 "Photo: Caleb Miller")
After Texas’ win over Stetson on Friday, head coach Rick Barnes wanted his team to fast break more often and show their speed.
Now that sophomore point guard Dogus Balbay has finally finished serving the final game of a 11-game suspension, Barnes may have found the speed he’s looking for.
“He’s going to go with it,” Barnes said. “He knows one speed and that’s full speed.”
After the long wait, Balbay will finally get to show this pace as he makes his collegiate debut for Texas (1-0) tonight against Tulane (1-0). Balbay, who hails from Istanbul, Turkey, was suspended by the NCAA for playing 11 games with a Turkey professional team before he enrolled at Texas, a violation of NCAA amateurism rules. Balbay was sidelined with a right knee injury last October and was forced to serve his suspension after he recovered from surgery.
Now that the issues with both his knee and his suspension are over, Balbay is finally getting his first-game jitters.
“I’m kind of nervous,” Balbay said. “You’re going to be nervous. This is my first college game.”
Balbay’s speed will come as a pleasant addition for the Longhorns. After the Stetson game, both Barnes and players labeled the offense “stagnant.”
“We didn’t get [any] movement on offense,” Damion James said. “We just [were] really looking forward to A.J. [Abrams] scoring instead of everybody being aggressive.”
Texas only managed three fast-break points, despite Barnes’ emphasis on the transition game, and only tallied two assists in the first half.
“We didn’t play at the speed or the quickness that we wanted to,” Barnes said. “I didn’t feel like we pushed the ball when we needed to in transition.”
Texas will look for Balbay to help speed up the offense, but the sophomore’s recent outings have been perhaps too fast for the 19-year old.
In the Longhorns’ closed preseason scrimmages against Gonzaga and Davidson, Barnes said Balbay struggled in finding a balance between playing too quick and playing too timid.
“He just needs to go from being the Roadrunner to something in between,” Barnes said. “[Against Gonzaga,] he went from being the Roadrunnner to being the turtle, and we don’t want that.”
“The first two scrimmages were kind of tough for me,” Balbay said. “I just need to run the plays.”
But Barnes is confident that Balbay has started to come around.
“I think he’s starting to realize it’s a different game,” Barnes said. “He’ll be all right.”
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