Smart hopes squad absorbs lessons
AUSTIN – On the night of April 4, Shaka Smart reclined in a mesh office chair inside a mostly barren office a few paces outside the New York Knicks locker room at Madison Square Garden.
In that moment, the Texas coach grappled with divergent emotions. Smart wanted to bask in the NIT title run’s success; he also needed to figure out how to tap that success and use it for next season.
During the preceding two weeks, Smart witnessed a psychological shift in his players. They were playing for pride, for each other.
After five straight victories, including an 81-66 triumph over Lipscomb in the title game, Smart understood this was the way forward. He just needed to figure out how to draw this out on a consistent basis.
“Well, we as a team have seven months and one day to figure that out,” Smart said that night. “That question right there is going to be what determines if we’re successful or not.
“I think for our guys, hopefully this tournament and this season overall can be something our young guys can really grab onto to understand the margin for error, the difference between winning and losing, it’s not really that big. That’s something we have to understand regardless of who the opponent is.”
All spring, Smart, his staff, and the nine Longhorns who remain from that title team spoke often of what occurred in this program from late March through the first few days of April. It was a tournament Texas never set out to conquer — as
Smart stated, the goal each season is not to make the NCAA Tournament, but to advance.
Still, those wins weren’t hollow. Far from it.
“Instead of me lecturing to the guys, it was really trying to get them to pull out what were the common themes during that time that allowed us to win five games, win an NIT championship,” Smart said Monday. “They did a good job of really pulling out the things that I would’ve pulled out.”
The first thing the players pinpointed was how critical it was that they, through that stretch, took ownership of the team, of the successes and, more importantly, the failures.
The senior leadership, especially from Dylan Osetkowski, was key. In a sense, his voice and presence resonated in a more powerful way.
The message never changed, just the delivery and the deliverer.
“It’s a lesson for me as a coach,” Smart said. “So what we’re trying to do is gain consistency in that way. It’s easier to do that over three weeks than it is over five months.”
The second major development throughout the NIT run was how the players struck a balance between respecting the opponent and entering each game expecting to win. It was a sort of humble confidence that flowed throughout each of the five wins.
It was apparent in a 58-44 semifinal win over a TCU team Texas had twice lost to in the regular season.
“That is critical for any team,” Smart said. “For our team, when our guys go out there on the floor we say all the time, hey, expect to win but also expect to do what goes into winning because it’s not just going to happen for you.”
The Longhorns’ biggest revelation was how much better the team performed when unified by camaraderie and pride.
For a couple weeks, the whole took precedence over the individual. Before that, it too often seemed the opposite.
“That allowed them to practice and enjoy what they were doing late in the year,” Smart said. “That allowed them to gain an appreciation for the little things we did, whether it was on or off the court. The key is carrying that over consistently over the course of a whole season knowing that there’s still going to be ups and down.”
At 6:45 a.m. Tuesday, the Longhorns will jog onto the practice court. There will be six weeks remaining until the Nov. 5 season opener against Northern Colorado at the Erwin Center.
Between now and then, Longhorns old and new will have to learn from the past in order to forge a better future. There can’t be another NIT run in this program’s future — that much Smart knows.
“Not making the NCAA Tournament hurt us, upset us, gave us more bad feelings more than anybody else. So we challenged their pride,” Smart said in April. “The guys really made a collective decision that they wanted to end this the right way.”
Texas has to ensure it starts this season the right way. The clock is ticking.