With just five days remaining until its season opener against Ohio State on Nov. 4, No. 19/19 Texas men’s basketball got ready for competitive play with two closed scrimmages against TCU and Colorado. 

The Longhorns first faced the Horned Frogs in San Antonio, leaving with an 80-52 win according to reports. The team was able to rotate around their players in the scrimmage, playing a 10-man rotation. 

The depth in the Longhorns roster is expected to be an advantage for the team, switching up their lineups based on the strengths of the team they play. 

“We’ve got different guys that on any given night could be our leading scorers,” head coach Rodney Terry said. “We are pretty deep and we do have a number of different guys that are interchangeable, guys that compliment one another very well, so with that we play a lot of different lineups.”

One player who made his way onto the 10-man rotation is senior forward Arthur Kaluma. After playing three years of collegiate basketball in two other conferences, Kaluma knows what a team is supposed to look like in preseason scrimmages to be successful in the season.  

“It looked like what it was supposed to look like,” Kaluma said. “Of course, we had some mistakes. It was our first scrimmage, but for our first scrimmage, it looked like what it was supposed to.”

Coming off of that first scrimmage, the team noted that they needed to do a better job of taking care of the ball, having turned the ball over to TCU around 21 times according to Terry. 

In their second scrimmage against Colorado on Oct. 27, the team was able to clean up that aspect of their game a little more. Terry reported Texas only had nine turnovers against Colorado with three at the half. 

“I thought we did a better job in our second scrimmage taking care of the ball than we did in the first one, which is again to be expected especially early in the year,” Terry said. “Learning the value of taking care of the basketball, making simple plays, and then at the end of the day just getting used to playing with each other.”

Another aspect Terry will work on is fouling. 

With a guard-heavy team, the Longhorns are aggressive defensively. While not wanting to tone down their energy on the court, Texas needs to clean up their game a little bit. According to Terry, in game one, the Longhorns gave up 31 free throws, while in game two, they improved to only giving up 22 or 23 free throws. 

“We have to just quit fouling, we can’t foul as much,” Terry said. “Getting your hands back and playing with your feet and not putting your hands on guys.”

Despite their mistakes, the team also looked connected and had high energy, specifically on the bench.

“I thought we had great bench energy … We didn’t have any guys moping around or pouting about playing time,” Terry said. “I thought everybody was really connected and locked in together in both of the scrimmages.”

Knowing what the team needs to focus on from the scrimmages, Texas is preparing for its first game in Las Vegas on Monday.