If today’s Zoom conference with Texas head coach Shaka Smart was any indication, the Longhorns are listening to an extremely competitive, energetic head coach prepping his team for tomorrow's contest against Iowa State (7:00 p.m. on LHN). At times, a borderline fiery Smart unintentionally delivered the media a pep talk for tomorrow’s game.
“I'll tell you what. We've had a lot of bad things said about us too,” responded Smart when asked how he keeps the guys levelheaded while people are writing and saying so many nice things. “I think our job is to understand who we are and who we want to be independent of what anyone else says about us. I think when you're going through tough times clearly, there's a lot of negativity that gets thrown at you. And it's very, very easy to internalize that as a coach, as a player. And then when you win a couple of games are you know some things go well… again, just the way it's like a mathematical equation: one plus one equals two. So, you're going to have some positive things thrown at you.
“To me, and this is why I'm not a huge fan of social media or any of that kind of stuff, you can't get high on one and then reject the other; like if you're into all the positive things that people are saying about you and that's making you feel good in terms of self-esteem and your own, you know self-worth, then you can't ignore the negative things that people say. And I think that's something as a young person that these guys have to go through and learn sometimes the hard way. But we got practice today, this afternoon. So, it's about us getting better and trying to improve on where we are. And then we've got a really good Iowa State team coming in here that played West Virginia extremely tough, played Baylor extremely tough, and is certainly capable of beating us if we're not at our best. So, we've got to focus on having that edge so that we can be our best.”
The last time Texas and Iowa State played Texas returned home after a disastrous 29-point loss. The Longhorns looked so bad everyone thought it signaled the end of Smart at Texas. Now, players were the first to bring up the last matchup as a point of emphasis heading into tomorrow’s game.
“I mean if you're a competitor it does,” stated Smart matter-of-factly before a long pause. “It helps me. I know that game is at the front of my mind. A long time has passed between that game and now. But again, if you're a true competitor then the last time you played someone or, you know, to me, the fifth to last time you played someone is in your mind. And so that's something that we talked about yesterday, and I'll give our guys credit. They brought it up. They brought last year up.
“So, it's good that that's something that's in their mind, but at the same time we had a seven to nothing I believe lead against them here last year. And then they came back and were leading for most of the second half. So, you can learn from all these games, and that's the thing for these guys again as young people is like, there are so many opportunities to learn and take lessons out of these situations if you're willing to just have the humility to the look closely and say, ‘what can I learn?"
Just before the press conference began, the AP announced its updated Top 25 poll, which ranked the Longhorns No. 4. It’s the highest Texas has been ranked since February 2011. A major emphasis point for Texas remains keeping its edge and playing with energy on defense, and that means not allowing a high ranking to change that...
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