Texas’ climb continues as Bears prowl in

By Steve Habel, Senior Contributing Writer

AUSTIN, Texas – It’s taken the Texas football team five weeks to climb out of the hole it created for itself in an season-opening loss the Maryland.

Some, including coach Tom Herman and many of his players, have said the results – a No. 9 ranking in the latest Associated Press poll and a genuinely upward trend – were worth that early slap in the face.

Texas (5-1, 3-0 in Big 12 play) puts its lofty ranking, its highest this late in the season since 2009, on the line on Saturday when resurgent Baylor invades Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium for a key Big 12 Conference game.

The Longhorns, who have thrived in their “each-week-we-are-0-0” mantra, are in a good place despite the bumps, bruises and general wear and tear of the first half of the season and a brutal stretch of games that seen them play, and beat, three ranked teams over the past four weeks by a total of 41 points.

“Winning is a horrible teacher – it masks a lot of deficiencies,” Herman said. “If we would have gone down and scored in the two-minute drill in the first week (against Maryland) and won that game we still would have still had all the exact same problems that we needed to work on."