State of the Program: Texas Longhorns

Rinse & Repeat

The Texas Longhorns ended Chris Beard’s first season by snapping a March Madness victory drought that extended back to 2014, which is a positive step for the program even if it didn’t live up to the preseason hype or Beard’s promise of being “a Monday night program”. A second-round exit felt like a fitting end for a team with as defined a ceiling as Texas had, and like 360+ other programs the Longhorns coaching staff spent their offseason trying to determine where they came up short, analyze how they could modify their approach going forward, and mine the recruiting/transfer options necessary to shore up their deficiencies. It appears that they kinda sorta addressed some of them (athleticism & potential for growth) and entirely ignored some others (three-point shooting & rim protection). They could have used the offseason coaching turnover (exiting: Ulric Maligi & Jerrance Howard) to bring in some fresh blood with interesting ideas on how to improve the offense, but they decided to focus on defense (entering: Brandon Chappell) and promoting from within (upgrading to business class: Bob Donewald). Time will tell if those coaching hires pay off in a better on-court product.

But before we get to any of that, we need to address the gun-waving elephant in the room.

Arterio Morris

He shouldn’t be on the team. At the bare minimum, he should be suspended indefinitely. For those who are unaware, Morris was arrested in early June and charged with misdemeanor assault. The story didn’t really surface anywhere until mid-July when his ex-girlfriend posted a series of photos & videos on her Instagram account.

Austin Massey @austinmassey247

Arterio Morris, a 5-star recruit and Texas signee, has been accused of physical abuse by his ex-gf. According to her post, Morris was previously arrested for a physical dispute with her and his family/HS coaches pressured her to drop the charges due to Morris’ “NBA aspirations”

In addition to what was captured above, the posts showed a series of threatening text messages and a video of him flashing a gun at the camera with a threatening message caption. Some in the pro-Morris camp tried to play off the gun video by saying that video recording was from two years ago, but if your best defense is “no that was an entirely different time he threatened someone with a gun” then maybe you need to rethink your angle. I’m not a lawyer or anything, I’m just someone not personally invested in Morris getting paid to play basketball and I think maybe you should workshop that explanation a smidge.

The thing is, when the Instagram stories went public, Morris had been practicing with the team for several weeks. Beard and the program had nigh on a month & a half to figure out how they were going to handle it and they basically just whistled past the graveyard for as long as possible. They’ve done the requisite ‘we’re letting the legal situation play out’ PR nothingburger and are hoping they can get Morris on the court without people questioning it too much, all the while talking about how much effort they’re putting into building a culture at Texas. Which, I guess technically they are, it just seems to be one where the only thing that matters is wins. Maybe I’m in the minority here, but as much as “uniting a family” is about having each other’s back, it’s about holding each other accountable for your idiot behavior. I’m sure if he’s ever pressed on it, Beard will bring up how he’s a father of daughters and he respects women too much to yada yada yada, his defense of this decision is as predictable as his offense.

This is the third instance I can find of Beard dealing with a player who had a domestic violence/sexual assault allegation, and while I’m not so much concerned with the number of incidents on his teams - when you are in charge of this many young men over the years, it’s basically inevitable you’re going to have some of them act like idiots off the court - I am concerned with how he’s handled them. Deshawn Corprew was suspended by Beard but only after his hand was forced because a Title IX complaint was filed to the university. Chris Clarke was suspended by Virginia Tech for the year because of a marijuana possession charge, but it was an open secret in Virginia Tech circles that the pot charge was the cover Buzz Williams used to suspend Clarke for assaulting a woman without it showing up in a Clery report. (Do you really think a basketball player is going to miss an entire season for weed? Is it 1985 where you live?) Beard slid into Clarke’s DMs while he was suspended and recruited him to Tech. (The most charitable reading is that Beard didn’t properly vet Clarke rather than simply not giving a shit about what he did, but I find it difficult to believe Virginia Tech bloggers knew about the assault allegations and Beard did not.) Now there’s Morris, who hasn’t so much as run an extra wind sprint and there’s an arrest warrant & a literal video of him threatening a woman with a gun; three incidents is a small sample size so maybe things change going forward, but the actions to date do not paint Beard’s handling of DV/assault issues in a friendly light.

