Ridley leads men’s basketball past Samford, 59-49

By Steve Lansdale

AUSTIN, Texas — Senior center Cameron Ridley tied his season high with 14 points, pulled down nine rebounds and blocked four shots to lead the Texas men’s basketball team to a 59-49 win over Samford Friday at the Frank Erwin Center.

“Cam has made a lot of progress, (and) the vast majority of that goes to Cam,” first-year Texas head coach Shaka Smart said. “Our strength coach has done a nice job setting up a plan and our nutritionist has worked with him on what to eat and what not to eat. Cam has gotten in better and better shape and he is a really [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]good player. I am probably the one who thinks that he can be much, much better than he is right now. But right now, he’s playing better than anybody for us, and we need to continue to find ways to give him the basketball.”

Ridley echoed his new coach, and said that his improved conditioning helped him as an offensive threat and on the boards.

“Yes, I feel like I’m in much better shape,” Ridley said. “That’s something I worked on all offseason, and during the summer. I just come out and try to play my hardest. “As a big man, it’s my job to crash the glass and chase every rebound so I always start the game by going for the offensive rebound.”

Ridley hit seven of his 10 field goal attempts, while the Longhorns’ second-leading scorer, guard Javan Felix, drained three three-pointers en route to an 11-point outing.

The victory gave the Longhorns back-to-back victories for the first time in Smart’s tenure as the team’s head coach, but Smart said that he is far more interested in his team’s potential than he is in its current performances.

“It took too long (to win consecutive games), but we can’t focus on the past,” Smart said. “We have to keep moving forward and getting better. The positive I take out of tonight is that we emphasized getting stops, and there were stretches in tonight’s game where we carried that over. We were able to get three stops in a row seven times during the game, and that is usually a recipe for success. Clearly, in addition to that there are areas for us to grow and get better. I really make sure we’re measuring our team against what we can be and what we need to be rather than the opponent we are playing that day.”

Texas continues its homestand Tuesday when UT-San Antonio comes to the Erwin Center for a 7 p.m. game that will be broadcast nationally on the Longhorn Network.
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