SEC Hoops Preview: Texas Longhorns

Oct 18, 2024 | Uncategorized

Written By

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Previewing the Texas Longhorns Men’s Basketball team. Can Rodney Terry keep the momentum going.

Welcome to the SEC, Texas!

The destroyer of worlds like the Southwest Conference and a near elimination of the Big 12 Conference, the school that brought us the Longhorn Network to spite their Big 12 conference mates and sent schools like Mizzou and Texas A&M packing up for the SEC while Nebraska left for the Big 10 and Colorado bolted for the Pac 12. And all for what? To end up splitting up the pie evenly with Missouri in the end, in the Southeastern Conference.

Texas Basketball has always been one of those jobs where it feels like anything is possible, but breaking through never has. 38 trips to the NCAA Tournament but just one Final Four in the last 75-plus years. Three conference regular season championships in the Big 12 era but none since they shared the title with Kansas in 2008.

And entering a new league where the top of the order appears set, Texas looks like a team that can survive just outside the top tier or sink to the bottom of the middle tier. They’ll be good, but will they be good enough?

Previous SEC Previews

11. Mississippi State Bulldogs, 7-11
12. Vanderbilt Commodores, 7-11
13. Oklahoma Sooners, 7-11
14. Georgia Bulldogs, 6-12
15. LSU Tigers, 5-13
16. South Carolina Gamecocks, 5-13

Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Texas Longhorns

Last season: 20 – 13 (9-9 in conference) #25

The Masses Prediction: 8th in conference, 9.9 – 8.1

SEC Media Pick: 7th in conference

Analytics Average: 5th in conference, 17th overall

Austin American Statesman-Imagn Images

HEAD COACH: Rodney Terry | 3rd-ish Season, 43-21

I should note that it was officially 43-21 because Terry famously took over Texas midseason when Chris Beard was arrested and later fired in early January of 2023.

The university suspended Beard in December 2022 after an arrest on felony charges after his fiancee told police he strangled and bit her. Terry took over the same day, which also happened to be when the Longhorns were set to play Rice and sitting at No. 4 in KenPom. From then on, UT never fell below 10th in Pomeroy’s ratings and reached the Elite Eight.

The performance was enough to earn Terry the job full-time, and he opted to keep most of Beard’s staff in place. He also turned to the portal last offseason, but the revitalized roster struggled to a .500 finish in a loaded Big 12 Conference.

A former assistant for Rick Barnes, Terry revamped a struggling Fresno State program in his first head coaching job, including three consecutive 20-win seasons and an NCAA Tournament bid in 2016. Yet Terry might have erred in taking on a rebuild at UTEP, which got him back in the Lonestar State but at a place where success is rare.

His time in El Paso wasn’t a complete disaster. The Miners finished 126th in KenPom during the ‘21 season, a dramatic improvement from 240th when Terry arrived. But he took a nice payday to help Beard run the program he now helms.

Since firing Rick Barnes in 2015, the Longhorns have been mostly fine. UT tapped Shaka Smart as part of its reset, a match that brought a young and successful coach with a fun style to Austin. Yet it’s also a great example of how every coaching hire can be a tossup. Smart was there for six seasons, made three NCAA Tournament trips, and won zero games.

Feeling the heat, the Wisconsin native took a soft landing at Marquette, sensing the restless natives, and he’s been fantastic for the Golden Eagles.

Meanwhile, Texas thought they hit a home run with Beard, but his demons got to him before he fully realized his potential. The program has still connected to four straight NCAA tournaments, through the turmoil.

LOST PRODUCTION

% Minutes: 79.22% | 13th
% Points: 79.01% | 13th
% Possessions: 80.66% | 13th

Roster turnover might stand in the way of the Longhorns reaching the tournament for a fifth consecutive season.

Turnover is a reality today, but Texas saw churn among players who headlined the Longhorns. Some of that couldn’t be helped. Max Abmas, for example, saw his eligibility run out. So did Dylan Disu. Those departures sapped an elite on-ball creator and versatile defender from the rotation. Graduation also subtracted depth pieces like Ithiel Horton and Brock Cunningham.

But the bigger hits came when Tyrese Hunter and Dillon Mitchell jumped into the transfer portal. Hunter’s development stalled after the point guard transferred from Iowa State two seasons ago. Meanwhile, Mitchell, once a projected lottery pick, could never flesh out an efficient skill set on offense.

As a result, the Longhorns do not return a single player who played more than 50% of the minutes or averaged more than 8 points per game.

THE ROSTER

Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Out of necessity, Terry leaned hard on the transfer portal, assembling the 18th-best class, per EvanMiya.com.

Five of those transfers played at least 70% of minutes at their former homes, and each finished with an offensive rating north of 100.0. All of them averaged double figures, too. The top five members of Terry’s portal class combined to average 72.7 points. So, if the goal was to bring in reliable producers, Terry achieved the desired result.

Tramon Mark led Arkansas, using 19.6% of total possessions and managing a 112 offensive rating. Jordan Pope’s production at Oregon State might be more impressive, considering he didn’t have much help on a team that finished 13-19. Lastly, Arthur Kaluma has been a secondary option at Kansas State and Creighton.

If there’s a concern, it’s the depth of the interior. Kadin Shedrick has never played more than 51.9% of team minutes. That peak came when he suited up for a mediocre Virginia outfit as a sophomore. Jamie Vinson is the next player with size at 6-foot-11, but he was rated a three-star recruit. It’s hard to imagine a player like that stepping into big minutes. Ze’Rik Onyema has never been relied upon for big minutes, while four-star freshman Nic Codie is a more natural fit at combo forward. It would look like we’ll see our fair share of small ball lineups with Texas this year, which is why I’m bullish on Kaluma stepping into big minutes.

