Gaze onto the court at Covington Middle School in southwest Austin on a Sunday afternoon, and you will see something a little strange: Ten fourth and fifth graders play a full-length game of basketball without dribbling.
Turns out the 69-game home winning streak that the Longhorns snapped two weekends ago at Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse was not the only major loss that occurred on the Lawrence campus in January.
COLLEGE STATION — As the few Longhorn fans at Reed Arena snuck down to seats directly behind the Texas bench, senior Gary Johnson turned around with a huge smile and responded to the “Texas Fight” cheers that echoed throughout the arena.
All the usual stars showed up for Texas on Monday night — Jordan Hamilton scored a game-high 20 points, Tristan Thompson added 10 points and five boards and Cory Joseph scored 11 — but for the Longhorns to win by 20, it took some atypical contributions from the team’s role players.
As he waited for his former college roommate Marcus Cousin to finish showering after Saturday’s 105-103 overtime win against New Mexico, newly acquired Austin Toros guard Aubrey Coleman stressed the importance of their relationship.
One of the many songs on the warm-up playlist blasting inside the Frank Erwin Center before basketball games is J. Cole’s “Higher,” in which he croons, “Come here, I’m about to take you higher.”
After taming the fast-paced Tigers, No. 7 Texas (18-3, 6-0 Big 12) faces a change of pace tonight at Texas A&M, which has the ninth-best scoring offense in the Big 12.
The biggest storyline of Wednesday’s game at Oklahoma State, aside from the touching tribute to the 10 killed in a 2001 plane crash, was Dogus Balbay’s defense.