College hoops preview
What’s in store for A&M as well as UTSA and other area schools.
As UTSA coach Steve Henson scrolled through Twitter on Monday afternoon, he found a different piece of bad news seemingly every half hour.
College basketball season is slated to start Wednesday, and within the past week about 40 Division I programs suspended activities due to COVID-19 protocols. Games slated for the first week of the season were being canceled across the country, sending teams and tournaments scurrying to find replacement matchups.
At UTSA, the final days before the start of the season have been smoother, with Henson saying the team has gone weeks without a COVID-19 infection despite upping testing to three times a week.
But while UTSA’s seasonopening matchup against Oklahoma at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Norman remains on schedule, Henson is bracing for the same set of challenges that have started to rock the sport.
“Every coach has those concerns right now,” Henson said. “You try not to dwell on it. Just try to stay prepared. We’ve been talking for months about being ready to pivot, being ready to handle adversity, being ready to make changes. And it’s going to happen.
That’s just the nature of it.”
Henson said the process of building a nonconference schedule was difficult “beyond description.”
UTSA ended up slotting its home opener for 3 p.m. Friday against UT Permian Basin — a matchup announced just a week in advance. After the game, the Roadrunners will load into a bus and travel south to the Rio Grande Valley for a matchup against UTRGV at 3 p.m. Saturday.
Henson described the circumstance as “not ideal,” especially on the heels of Tuesday and Thursday travel through airports that will likely be crowded because of Thanksgiving.
“Typically, you talk about making it to the finish line,” Henson said. “We’ve been talking about, ‘Let’s make it to the starting line.’ We’re real close right now. We’re real close. The guys are excited, hungry and really looking forward to it.”
Senior guard Keaton Wallace said the players are bracing for an unbalanced schedule and a season that “might not be fair.”
Conference USA worked to mitigate risk by scheduling teams to play back-toback games on consecutive nights in the same location through the season — an alteration that means one COVID-related issue can create a stretch of 12 days between games.
“Some of it is going to suck,” sophomore center Jacob Germany said. “We prep for a team all week, and the day before we travel, we get shut down because of something. I’m not looking forward to that, but it’ll come. For the most part, we’re so locked in on the season and wanting to be good that we’ll look past that, and look forward to when we’ll be able to play.”
When the Roadrunners take the floor, the goal will be to pair their typical uptempo, hot-shooting offense with a renewed focus on defense. Last year, an inability to slow opposing scorers led a team that was picked second in the league to slide to a No. 10 seed and a first-round exit from the Conference USA tournament.
The projections have followed suit, as UTSA was selected to finish ninth in the league this season.
“I don’t think we talked about it. I assume most of them saw that, and it’s pretty easy to tell them why,” Henson said. “It’s because people think we’re going to defend the way we did a year ago.”
The Roadrunners return the nation’s second-leading scorer in senior guard Jhivvan Jackson (26.8 points per game), but Henson announced in a statement Tuesday that Jackson will not be with the team for the season’s first two games due to a violation of team rules.
Wallace is also back in the fold after netting 18.8 points per game last season and combining with Jackson to form the nation’s highest-scoring backcourt duo for the second straight year.
Expectations are high for Germany, who averaged 5.5 points with 4.5 rebounds per game last year and said he added about 20 pounds during the offseason to reach 235 on his 6-foot-11 frame.
A pair of transfer wings, 6-foot-6 Cedrick Alley Jr. from Houston and 6-foot-6 Eric Parrish from Akron and Nevada, are projected to play significant minutes, providing needed length and athleticism.
Henson said the Roadrunners seem to be covering more ground on defense than in past seasons, and Germany said team has locked in on half-court situations, taking a more aggressive approach against ball screens.
“We almost look forward to playing defense. I think that’s going to take us to the top of the league,” Germany said. “Last year, we could score on anybody, but we couldn’t stop them. I think our scoring is just as good as it was last year, and I think our defense is going to start winning us games.”