Oh, and by the way, Terry added one of the best freshmen in the country, dynamic playmaking guard Tre Johnson, one of the more likely one-and-done prospects in the country.

William Purnell-Imagn Images

Texas has one of the best-looking rosters if you’re checking in on the guards and wings. Kaluma is a consistent playmaking wing, and Tramon Mark is the same. The Indiana State transfers come from a system that prioritizes ball movement and should be able to handle working off the ball to support some very ball-dominant guards in Jordan Pope and Tre Johnson.

But while this talent level is intriguing, the lack of interior help coupled with this many ball-dominant players is a concern. When we worked up our transfer projections, which were initially done individually, we churned out a robust 90.1% of the minutes taken up by transfers alone. That’s without returning players and a top-five freshman. And 10% of the minutes equates to 20 minutes of game action. Last year, UT’s returners averaged roughly 41.6 minutes.

So, the adjustment and distribution of possessions are going to be tricky to watch. Checking in on EvanMiya.com and his BPR rating, Pope is a player who drags down a significant amount because he’s only had a passing interest in defense during his first two seasons. Mark, Kaluma, and Weaver grade out well defensively. So, someone will have to take shots, and someone else will have to play better defense.

There’s no middle in the non-conference schedule. The amount of sub-330 rated teams lined up for home games along with three Quad 1 games and a dicey four team MTE is the framework of a weird schedule.

The SEC also did Texas no favors on their entry to league play. Texas A&M on the road, Auburn at home, Tennessee at home, Oklahoma on the road, then Florida on the road? Texas doesn’t see a Quad 2 game until they host Missouri three weeks in. The landing is softer however. If Texas can keep their wits early, they can line themselves up to far exceed the modest expectations projected here.

THE RULING

Will this Texas roster be nothing more than a nice collection of parts, or can Terry blend them into an efficient offense machine with enough defense and rebounding to contend for an NCAA Tournament berth?

It’s easy to see recruiting wins like Johnson, Mark, Kaluma, and Pope and be wowed by the names and stars next to their names. But how do they fit together?

This season will be a very telling one for the future of Rodney Terry at Texas. Plenty of detractors look at his struggles at UTEP and point to the job in Austin as too much for him to handle. But it’s also worth pointing out that UTEP has primarily been a forgettable program for over 20-plus years. Since 2005, they’ve only qualified for two NCAA trips and none since 2010. The days of top 100 finishes are gone. While Terry didn’t do much to improve the situation, it’s also vastly different from the circumstances in Austin.

Texas has “capital R” Resources. Terry has also applied those resources to a talented roster.

The two (or three) keys worth watching are how they implement Pope and Kaluma. Each of the last two seasons under Terry, Texas has provided strong lead guard play. Two years ago, it was Marcus Carr. Last year, it was Abmas. They also had strong secondary options on the wing. Two years ago, it was Timmy Allen. Last year, it was Disu.

Neither year has they relied heavily upon solid post play. They also haven’t been heavy pick-and-roll teams. Pope used pick-and-roll on nearly 30% of his possessions, which is in the 80th percentile of usage. He’s used to being a strong lead guard, but he did so by running pick-and-roll.

Meanwhile, Kaluma and Mark don’t necessarily stand out as needing high usage to be effective. But despite being pretty good at it, Mark hasn’t been known for his spot-up ability. So how Pope and Kaluma are deployed will tell us a lot, along with how they fit with Johnson.

If Terry can manage all these personalities and play types together and get them to defend and rebound, Texas will easily be in the top half of the league and firmly planted back in the NCAA Tournament.

My Results: Texas Longhorns — 10th in Conference, 8-10

About the preview: a number of respected basketball bloggers were asked to submit one pick for the entire league schedule game by game. The game by game option allows us to account for the unbalanced schedule when addressing any kind of power rankings. Each set of picks are reflected in “the Masses” picks. Included in “the Masses” are various SEC media members who made picks at my request, as well as additional credit given to the analytics projections.

If you’d like to submit your picks, click here for the Google Form we used. If you want to know your results, send me an email.

Additionally, instead of relying solely on KenPom.com for the analytics site projections, we’re taking the average of the four main sites (EvanMiya.com, BartTorvik.com, Haslametrics.com, and KenPom.com) to give a closer consensus picture. These are weighted a touch for reliability.

The projections: This is new! In an attempt to be as accurate as we could be we increased the amount of analytics used to make individual projections which influenced how these teams slotted in order. Matt Watkins used an indepth method for projecting the entire SEC transfer list, we then mixed in EvanMiya.com’s BPR projections, and BartTorvik.com’s preseason individual projections to round out the expected production based upon how each coach routinely uses his rotations.

GLOSSARY

* – an asterisk denotes a walk-on player

GP – Games Played

%min – percentage of total available minutes played, does not account for time missed due to injury

%poss – percentage of team possessions the player is responsible for ending a possession, whether by making a shot, missing a shot not rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. For returning players this is noted as a percentage of total team possessions. For newcomers it was total possessions when that player was on the floor, better known as Usage Rate.

ORtg – Offensive Rating, similar to a points per possession but averaged out over 100 possessions. So it’s how many points a player would score if they were responsible for 100 possessions.

BPR – Bayseian Performance Rating, a single player efficiency metric created by Evan Miyakawa to determine both offensive and defensive impact when a player is on the floor.

PPG – Points Per Game, RPG – Rebounds Per Game, APG – Assists Per Game: All traditional statistics used to measure player production.

For newcomer player rankings, we used EvanMiya.com’ s rankings for transfers, and 247sports.com ‘s Composite Rating for Freshmen and Junior College signees.

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