With nine new players, the Longhorns need time to gel on both ends of the court, but especially on offense.
Texas Longhorns head coach Rodney Terry could use a magic wand for Christmas, but would likely prefer not to wait that long.
In assessing the state of his team’s offense coming out of the season-opening 80-72 loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes on Monday in Las Vegas during which the Longhorns shot 25 percent from three-point range and struggled to produce around star freshman guard Tre Johnson, Terry mentioned multiple times that he doesn’t have a magic wand to instantly produce a more cohesive offensive attack with a roster that features six transfers and three high school signees.
“I wish I had a magic wand that we’re just going to click right off the bat in terms a new team and guys are playing the way we want to play offensively. I think that’ll evolve, and not only us, but many teams in non-conference play are going to experience a lot of the same kind of growing pains in terms of offense,” Terry said on Thursday.
There are certainly key points of emphasis for Texas after players settled for too many jump shots during crucial periods of the loss to Ohio State, which included a scoreless drought of 5:09 during the first half that consisted of four missed three-pointers and three missed jump shots.
“They’ve gotta learn how to work the game — hey, if I’ve taken one or two shots from the perimeter and we haven’t gotten that ball to the paint, we’ve gotta try to execute, get that ball to the paint in some form or fashion, a two-foot play with the drive, put it in the post with the post feed, or at some point, coach is just going to have to call a play that he wants to run and he’ll get the shot that he wants,” Terry said.
And it wasn’t that Texas players panicked on the court, but Terry thought that they pushed too hard to get the game back level all at once instead of working the game.
The Longhorns head coach doesn’t want his players to be robots and he wants to give them the freedom to go out and execute — no team is going to find success running set play after set play. Coaches don’t want to coach that way and recruits don’t want to play in that kind of offense.
Instead, Texas runs actions that are typical in the NBA.
“You’ve got to make reads, you’ve got to play out of it, and you’ve got to give guys a chance to flow and not be robots. And that’s really what we try to do from a from an offensive standpoint — we try to score early in transition if we can and then from that point, we flow into a pick and roll or direct hit or we get right into some form of motion or movement. But again, that takes time for teams to develop a really good chemistry and flow about themselves,” Terry said.
He expects the defense to be ahead of the offense right now, but the defense for the Longhorns was lacking against the Buckeyes, too. Sure, Ohio State hit some tough, contested shots at key moments in the game, but they also got too many easy looks from three-point range when Texas players had their hands down or didn’t recognize the ability of players to hit from well beyond the arc. For the game, the Buckeyes hit 14-of-28 three-point attempts, including 4-of-4 shooting for freshman guard John Mobley Jr. in his collegiate debut.
“We have to get better with our shooter defense,” Terry said.
Texas has some time to work through those growing pains with games against Houston Christian, Chicago State, and Mississippi Valley State before playing Syracuse in Brooklyn on Nov. 21.
That stretch starts on Friday with the home opener against the Huskies at 7 p.m. Central on SEC Network+. Houston Christian enters the contest at 1-0 after a 86-59 win over Avila (Mo.) during which four players scored in double digits, led by 18 points from guard Bryson Dawkins, who started his career at North Alabama before a stop in junior college.
Ranked No. 349 nationally in Bart Torvik’s adjused efficiency rating, Houston Christian only turned the ball over eight times, but shot just 25.7 percent from three-point range.
Texas is a projected 31.5-point favorite in the game.