For the Longhorns, recent seasons provide plenty examples for motivation and reminders of what not to do. Everyone on the Texas roster experienced last season’s extreme highs and extreme lows, and for the experienced players, that’s all they know on the Forty Acres. Until now.
Now, the Longhorns know they’re capable of doing something special, and we know it’s not just talk.
No. 4 Texas, off to its first 3-0 Big 12 start since 2010-11, delivered a stunning statement at Kansas and followed with a home win over Iowa State. We’ve grown used to expecting letdowns from Texas. That didn’t happen Tuesday night.
“We have like a one-game mentality type of mindset that we know with winning comes a lot of praise. A lot of, you know, high fives, and all that good stuff. But we also know how it feels to be on the other end having a roller coaster season,” said Matt Coleman. “Just keeping the mindset one game at a time. [We’ve] only played three games. You play everybody twice. We're going to see Kansas [again]. Haven't seen Baylor, Texas Tech… Oklahoma…so, we know that there are still games ahead of us. And you can't win anything right now. You can’t win a championship right now three games in.”
Instead, Texas took total control of the game after ISU’s initial first punch by responding with a bigger, meaner, more aggressive punch of its own, and confidently – at times overconfidently – kept its distance on the scoreboard. The familiar nervous energy and feeling of “here we go again” that so often descends from the rafters like Sting with a baseball bat was nowhere to be felt Tuesday night in an empty Erwin Center.
When Iowa State tightened the gap on the scoreboard, the Longhorns never played like a team that thought the outcome was in doubt. It wasn’t the same second half as Kansas when Texas kept the pedal to the metal and aggressively embarrassed Kansas in its own sacred gym. But it was the same in another way because it was different than we’ve seen from these Longhorns in the past.
“I think our guys definitely have more confidence to expect to win. I definitely felt that on Saturday our guys, our guys expected to win. And it's a fine line. I mean, as we like to tell the players as coaches, expect to win, but expect to do what goes into winning… largely our guys have done that,” said Shaka Smart.
Following the win at Kansas, Texas players, to the delight of their head coach, were first to bring up the embarrassment at Iowa State last season.
“100%,” responded Coleman Thursday afternoon when asked if Texas had put the win at Kansas behind it. “I feel like the media and everyone else talks about it more than us.”
They were probably first to bring up, after beating Iowa State, an even bigger embarrassment at West Virginia. But for these Longhorns, it isn’t just about delivering payback to Iowa State or West Virginia. This is years in the making.
“We owe everybody something,” responded Andrew Jones when asked if the team owes West Virginia for last year’s game in Morgantown. “We have a lot to prove. We want to let everybody know Texas is here. We're here to stay. And we want to continue to make statements game by game, day by day. We want to get back in the lab, prepare for West Virginia, and try to go up there and make a statement.”
The word “statement” has been used a lot by Texas players. In Asheville during the Maui Invitational, Smart said Courtney Ramey labeled one game as a statement game. And then he did it again, and again until Texas left with a trophy. These Longhorns want to make statements all year, and don’t underestimate what winning their first championship of the 2020-21 season did for their mentality moving forward.
“The fun all started when we were in Asheville. Just believing in ourselves. The day we got back in the summertime just looking to my left, looking to my right understanding that we have the guys to achieve something special this year. And we just want to keep playing for something bigger than ourselves; playing for something bigger than coach. We’re playing to win a championship for the University of Texas.”
Like its improved aggressiveness, mental and physical toughness and consistency, that understanding Coleman speaks of isn’t fake, which is a word that could too often be associated with past Longhorn teams. You can see it on the floor, especially when players communicate to each other and hold each other more accountable than ever before. And you can see it in the statistics, like the most consistent game efficiency scores since the start of 2009-10; improved rebounding, offensive possession pace, and free throw rate; and to this point, the best defense, statistically, Smart has ever coached.
Could Texas soon take some lumps in the Big 12? Sure. It could happen this weekend. West Virginia is going to test UT’s toughness and rebounding in a way almost every other team in the country cannot. The Longhorns will play back-to-back games against top 15 KenPom.com teams, have yet to play Baylor, and have, assuming the Big 12 reschedules the game at Baylor, 10 remaining games against national top 50 league opponents.
However, in the past, we would have already seen the wheels fly off before some sort of frightening crash. And there’s a distinct difference between an alarmingly poor performance and an occasional bump in the road during the Big 12’s gauntlet.
Perhaps the best way to say the Longhorns are different is by watching their energy, body language, faces and the way they carry themselves. The Longhorns aren’t trying to convince themselves they can win and can play a certain way. They know.
What the program has been preaching for years is finally finding its way to the court each night. Sometimes we see it for 20 minutes and sometimes for very close to 40. But each night we’ve seen it enough to say something we have been unable to for years: these Longhorns need to be taken seriously.
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