Also - and I know this isn’t the most important part of this story - but he’s doing all of this for a guy who is probably a backup point guard this year. The arrest happened after Tyrese Hunter committed to Texas - so at that point the math said Morris isn’t starting over Hunter & is at best platooning with Carr - and Beard still spent 6 weeks refusing to make eye contact with the freight train of potential negative consequences coming down the tracks because either Beard didn’t care about the consequences or he thought he was too bulletproof to be impacted by them. It’s one thing if you’re ignoring Morris’ heinous actions because he’s the next Trae Young, I can cynically understand the impulse even if it’s still the wrong thing to do, but he’s going to the mat for a backup who - given the history of top-50 recruits under Beard, not to mention the general nature of the transfer portal - may be gone in a year. I can’t help but be reminded of the beginning of the Tom Herman tenure when he decided to bring in Briles-truther Casey Horny as an analyst & burned considerable political capital keeping him on staff; at a certain point, you’re burning matches you may need down the road when you’re not living up to your promises, and you’re doing it for this guy? Everything about this decision is entirely avoidable, it’s like there’s nobody around Beard telling him to take the long view. Maybe it’s as simple as he came from a university which allowed their coaches to skate on tons of shit until they were caught by reporters, and he expects the same latitude at Texas. Regardless, it stinks.

This should be plainly evident but I’ll go ahead and say it: this is a basketball court, not a court of law. There’s no due process beyond what the program and the university say there is, there’s no innocent until proven guilty standard for playing basketball. All of this is entirely under Chris Beard’s control, he can suspend/eject Morris at any point in time he so chooses. Morris continuing to be on the team is the choice Chris Beard has made. Well, that’s not entirely true; Chris del Conte could exert some control if he cared, which he doesn’t appear to at all. CDC shouldn’t escape the bacterial infections from the Shamu Smith & Wesson Splash Zone, he has a say in how this goes down. CDC hired this guy, he can tell Beard to suspend Morris & save himself - assuming the Texas beat writers actually ask them, there were zero Arterio questions at Big 12 Media Day - some uncomfortable questions. Let’s check in on how that accountability process is going.

The Corral @TheCorralUT

Yeah, I think our guys had some fun tonight 🫡

I’m sure he’s learning a valuable lesson about the consequences of assaulting women in between rapping with teammates at a school-backed function. Hell of a culture Beard & CDC are building. If only there was an example of a Texas basketball player being suspended for a domestic violence situation, that would be really handy. Alas.

*touches finger to ear*

Oh right, there is: Martez Walker.

Back in 2014, Martez Walker was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend in her dorm room. He was suspended from the team in a matter of hours and barred from campus; a week later he was arrested again for returning to the dorm room. He was kicked off the team not long afterwards. There was a public statement from Rick Barnes denouncing Walker’s actions, as well as a statement from then-UT president Bill Powers. God, if only Chris Beard had ever met or knew Rick Barnes well enough to call him and ask him how he should handle the Morris situation, that would surely be useful right now. Alas.

*touches finger to ear*

Texas Men’s Basketball @TexasMBB

Fireside Chat with the legendary @RickBarnesUT Excited to honor him at the game on Saturday! 🤘 #UniteTheFamily x @ChrisBeardUT

Oh.

P.S. here’s how another school is dealing with a freshman facing assault charges:

Corey Crisan @cdcrisan

JUST IN: Dior Johnson has been suspended indefinitely from the Pitt men’s basketball program.

Huh, so it is possible in the year 2022 to suspend a freshman basketball player for assault charges. Who knew?

Anyway, let’s move onto something that actually keeps Chris Beard up at night.

