For Texas, it’s back to transfer portal
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Texas played its final game of the basketball season on Saturday night pretty much as it played almost all of them this year.
Now, after dropping a heartbreaking 62-58 loss to No. 2-seeded Tennessee and mentor Rick Barnes, Texas coach Rodney Terry can embark on the offseason preparations for next season knowing he faces a major rebuild. Here's a suggestion.
Find a shooter, Rodney. Then go find another one. A third wouldn't hurt while you're at it.
We're not saying the second-year head coach should go all-John Calipari and scour the landscape for every talented freshman he can find.
But it sure would help if Terry could lure a Dalton Knecht to Austin as he tried instead of seeing him go to Knoxville for a chance to be coached up by Barnes. Rumor was he was making $125,000 in NIL money at Tennessee.
If that's true, he's vastly underpaid because even though the Volunteers shot the ball even worse than the Longhorns, Knecht was the biggest portal prize of them all.
He became the SEC player of the year and, on a very sluggish night, still wound up with 18 points and four critical free throws in the last nine seconds to hold off Texas in the second-round Midwest Regional game.
The Volunteers made their last seven free throws.
There's no shame in falling to a No. 2 seed like Tennessee and scrapping valiantly to overcome a near-comical stat line of 17 mind-boggling turnovers – 10 by the starting backcourt of Max Abmas and the mercurial Tyrese Hunter – that almost sent the seventh-seeded Longhorns (21-13) to the Sweet 16 for the second year in a row.
But the hill was too steep to climb. Texas scored 56 points in Thursday's win over Colorado State in the opening round and then 58 in the loss to Tennessee. Those were the Longhorns' two worst scoring outputs of the season. Hitting eight threes in 37 tries in two
NCAA Tournament games won't get it done.
Terry deserved – and got – a ton of credit for keeping Texas from unraveling during the Chris Beard saga last season. And he deserves credit for reaching the tourney and winning a game against Colorado State this year.
But he also deserves some blame for not building a more cohesive lineup and deeper bench.
While the Longhorns' ball-handling and decision-making were hideous Saturday night, their defense was spot on, limiting the Vols to just 3-of-25 shooting from deep range.
And Chendall Weaver once more was the life of the party. No Longhorn brings more energy and spirit or plays harder. He's got a couple of more seasons of eligibility and could well be the heart and soul of next year's team once he works like crazy on his jump shot.
Dylan Disu is among the crowd departing. He leaves after a spectacular season-and-a-half. He improved by the minute and was a joy to watch despite injuries.
Texas is saying goodbye to three starters and its biggest role player in history in the feisty Brock Cunningham and maybe even more.
Junior-to-be Dillon Mitchell could leave (he drastically needs another year to work on his shooting range outside of dunks as well as his ball-handling). and Hunter might leave too after this erratic junior season.
When I asked Hunter after he put up 30 in the regular-season finale against Oklahoma, he said he was only concerned about the next game and the one after that. On Saturday night, he said he intends to test the NBA waters just as he did last year.
Terry needs to hit the portal and hit it hard. No, harder than that. Heck, before the first NCAA Tournament game tipped off this past week, 555 players already enrolled in the portal. Surely a few of those wouldn't mind playing in Austin and eating Tex-Mex at Matt's.
We assume general manager Chris Ogden has done his homework and Texas will put on the full-court press for some shooters. The portal opened last Monday in the most asinine timing of all since 68 coaches were busy preparing scouting reports and practices for, uh, rather meaningful games.
Yeah, like the actual NCAA Tournament.
But Terry needs to do a much better job than he did last offseason.
After inheriting the reins from the deposed Beard at midseason and taking Texas to the Final Four doorstep, he and his staff lost his entire recruiting class in two high-profile players. And while he didn't whiff in the transfer portal, he didn't exactly hit a home run, either. Call it a ground-rule double because he landed an elite scorer and volume shooter in the streaky Max Abmas – who tried that ill-advised fall-away jumper from the corner in the closing seconds Saturday to end his highly thrilling one Texas season – and Weaver, the hyperactive guard whose batteries never run low. The rest? Not so much.
As a result, the Longhorns were a .500 team in Big 12 play, finished seventh in the league and since Feb. 26 had a 7-8 record. They beat some very good teams like Baylor, Texas Tech and TCU, but had trouble winning at home and could never find that reliable third scoring option beyond Disu and Abmas.
So Texas' window has closed with this group carried over from last year's Elite Eight run. But that does't mean another can't open.
Terry had his share of detractors these last few months, but he's more than capable and just needs more talent to play on even playing fields.
He's got some coming in with three recruits, none more high-profile than Trey Johnson, the 6-foot-6 guard from Dallas and a McDonald's All-American. He's been Mr. Basketball in the state, led his high school team to a Class 6A state championship and scored more than 2,000 career points.
Texas could use points like that. And a few more out of the portal as well.