Texas men’s basketball enters the season looking loaded on paper and brand-new everywhere else.
The Longhorns have 11 new players, a transfer and recruiting class that ranks highly, and enough talent to make the roster look almost unrecognizable. What they do not have, at least yet, is the kind of continuity that turns raw ability into a finished product.
Head coach Sean Miller knows that better than anyone.
Asked by CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein whether the turnover in his short time on the job is a concern, Miller didn’t soften it.
“It does,” Miller said. “That’s never a good thing. We don’t aspire to have that in place every year.”
Texas already lived through the downside of a major reset last season. A new coaching staff had to piece together an identity on the fly, and the defense never really found steady ground.
In SEC play, the Longhorns gave up 80.83 points per game and finished 9-9 in the conference. The gap between that stretch and March was obvious, though.
In the three NCAA Tournament games Texas won, it allowed just 68.33 points per game.
Miller said that kind of growth simply takes time.
“No matter what we all try to do, as much as you like to get things perfect … it does take time,” Miller said. “Much of last season fell into that category where even if we were on the right track, we were the furthest thing from where we want to be.”
This year, Texas has at least one major advantage it didn’t have before: the coaching staff is intact. Miller and his staff are back for a second summer together, and he believes that matters.
“When you go through something a second time, it’s clear, it’s more straightforward, and I think you can implement a culture, implement a system (and) have a better feel and understanding,” Miller said. “Consequently, I believe that we, as a program, can make more progress through the summer months than we could have last year.”
Even with that edge, the roster still needs a lot of work to become a real team. Texas returns only four players from last season, so communication will be a daily job. The Longhorns have to figure out each other’s tendencies, settle into roles and learn how all the pieces fit inside Miller’s system.
That challenge gets trickier because the newcomers aren’t coming in empty-handed. Players such as sophomore guard Isaiah Johnson, junior forward David Punch and junior guard Mikey Lewis arrive after handling important roles elsewhere, while other additions come in as highly regarded recruits. At some point, that talent has to be sorted into something workable, because there simply aren’t enough minutes for everyone to get everything they want.
“Guys have to really buy into being a part of something that’s bigger than just their own goals,” Miller said in his interview with Jon Rothstein. “But it’s easy to say that in July and August.
(It is) much more difficult to be able to say that in February. Only five guys can start … we all have 200 minutes to give out; sacrifice is a big part of this.”
So Texas has the pieces. The question is whether they can become more than the sum of them.
If they do, last season’s Sweet 16 run might not be the benchmark. It could be the baseline.
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For Texas fans, the bigger backdrop may be how the rankings continue to shake out elsewhere in the sport, especially with Texas A&M tumbling out of the top 25 after a loss to unranked Kentucky. It is the kind of early-season turn that sharpens every debate about who is really built to stay near the top, and Texas is still the team sitting in the pole position for now. [Read more 🡒]