Perimeter Shooting

Despite games like Virginia Tech (10-19), at West Virginia (8-16), and at TCU (8-18), last season Texas as a team was below-average shooting the three. They ranked 215th out of 358 teams, or worse than ~60% of D-I behind the arc and their three best perimeter shooters - Andrew Jones, Courtney Ramey, & Jase Febres - all left the program. Beard and crew knew this was coming, and given their willingness to use the portal they came up with…Tyrese Hunter & Sir’Jabari Rice. Both of these men are fine basketball players and I think they will contribute to Texas winning games down the road, but let’s take a step back and look at the macro here. There is currently one player on the Texas roster who has a college three-point shooting percentage above 33% - the mark where shooting a three is roughly equivalent value of shooting a two at 50% - and it’s Rice, who is shooting 34% lifetime. For reference: Andrew Jones was lifetime 35%, Jase Febres was 36%, and Courtney Ramey is 37% pending whatever he does at Arizona. You could accurately describe all three of them as streaky three-point shooters, and any one of them would be the primary perimeter threat if they were at Texas right now. This is a team bereft of snipers, and a fair number of them are more trebuchet than rifle to date.

I want to focus on Tyrese Hunter a bit here, as I suspect a lot of people are pinning hopes on him becoming a better perimeter shooter this season. For one, it’s a fair suggestion; many freshmen become better shooters in their sophomore years. The question to me is ‘how much better’, because a lot of Texas’ offensive hopes rest on Hunter’s progression. This is the point at which I bring up Buddy Hield again, who is arguably the gold standard for freshman-to-senior progression as a shooter. (It is an unfair example as comparing anyone to Hield is tough, but roll with me for a moment.) Here are Hield’s stats from deep each season:

2013: 19-80 (23.7%)

2014: 90-233 (38.6%)

2015: 93-259 (35.9%)

2016: 147-322 (45.7%)

Tyrese Hunter’s freshman season at Iowa State was 37-135 (27.4%). He made roughly 20% of his threes in a single game by going 7-11 from three against LSU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, which says he could hit at a higher rate but there are so many variables involved - ISU’s slow offensive system, their lack of other shooters, their…hang on, maybe it’s not so far off. I don’t know that it’s fair to peg a 15 point year-over-year jump in shooting efficiency on a ball-dominant point guard who works hard but isn’t the gym rat that Hield was, but let’s just say for the sake of argument Hunter manages half of that. That puts him at ~35% give or take, which is solid but doesn’t really solve Texas’ perimeter problems. Hunter is generally better used penetrating/creating and drawing in the defense to open up spot-up shots for players like Rice & (believe it or not, and if you don’t then buddy you give me a better option) Brock Cunningham, who hit 47.8% in limited opportunities last year once he ditched the side-spin shot he rolled out the two years before. As much as I enjoyed watching somebody try to invent the first three-point slider in real time, it’s probably for the best Cunningham isn’t using a Houston Astros reliever’s worth of tar on every shot any more.

So if Hunter is the creator - and logic says that if he’s the primary ball-handler then he’s supposed to create - that leaves the rest of the team to hit threes. Does anybody on this team scare a Big 12 defense from deep? Not really. Maybe Carr flourishes off the ball and pushes his make percentages a couple points higher, but it would be unwise to expect something higher than 36% or so given he’s only cracked that number once in his career thus far and he’s now 23 years old. I suspect conference play is going to feature a lot of teams going under screens and daring Hunter/Carr/whoever to pull the trigger, if they go off then Drew/Self/whoever will tip their cap to the player and move on. There will probably be a few games where Carr/Hunter/Rice get hot from deep and help Texas win, but I’m guessing there will be at least as many games where Texas is rocking a sub-25% three-point shooting percentage in a loss. I’m going to mention again that I would have preferred seeing Texas go after Isiaih Mosley from Missouri State (career 40% from deep, 66-160 last season) over Rice. He ended up at Mizzou instead.

