Time for Texas to maintain poise in crucial contests
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s all set up for Texas, just like it was a dozen years ago. The Longhorns love their mix and they like their path, and whether he admits it or not, Sean Miller owes them at least a fraction of a second.
“I actually forgot about that,” Miller said Thursday, grinning as he recalled the afternoon in 2011 when time sped up on UT and then left the program behind for more than a decade.
Such is the luxury of winning. The game that hadn’t crossed Miller’s mind in ages has haunted those who follow the Longhorns ever since. And now that they’ve climbed their way back to precipice of something special again?
They hope they have something the last UT team with hopes this high lacked. Specifically, the poise not to let one bad break beat them.
“We don’t get frantic anymore,” Longhorns forward Timmy Allen said, and although he was referring to only the recent past, he might as well have been summarizing multiple chapters of UT’s basketball history.
On Friday in a Sweet 16 game at T-Mobile Center, the Longhorns will face a Xavier team led by Miller, who coached Arizona against UT in 2011. Back then, in a Round of 32 showdown in Tulsa, Okla., the whole affair turned on a controversial five-second call against UT’s Cory Joseph.
To this day, Longhorns who were there insist Joseph didn’t get his full allotment of time to inbound the ball. Miller, on the other, hand?
“I thought (the official) got the call perfect,” Miller said Thursday, drawing a room full of laughter. “Five-and-a-half (seconds) is what I had it at.”
It could be argued — then and now — that such minor discrepancies shouldn’t spell doom to a team good enough to play for it all. If UT does its job on Friday, one questionable call won’t keep interim coach Rodney Terry and his team from building on its championship vibes.
The last time a Final Four looked this close to the Longhorns’ grasp was that postseason in 2011, when Rick Barnes had almost everything going for him. Not only did his roster feature three future NBA guys — Joseph, Tristan Thompson and Jordan Hamilton — UT also could entrust lategame playmaking to J’Covan Brown, who Arizona could not stop.
Against the Wildcats in Tulsa, Brown got to the basket over and over again as the Longhorns erased a double-digit deficit, scoring 21 of his 23 points in the second half. After his last bucket put his team ahead by two, UT got a huge defensive stop with 14.5 seconds left. All the Longhorns had to do was inbound the ball and make a couple of free throws, and they were on their way to the Sweet 16.
That’s where things went haywire. Joseph, who later would become a Spur, couldn’t immediately find an open teammate and tried to call a timeout. But the official didn’t allow it, whistling him for a five-second violation and giving the ball back to Arizona.
Although replays clearly showed five seconds had not elapsed, there was no reversal coming. The Wildcats pulled ahead on a three-point play in which Derrick Williams flailed and flipped the ball into the basket while being fouled, and the Longhorns were sent home, to use Barnes’ word, “flabbergasted.”
Over the next dozen years, that’s how most of their seasons ended. They almost always had at least one NBA prospect, but continually found ways to fall short in March.
That might have happened regardless if UT beat Arizona 12 years ago. Still, Miller said he often marveled at how much can be defined in such a small snapshot of time.
“(If ) you don’t advance, sometimes you can really feel like a failure,” Miller said. “In that particular game (in 2011), it was on like a single moment that differentiated going to the Sweet 16 and not.”
The Longhorns never made it back there until this month, and their breakthrough came in a way that showed how they’ve changed. Last week against Penn State in the second round, they blew a second-half cushion, let the Nittany Lions go on a 10-0 run to take the lead with less than five minutes left, and looked ready to be “flabbergasted” all over again.
Instead, they responded with a 10-0 run of their own to pull away.
“Whenever there’s a point of adversity, we’re never trippin’,” Allen said. “We’re extremely calm. That’s something that hasn’t always been with us.”
And if it’s with them Friday?
Miller can keep his second. The Longhorns won’t need it anymore.