Senior guard, freshmen lift men’s basketball past Incarnate Word in season opener

By Steve Lansdale

AUSTIN, Texas — Senior guard Kendal Yancy hit eight of nine free throws en route to scoring a team-leading 19 points and swiped a career-high four steals to lead the No. 21/22 University of Texas men’s basketball team to a 78-73 victory Friday over Incarnate Word at Incarnate Word at the Frank Erwin Center.

Texas head coach Shaka Smart said that while [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]the five-point margin was not as lopsided as some might have expected, the tough battle in their season opener could benefit the Longhorns as the season progresses.

“Anytime you can get experience in a close game and deal with some adversity during the game – you want to go out and have a dominating performance and you want to win by a ton of points if you can,” Smart said. “But the bottom line is our guys came back after we relinquished a double-digit lead. We’re down one, I thought some guys made some real winning plays. Probably the play of the game was Jarrett Allen diving on the floor to save the possession for us, call timeout, we end up scoring coming out of the timeout. So you really want games like this that you can learn from, but at the same time there’s a humbling side of this which is good which is, ‘Man, there’s so many things we’ve got to get better at and improve on.’ Certainly on the defensive end, we have a lot of growth that needs to occur.”

With the victory, the Longhorns now have won 14 of their last 15 season openers, and are 91-20 (.820) all time in season openers.

Forward Jarrett Allen posted a double-double in his first college game, scoring 16 points and yanking down 12 rebounds to lead three freshmen who scored in double figures; fellow freshmen Andrew Jones and Jacob Young scored 10 points apiece, and sophomore guard Eric Davis, Jr., added 16.

“A year ago these guys were starting their senior years, and now it’s just a different level, and they’re going to see the level of competition continue to go up,” Smart said of the freshmen. “But I thought tonight at least was a good first game for them because they were challenged, they responded, they did some good things, there were some things to improve on, and now it’s all about how do we view the next few days.”Allen’s 16 points were four shy of Kevin Durant’s record for scoring in a UT debut, and his 12 boards were one short of P.J. Tucker’s record for a Longhorn in a freshman debut.

Freshman center James Banks established a new record for blocked shots in a Longhorn debut, with five.

“He’s got a really high ceiling,” Smart said of Banks. “He really in a lot of ways doesn’t even know what he’s doing, and I say that in a good way. He’s just learning. Same thing for a lot of our other young guys, but he’s made major progress. I like the way that he played with energy. He gives us a presence out there that’s different than anybody else, and he has a youthful exuberance about him. I’m excited about James because he’s only going to get better and better.”
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