By Kevin Flaherty
FOXSportsSouthwest.com
January 28, 2011
The saying goes that if March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.
In the case of last year's Texas basketball team, the squad entered January like a lion and was a lamb by the time March started. The Longhorns tore through the early part of the college basketball season with a 17-0 record and a 3-0 start in Big 12 play, rising to the top spot in the country by blasting teams like Pittsburgh, Michigan State and North Carolina.
Then it all fell apart. The Longhorns dropped 10 of their final 17 games, with five of those losses coming by double digits. A team that looked like a sure-fire Final Four pick went out with a whimper in the first round against Wake Forest.
Texas coach Rick Barnes has mostly declined to discuss last year's results, while senior forward Gary Johnson was quick to point to a lack of senior leadership and poor chemistry in Texas's season-opening Media Day. Johnson also said that the team didn't handle its No. 1 ranking well, thinking that the players had already accomplished something and resting on their laurels.
Truth be told, the roster just seemed to combat itself. Dexter Pittman clogged up the lane, keeping a slick driver like Avery Bradley out. Damion James pushed Jordan Hamilton to the bench, where he seemingly chucked up shots at will. The rest of the group was a mix of the offensively challenged (Dogus Balbay, Justin Mason) and the defensively limited (J'Covan Brown).
In short, there was no fit. And last year's lack of fit has presented this year's Texas squad with the most damning conjunction that sports media can find: 'but'. In this case, it's used as: "Texas may be off to a great start, but look at what happened last year." People don't like to be wrong, and last year's Longhorn squad, which had writers and broadcasters going all-in at the start of January, certainly made those same prognosticators look silly by year-end.
"We don't like to talk about last year," said Balbay, a senior guard and leader this year. "But I think we learned a lot, and we are working to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Slowly but surely, those same people are starting to purchase stock in this year's Texas team, currently sitting atop the Big 12 at 18-3 and 6-0 in conference play. They're battle-tested, playing nine games against the Ken Pomeroy top 50, winning six of those contests. The Longhorns have won road games at Michigan State, Kansas and Oklahoma State, winning the latter two within a span of five days, and a semi-away game against North Carolina in Greensboro.
The Longhorns have been especially stout defensively, fielding the country's top unit in terms of both defensive efficiency and effective field goal percentage. Texas boasts arguably the country's top defensive backcourt in the country in Balbay and freshman Cory Joseph, have a player in 6-foot-6 Gary Johnson who can defend both the wing and in the post and have a big-time shot-blocker on the back line in Tristan Thompson. Jordan Hamilton has improved as a defender as well, while his role as the team's primary scorer is more in-line with this year's needs. Even the bench players
