hunter answers almost immediately. “Yes,’’ he says. “They ain’t gonna say it, but I am.” He goes back to the personal burdens that each of them carry, and the added weight that Beard’s arrest and subsequent dismissal added to it. “People talk about ranked teams, they never speak on us, unless it’s about the situation,’’ he says. “It’s like, the chief is gone, so how could we do it? So yeah, for me it is an F-U.’’

Heads nod in agreement but then Allen pipes up and says above the din in the room: “I disagree.’’ His teammates turn to listen to him, as he explains how just recently the team’s strength coach, John Reilly, challenged him to invert his perspective. Instead of considering Beard’s arrest as the obstacle for the team’s goal, view it as the opportunity. “What if this is the only way we could win it all?” Allen says. “Like God was like, he has to bounce so you all can win? It wouldn’t be an F-U to everyone else. It’s more a testament to us and our journey. Because this was never about anyone else. It’s always been about us.’’

For a half beat the table is silent and then Carr looks at his roommate, the one he woke up on that endless Monday, and nods his head. “Man, that is perfect,’’ he says. “That’s it. It’s always been about us.’’

 

I love that article. I wish I could give it a dozen likes. Thank you very much for posting it. 

[MotownHorn 1761]

Just read The Athletic article. Great piece on our guys. I fucking love this team. 

[LTtxfan 49166]

 

[Herpa Derpa 6125]

4 hours ago, Js1 said:

 

 

Again, how can you not love these guys? 

[LTtxfan 49166]

Love it... “That’s it. It’s always been about us.’’

Quote

Timmy Allen:   “What if this is the only way we could win it all?” Allen says. “Like God was like, he has to bounce so you all can win? It wouldn’t be an F-U to everyone else. It’s more a testament to us and our journey. Because this was never about anyone else. It’s always been about us.’’

For a half beat the table is silent and then Carr looks at his roommate, the one he woke up on that endless Monday, and nods his head. “Man, that is perfect,’’ he says. “That’s it. It’s always been about us.’’

 

[Js1 85307]

[Herpa Derpa 6125]

He won't make it that far.

[ztejas 43418]

Princeton scares you to death. 

[Valmy77 13226]

Bracketology is about as predictive as numerology.

[jimmyjazz 45898]

On 2/1/2023 at 8:56 AM, Js1 said:

Again, how can you not love these guys? 

Yeah, I have my own (mostly negative) thoughts about Rodney Terry getting the permanent job, but it's just not possible to do anything but root for these guys.  Whatever happens, happens.  

"Oh no, we made the Final Four!"  Nope, I'd be happy as a pig in shit.

[Pancho 44757]

Bracketology is not too hard when it comes to selecting the 68 teams. Lunardi mostly gets those right. It’s the matchups, locations, and seeds where he is more off. 

[YGIFS 19450]

Fresno?!?  Nobody goes to Fresno anymore!  /johnnyjacobs 

[Js1 85307]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yeah, I have my own (mostly negative) thoughts about Rodney Terry getting the permanent job, but it's just not possible to do anything but root for these guys.  Whatever happens, happens.  

"Oh no, we made the Final Four!"  Nope, I'd be happy as a pig in shit.

I reminded someone earlier we haven’t made the S16 since he and I were college freshman so I’d be fucking thrilled if we did that 

[CashMcCoy 3199]

22 hours ago, Pancho said:

Bracketology is not too hard when it comes to selecting the 68 teams. Lunardi mostly gets those right. It’s the matchups, locations, and seeds where he is more off. 

Hopefully he is at least right about us landing in Denver for the first two rounds. Need to cross a UT tournament game off the bucket list.

[shadow_operative 15932]

this is my favorite texas team since shaka's first team. love these guys and their effort. so easy to root for. so much heart. they love each other, and they want to win with/for each other. they believe in each other. and hell, they've made a believer out of me. i thought the conference title was a lost cause after our first few performances without beard, but our guys have regrouped, hit their stride, and are playing some really inspired basketball. this is a special team, one that deserves to have a special season. i was wrong to doubt this group. i won't do it again. what a special team we've got. now let's go win the whole damn thing! 

Edited February 4, 2023 by shadow_operative

[Js1 85307]

Everything about this team is just so likable and easy to root for 

[Paul Wesley 3278]

Did Disu come back in the game after he was favoring his arm?

 

[Pancho 44757]

[shadow_operative 15932]

11 minutes ago, Paul Wesley said:

Did Disu come back in the game after he was favoring his arm?

 

he did. 

4 minutes ago, Pancho said:

shouts out osu for knocking tcu down a peg.

[Js1 85307]

6 minutes ago, Pancho said:

5 teams above Kansas

[Paul Wesley 3278]

Who would have guessed that the rest of the league would be rooting for Kansas at home vs Texas?

[Hookem2147 21207]

I’ll knock on all the wood, but I thought heading into this weekend that at Kansas was more winnable than this game today.

[Catdaddyhorn 3444]

7 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

I’ll knock on all the wood, but I thought heading into this weekend that at Kansas was more winnable than this game today.

Same here. We match up really well with KU.  

Edited February 5, 2023 by Catdaddyhorn

[BigOrange1 6435]

win or lose against kansas, winning the conference is very much on the table.  i never dreamed that would be possible after the home loss to ksu.  what an awesome display of resolve this team has shown.

Edited February 5, 2023 by BigOrange1