Habe on the Horns – Texas Basketball has its chance to prove doubters wrong

By Steve Habel/Senior Editor

When the Texas men’s basketball team was awarded a spot on the NCAA tournament on Sunday for the 16th time in coach Rick Barnes’ 17-year tenure on the 40 Acres, a collective sigh of relief was heard from the Longhorns’ faithful.

That could have been expected after the Longhorns, a team that rose to as high as sixth in the nation in the early stages of the season, won just eight of their 18 Big 12 Conference games and then blew a 10-point lead to eventual champion Iowa State in the final three minutes of their league postseason tournament quarterfinal.

A whole lot more was [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]expected from this Texas team, but as it enters the Big Dance on Thursday – as an 11-seed against sixth-seeded Butler in Pittsburgh – many of its goals are still within reach.

“The fact is we’ve got a great group of guys and the regular season didn’t go the way we would have liked it to go,” Barnes said. “I really appreciate and admire our players for the way they’ve stayed with it.

“When things aren’t going well so many people have opinions about what’s happening and they don’t really know,” Barnes added. “They have their opinions from an outside person looking in. From the inside, we know where we are. I think our coaching staff, my assistants did a great job of keeping our guys focused on knowing where we were and what we’ve had to do.”

These Longhorns have the talent to go deep into the tournaments (I’m sticking to my prediction from December that Texas would make it to the Elite Eight), but the pieces have to all fall into place at the same time.

But one more series of letdowns or run of bad shots or gaggle of turnovers or that one missed offensive rebound and Barnes and his team will be back in Austin fighting through traffic from the South by Southwest music festival like the rest of us.

“When you get into this tournament, it’s a new start for everybody,” Barnes said. “You realize it’s a one-game tournament, win every game or you don’t get to move on. You’re here because you’ve earned your way here. The players are excited to be here.

“Yes, this is a chance,” Barnes added. “But it gets down to you still have to go play basketball. You’ve got to execute, you’ve got to get your thoughts on the game. Over the last six games, actually prior to the West Virginia game, we felt like we were heading in the right direction.”

Indications are that Texas (20-13) is playing its best basketball of the year, the loss to Iowa State notwithstanding. The Longhorns had to win their final two regular season games and the opener in the Big 12 tourney to even get a sniff at the NCAAs and Barnes told the assembled media on Selection Sunday that his team was completely healthy for one of the few times all year.

“You look at the last few weeks, starting with the game in Lawrence against Kansas, we played them tough and could have went either way going into the half of the four minutes,” Texas’ Jonathan Holmes, the lone scholarship senior on the Longhorns’ roster, said.

“We won the two big home games against Baylor and Kansas State and then beat Tech. We were confident. We knew we were playing better. We were holding each other accountable so we could feel things turning a little bit.”

Barnes cites the need for solid guard play for success in the tournament, and point guard Isaiah Taylor has been at his best in the last half-dozen games.

I think that Javan Felix is the biggest key for the Horns as they move forward. If Felix can hit more 3-point shots, and he’s capable, that will open up driving lanes for Taylor (who’s a fearless attacker), Kendal Yancy and Demarcus Holland and keep opponents from double-teaming post players Myles Turner and Cameron Ridley.

The thinking here is that we still haven’t seen the best of this Texas team – but time is running out.

Just sayin’, ya know?

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