Rim Protection

Let’s get this out of the way: the Texas defense should be very good this year. One of the many consistencies of a Chris Beard team is that they defend well; regardless of what a Texas Tech fan would have you believe, Chris Beard does actually know how to coach a defense without Mark Adams. (And yes, Tech’s defense was better than Texas’ defense last year. Mark Adams is excellent at coaching defense, this is no shade at him.) One of the reasons Beard went after Tyrese Hunter is his defensive prowess, and Hunter should be a stout defender at the point of attack. Having said that, one of the things that a truly elite no-middle defense needs is an elite rim protector. As much as Jarrett Culver was the heart of the Tech team who made a very deep run in the tourney, it was Tariq Owens lurking as a help defender/shot eraser which made their tourney run possible and their defense historically elite. They allowed 84.1 points per 100 possessions - the lowest season average in KenPom’s 20-year database - in part because on the few occasions when a defender got to the rim Owens was there to block/alter/deny their shots. His 12.1% block percentage was 11th best in D-I, last year Texas had nobody like that. Christian Bishop was less than half as effective at blocking shots with a 5.5% block rate, which is a solid rate unto itself but not what Texas needs to take the next step defensively. There were several options in the transfer portal which could have helped here, but one in particular caught a lot of attention: Osun Osunniyi of Saint Bonaventure. His block percentage last year? 12.1%. Texas didn’t really pursue him (or any other high-level shot-blocking bigs, I don’t personally think Kenneth Lofton or Fardaws Aimaq qualified but you may think differently) and he ended up at Iowa State instead. Texas got bullied by high-level bigs multiple times last year, be it David McCormack or Eddie Lampkin or all 14 Purdue bigs that saw the floor against Texas; they didn’t really do anything to address this in the off-season. Texas will still be good defensively, but they will be at a disadvantage against teams with sufficient size just as they were last year. Maybe it will be somewhat ameliorated by the people in front of Bishop/Disu/Allen denying entry into the paint, but teams who can get the ball in the paint will cause Texas significant problems. In the time you’ve read this section, Drew Timme has scored 9 points & Moussa Cisse has grabbed 6 rebounds.

Non-Conference Schedule

There has been an interesting evolution in scheduling over the past few years; for a long time the non-conference schedule was basically up to individual coaches to sort out. They would start hitting each other up in early summer and work out a basic schedule with the help of their athletic department, but it was mostly their call who they played. Over the past few years though, it has changed; between the rise of the conference battles - think the Big 12/SEC challenge - and the increase in number of multi-team events (MTEs) which fall under the domain of specific networks, a schedule which was once ~45% at the discretion of the coach is now closer to 30%. The slide might not be done, either; The Athletic has an interesting article showing the demands of scheduling in an ever-larger Big Ten and how the non-con portion of their schedule may be shrinking as the size of the conference continues to expand. Where a coach like Barnes had 13-14 games to fill, Shaka had ~11; this year Beard has 8, but will be more like 9 when the Gonzaga home-and-home previously agreed to prior to his arrival concludes.

Why do I bring this up? Because the 8 games Beard scheduled fucking suck & the 1 that didn’t fucking suck (Arkansas as an exhibition) doesn’t even fucking count.

Gonzaga? Not his call.

Creighton? Not his call.

Illinois? Believe it or not, not his call.

Stanford? Would you believe me if I told you: not his call.

Tennessee? Brother, it was definitely not his call.

Last year, Texas’ non-conference schedule ranked 343rd in KenPom and that was with Gonzaga, Seton Hall, Stanford, & Tennessee in the mix. The worst KenPom ranking under Shaka was 187th (2020) and the worst under Barnes - which includes every year from the ‘01-’02 season on - was 234th (2015). Beard is breaking new ground in cupcake collection and there are no signs it is slowing down. Shaka Smart played 17 non-conference teams ranked below #200 in KenPom over the course of 6 seasons; Chris Beard played 8 sub-200 teams last season and there are 5 more on the schedule this year (with two others at 177 & 189). Beard is tripling the number of patsies per season because that’s what he does; he did it at Tech and he’s doing it here. Most people won’t notice or care because all they see are the Gonzaga/Creighton/Illinois/Tennessee games, but his schedules are low-key dog shit.

