Eight weeks — that’s how long Texas basketball head coach Rodney Terry had this summer to work with his rebuilt team.
“You’re fighting time when you’re putting the roster together like we all are right now in college athletics,” Terry said. “You’ve got to try to really instill in your guys over the course of the summer the importance of developing chemistry off the court.”
When building the team, the coaching staff first identified who was returning and then worked on finding players in the portal that complemented both the recruiting class and returning players.
Once the roster was built, the eight weeks of training began.
“We’re going to spend time on the court, but we’ve got to have good chemistry off the court,” Terry said. “And I think for us, we don’t try to force feed that. We try to let it happen organically. We try to have some older guys take some lead in developing that chemistry off the court.”
With 10 new members added to the roster, the team will be leaning on the experience of returning players such as sophomore guard Chendall Weaver, graduate student forward Kadin Shedrick and older transfers like guard Julian Larry.
“I say this to our team all the time, a coach can’t just anoint a guy,” Terry said. “He might have some expectations of some guys who could potentially be leaders. But really guys become leaders … if they’re about the right things off the court and on the court.”
Texas men’s basketball has a history of showing leadership off the court, rising above other sports programs at Texas in their involvement with the community.
Every year, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee has a competition between all sports programs at the University titled the Bevo Cup. Each program gets points for attending other sports competitions, participating in community service, earning a spot on the Big 12 Academic Honor Roll and attending student-athlete organization meetings.
This year, men’s basketball won the Cup.
With the development of team chemistry and their leadership off the court, the team has taken the right steps toward becoming successful this season.
“We still have a lot more time we need to spend here in the fall together on the court,” Terry said. “But I like what we’ve done (up) to this point right now.”
