Allen grateful for last season’s struggles
AUSTIN — Looking back on it now, forward Timmy Allen is grateful for that first season at Texas.
It was hard — harder than anyone anticipated, the All-pac 12 transfer from Utah included.
First-year coach Chris Beard had assembled a star-studded team of all-conference vets to pair with a blue-chip freshman and four program mainstays, and just about everyone pegged the preseason No. 5 as a Final Four-or-bust program. And by that binary logic, the Longhorns were the latter.
Two players left the program midseason. The offense looked downright prehistoric at times, more plodding than potent, and at times utterly devoid of any sense of joy. No one knew exactly when to defer, when to take the reins, when to push, when to listen. All the chaos and uncertainty watered down the talent.
Still, Texas still managed to win 22 games, finish third in the Big 12 and win its first NCAA Tournament game since 2014. But that, Allen believes, was only the precursor to something greater, the Rocky training montage before the redemptive prize fight.
With three regular-season games remaining before the conference tournament in Kansas City, No. 8 Texas (22-6, 11-4) is chasing history. It's tied for first with No. 3 Kansas (23-5, 11-4) in the Big 12 race. A No. 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament is in play. Only the Jayhawks have more NCAA NET Quadrant I wins than interim coach Rodney Terry's plucky group of comeback connoisseurs.
Allen, now a fifth-year forward,
and the four remaining members of last year's team are all playing pivotal roles, marching hand-in-hand with Terry in the wake of Beard's midseason firing. And none of this would be possible without what transpired last year — at least that's what Allen told graduate forward Brock Cunningham recently.
“When I think about last year and this year, I think about two completely different situations,” Allen said Thursday. “Humbling yourself, knowing what you need to get better at. And just a moment of realization that you're not where you're supposed to be or where you wanna be. I said this to Brock the other day: ‘This year doesn't happen without last year.' Because none
of this greatness happens without last year's struggle, and last year was a struggle.”
The Longhorns did make some key offseason additions to combine with the returning Allen, Cunningham, graduate guard Marcus Carr, super senior forward Christian Bishop and senior forward Dylan Disu.
New Mexico State graduate transfer Sir'jabari Rice has been all guts and timely buckets off the bench, and he could make a compelling case for being the most transformative newcomer in the entire nation. Five-star freshmen Dillon Mitchell and Arterio Morris have both had their moments, and the veterans have helped sponge up much of the pressure that might otherwise be placed on their shoulders.
Sophomore Tyrese Hunter has been volatile offensively, but he's turbocharged the team's pace while playing stout perimeter defense all year long.
Everything — everyone — just fits better this time around. The joy is palpable, the camaraderie apparent. A sense of certainty permeates every possession — everyone knows their role and is eager to play it to perfection.
The team's handful of returners formed the bedrock, and without their maturity and leadership Texas could very easily have been devoured and spat back out in the brutal Big 12.
And while Saturday's trek to Waco to face two-time defending Big 12 champion No. 9 Baylor (20-8, 9-6) won't be a walk in the park, the Longhorns are confident
that they'll be able to focus and earn their first series sweep of the Bears since 2013-14.
“Our guys have done a great job of really understanding you can have this game with you for one night, win or lose, and then it's onto another elite-level team,” Terry said after Tuesday's 72-54 pasting of No. 23 Iowa State. “And we have an incredible challenge on the road. Kansas has had a great year, has a great team. But we're not playing Kansas right now, we're playing Baylor. And last I checked they won a national championship (in 2021) and they have an elite-level coach.”
Allen and the four other holdovers returned for moments like this. The newcomers have all adopted the same mindset.
There's a lot of basketball yet to be played, of course. But right now, Texas is right on track, everything it desired before this season began still within reach as February draws to a close.
“As good as we played in some moments (last year), we were all grinding to get better,” Allen said. “And now we're here. So I'm thankful. And I'm not naive to the fact that that was necessary to get here. But in that moment, it's a moment of being humble enough to look yourself in the mirror and get better. And we've done that. And we're not trying to have that feeling again, that's for sure.”