Look, I don’t expect a coach to schedule a murderer’s row where every game is against Duke or Kentucky. I know there needs to be some easier games, especially because the Big 12 has none. All I’m asking is for him to go pick some plucky mid-majors and/or smaller Texas programs who are actually decent & swap them into things and everybody’s happy; replace UT-RGV (331), Arkansas Pine-Bluff (361), Texas A&M-Commerce (307), & Northern Arizona (261) with Grand Canyon (96), Wofford (147), North Texas (67), & Chattanooga (149). That would raise your profile by 100+ spots, and add in some Q2/Q3 wins which helps in March, because isn’t the whole point to build the best tournament resume possible? Stop scheduling like a football coach who can’t afford a loss, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

(Side note: what the hell is going on with the Gregory Gym game? They’re putting it on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend; I thought this was supposed to be about getting the students involved. Beard said students would be the priority this year as recently as August, but a press release in early October said only 500 of the 3500 seats are for students. I guess somebody finally did the math; are students supposed to skip going home to watch checks notes UT-Rio Grande Valley? Who is coming up with this shit?)

(SIDE SIDE NOTE: Can we please honor Jimmy Blacklock with a better opponent than Arkansas Pine-Bluff?? He was the first full-time African-American basketball player at Texas and you’re naming a ‘classic’ - again with the fucking classics! - in his honor by beating the bejesus out of one of the worst D-I programs in America? The dude played for over a decade with the Harlem Globetrotters, does Beard think he’s honoring Blacklock by bringing in the college equivalent of the Washington Generals? You just proved you have Eric Musselman’s phone number, bring in actual Arkansas.)

Somebody please make me the czar of Texas scheduling, I promise you’ll get a better TV product out of it. It may not matter this year because Moody will be brand new & packed, but when Beard is in Year 4 and still scheduling Texas A&M satellite campuses it’s going to show up in empty seats at the arena.

Recruiting/Roster Building

One of the more interesting things about what Beard is doing now is happening with how he’s building his rosters. In the post-tourney review, I talked about two different paths forward for Beard & his staff that basically broke down along the lines of “go young and take your lumps” or “keep shoveling transfers into the furnace”. It appears this class, he’s trying to split the difference. He brought in 4 freshman via recruiting (Dillon Mitchell, Ryan Brumbaugh, Wavey McGunFace, Alex Anamekwe) and supplemented it with 2 transfers (Tyrese Hunter, Sir’Jabari Rice) but one of his transfers (Hunter) was an underclassman. Hey look, the recruiting class of 2021 has a member again! #JaylonButNotForgotlon

I don’t know how many of these players Beard can hang onto for more than a couple of years, and his current recruiting targets for 2023 & 2024 are all high 4 or 5-star recruits so it seems like he’s not doing a lot of mining for the 3+ year players that tend to be the backbone of successful programs not named Duke or Kentucky. Either Beard thinks he’s going to battle Duke/Kentucky for the soon-to-be-disappearing 1 & dones or he’s falling prey to the same “kid in a candy shop” shit that Shaka did his first couple of seasons on the 40 Acres. The counterpoints to this are Rowan Brumbaugh & Alex Anamekwe, who seem in theory much more like a player who would stick around and provide some roster stability for a program that is experiencing relatively little right now. As of yet, it doesn’t appear that Beard is pursuing more of these types. I don’t really get what Beard is doing, I guess. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s just…haphazard, like somebody walking into a dealership and throwing down offers on all the most expensive cars in the lot without much regard for how it will fit with his lifestyle. His recruiting plan doesn’t have the same cohesion as somebody like Bill Self or Jay Wright, or even Tony Bennett. There may be a grand design I’m missing, or maybe he thinks if he has enough talent on hand then the inefficiencies of his offense won’t matter, which…honestly, there are worse ideas out there. Dean Smith got elite athletes to play a Four Corners offense and won big with it - albeit in a world where early entries to the NBA and transfers were relatively rare - so it can be done. Maybe if Beard had a history of molding his systems to fit the talent on hand then I would be more predisposed to think this method would optimize the recruiting targets, but if he’s just going to shoehorn a bunch of 1-year, 5-star elite athletes all into a low-possession motion offense then…well, good luck I guess?

