Filed under: Kansas, Texas, Big 12
Texas coach Rick Barnes has come close to laying blame for last season's debacle of a finish, but the nurturer inside won't allow him to admit it.
The chemistry inside of the Longhorns locker room was all wrong a year ago and it started with then senior Damion James and his unwillingness to lead. But it didn't stop there, then there was big man Dexter Pittman, who just lacked any bite on the interior. There were also the out of control play of freshmen J'Covan Brown and Jordan Hamilton.
Barnes couldn't fix it so the Longhorns tanked. The Longhorns coach won't admit to that, but in offering an explanation between the differences between this season's team and last year's squad, Barnes does offer a subtle hint as to why Texas plummeted from a 17-0 start and a No. 1 ranking to an early exit from the NCAA tournament.
"The biggest thing has been our seniors and the way they've set the tone from the end of last season to where we are right now," Barnes said recently. "It's the way they go about their business. It's hard. It really is hard. Everybody makes it sound like leadership is something that is easy to get. If it were, we would never talk about it. But it's not as easy as you think sometimes.
"Sometimes you get caught off guard where you think you are really going to have it and it doesn't materialize the way you think it will and it's tough."
This season so far has been a bit of an oddity in the opposite direction since a Longhorns team that had little expectations to start the season has suddenly gained national attention. The 10th-ranked Longhorns are a surprising 15-3 and 3-0 in the Big 12 heading into Saturday's showdown against No. 2 and undefeated Kansas in Lawrence.
Texas is coming off its most complete and convincing win of the season, thumping No.11 Texas A&M, 81-60, Wednesday night in Austin. The Longhorns' 21-point margin of victory over A&M represented their third-straight 20-point victory in conference games.
The key to the impressive start seems to begin with team chemistry. Hamilton, who tossed up ill-advised shot after ill-advised shot last season has matured and become the Longhorns go-to player in his sophomore season.
The 6-foot-7 Hamilton is still jacking them up, as his team-high 50 3-pointers made would indicate, but he's making better decisions as the Longhorns' best offensive option. As a big guard, he leads Texas with 19.7 points per game and is second in rebounding with 7.1 per game.
Even Brown has broken from the perception of being aloof and hard to coach to really giving the Longhorns some scoring punch off the bench on a consistent basis.
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