Lengthy road test looms for UT
Winning isn’t point of Horns’ 12-day visit to Australia.
Credit Rhonda Evans, a senior lecturer in the College of Liberal Arts, for getting the Texas men’s basketball team fully prepared for its upcoming trip to Australia.
Over five weeks, UT coach Shaka Smart said Evans “talked about all different types of things related to Australian culture, cuisine, animals over there, like kangaroos. I think at one point she showed a fight where a kangaroo punched a guy.” G’day, indeed. The Longhorns leave Saturday for a 12-day tour through Australia where they’ll play four exhibition games against local pro teams. All games will start at 4 a.m. Central time, and considering these are against professionals, Smart said, “I’ll be surprised if we don’t lose a game or two.”
While winning would be great, it’s not exactly the point of this trip. Teams take international trips like these in August to forge bonds and prepare for the season. Coaches get to see how players react outside their normal bubble. The players get what may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The NCAA allows these trips only once every four years. The UT men’s team hasn’t gone on a summer foreign trip since Tom Penders took his team to Australia in 1996. Texas’ 2015 trip to China didn’t count against that because their game there against Washington was a regular-season game. Rick Barnes, someone known to visit foreign locales on his personal time, chose to stick close to home.
“I felt like going into this third year would really make sense to go overseas,” Smart said. “I thought we would have some guys returning that had a decent amount of experience and hopefully a good group of guys coming in.”
Turns out, that’s exactly the case for Smart’s bunch. Veterans Kerwin Roach Jr., Andrew Jones and Eric Davis Jr. headline the roster with newcomers like Mo Bamba and Matt Coleman injecting optimism into the mix.
On Tuesday, Texas will face the Dandenong Rangers, a team from the Australia State League, which is one rung below the Australian National Basketball League. On Wednesday, the Horns face NBL team Melbourne United, a team that will come stateside to play some NBA exhibition games.
Texas will play the Cairns Taipans on Friday and the Illawarra Hawks on Aug. 21 before coming home. Along the way, the players will see the Royal Melbourne Zoo and the Great Barrier Reef.
Liddell commits: Texas landed a huge commitment Thursday from the state’s second-ranked player when Cibolo Steele forward Gerald Liddell pledged to the Longhorns.
Liddell, a versatile 6-foot-6 athlete, is Texas’ second commitment for the 2018 class. The Longhorns, who are expected to sign four players, also got a pledge from Westlake’s Brock Cunningham.
Coaches are not allowed to speak to the media about recruits until after they sign a national letter of intent. But Smart talked generally about his 2018 class Thursday.
“Our staff ’s done a really good job with some guys, and we’re excited about the way that class can shape up,” he said. “We have some specific needs we’re really working on.”