At the end of the day most D-I programs with title aspirations have some combination of elite high school talent and veteran players, few teams full of lottery freshmen starters ever make the final weekend. When you consider that there is only space for 2-3 of those lottery-laden teams - maybe fewer when the 1&D rule dies in the next couple of years - then talent acquisition of the non-lottery variety becomes more important. Even more important than that is managing some semblance of roster stability; every program is going to have some turnover, but minimizing the turnover can help build the foundation of a ‘Monday Night Program’. Kansas had 5 players who were on campus for at least 2 years & the two lynchpins of their title run spent 4 years in Lawrence, and they beat a UNC team with 4 2+ year major contributors. Baylor’s title team had 6 significant contributors who were in Waco for 2+ years. As much as a guy like Zion Williamson or Chet Holmgren is an invaluable asset to have for one season, the titles are won with some form of long-term roster stability sprinkled with new additions. (This should have been the 2020-2021 Longhorns, alas.) Texas does not yet have that under Beard, though it may eventually if he learns to minimize the churn.

One thing I do want to give the staff credit for is that this shift in recruiting does at least provide the possibility of the team’s ceiling being raised as the year goes on; Beard’s first Texas team had a ceiling practically cemented in place from the first day because he went after a bunch of high-level transfers who had all maxed out their games. Basically everyone incoming this year other than Rice has significant room to develop - even Threatens Von Texts if he goes to anger management counseling - so if Beard and crew continue to go this route of more HS recruits/younger transfers there is a chance one or more of his upcoming teams could get significantly better as the season progresses.

Summary

I know I’m being very negative about a team that’s probably going to win 18-20 games in the regular season, hover in or around the edge of the top-25 most of the year, be a 6 or 7-seed in the NCAA Tournament, and probably win another game in the tourney. It’s just that it all feels like Groundhog Day; they’ll be solidly adequate offensively against most teams while draining the clock like it’s Conrad Hilton’s inheritance, very good defensively against most teams, beat the tar out of 8 or so terrible non-con teams while losing most of their premiere non-con contests, win maybe 1 of 4 games against Kansas & Baylor, and probably lose in the round of 32 in March. Somebody will transfer early (hopefully not Brumbaugh or Anamekwe) and the team will hit generally the same ceiling it did last year. Which is the same ceiling most Beard teams have, because the average season for Beard teams is basically what I described above, finishing around 4th or 5th in the conference with a very good defense and soul-draining offense. This has been roughly what his teams have been 4 of his 6 seasons in the Big 12.

Do I think they’re as overrated to start this season as they were last season, nope. Will this be as bad or painful as the 11-22 season, absolutely not. Will it be interesting to watch….maybe? Maybe they will prove me wrong, I would be very happy to see Texas come out and run a crisp offense that pushes the pace and enables players like Mitchell & Disu to thrive in transition. I’d enjoy seeing Hunter & Mitchell reliably in a proper PnR where Hunter can lob the ball up for a rim-running Mitchell. If Texas can unlock the next evolution of Tyrese Hunter and put Marcus Carr in the spots where he can be the most productive, maybe this team will go farther than I currently expect. Maybe we’ll be fortunate to get a team more like the 2 best years at Tech than the 4 Tech/Texas seasons referenced earlier.

Next up:

October 27th: Let’s Talk about the Big 12, 2022 Edition

then

uhh, no idea