AUSTIN — The Longhorns are looking for ‘Level Five Juice’ all the time.
It’s a saying head coach Shaka Smart came up with, and the Texas Men’s Basketball team has totally embraced trying to level up all the way the rest of the season.
“Our identity is just our juice,” freshman Jaxson Hayes told Horns Illustrated. “It’s our energy. The energy we bring to the game — so we have a level five juice, which is the highest you can have. It’s some stuff that really our team knows, but the level five juice is us when we’re us at our best.”
Fellow freshman Courtney Ramey agreed, embracing the inspirations Smart comes up with to inspire the team.
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“I find it clever sometimes and sometimes it’s like whoa, how do you come up with something like that? I think my favorite one is level five juice, because it’s simple but it’s something you can fix,” Ramey said. “Because if he feels my level is a three, I’m gonna prove him wrong and level five will just be everywhere.”
Using that ‘juice’ to fuel the team is an area where the team is still searching for a consistency to its identity. Sophomore guard Matt Coleman III believes Texas can be the best defensive team in the Big 12 Conference if they can hit that level out of the gate every game.
With No.8-ranked Texas Tech coming to the Erwin Center for a 1 p.m. tipoff Saturday, getting that juice going is on the entire team’s minds.
“We just want to make sure we never have an outcome like we did this past weekend (in the loss at Oklahoma State), where we didn’t fight for 40 minutes,” Coleman said. “We call it our identity — we need to do what we do for us to have our best chance to win.”
Asked what the team’s identity is, Coleman answered without hesitation.
“Defense,” he said. “I feel like we can be the best — if not one of the best — defensive teams in the Big 12. We have all the length, athleticism, great group of guards, great bigs, we just have to do it.
“We have to do it.”
After falling behind big in the first half against the Cowboys, the ‘Horns rallied after the break and made a game of it, with Ramey’s 3-pointer at the buzzer coming just shy of tying the game and sending it to overtime.
The team’s confidence did not appear to waver during Friday’s interviews, and Coleman acknowledged that the overall youth of the team — with veterans Dylan Osetkowski and Kerwin Roach II the lone seniors on the squad and Elijah Mitrou-Long, the lone junior getting significant playing time this season as a first-year Longhorn, the veterans on the squad.
“So far, we’ve hit a couple bumps in the road early on but I knew we would,” Coleman said. “We have a lot of young talent learning and for my job I wanna make them learn fast, as fast as possible. I feel like I became more vocal toward my teammates on and off the court (this season), making sure guys are in the right frame of mindset all the time.”
Along with freshmen Ramey and Hayes, sophomores Jase Febres and Coleman as well as Royce Hamm, Jr. earned the bulk of the playing time in the game against the Cowboys.
Avoiding an early hole against Texas Tech is crucial, as the team knows.
Now is the time for executing what the Longhorns know they’re capable of, Ramey said.
“It’s always bad when you get a loss in a game you feel like you should win,” he said. “If we were the same team we were in the second half in the first half, it’s a completely different game and outcome. We just know we can’t have that start against Tech because it might be worse.
“We can’t put ourselves in a big hole like that if we want to beat teams in our league.”
Texas set single game tickets at just $10 for the game Saturday. Visit TexasSports.com/tickets or call ticket sales and services at 512-471-3333. Furthermore, visit the new Men’s Basketball Gameday Experience page to get info on the games at the Frank Erwin Center, including parking, ‘fan first’ concessions, happy hour pricing, and more.
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