KANSAS CITY — A few days ago, Texas coach Rick Barnes turned to one of his assistants in practice and made a bold prediction about the 2011-12 season. Well, kind of. “We’re going to be good at something — at least one thing,” Barnes told him. “I’m just not sure what it is yet.” There are indeed plenty of questions surrounding a Longhorns team that had three players — Tristan Thompson, Jordan Hamilton and Cory Joseph — selected in the first round of last summer’s NBA draft. Six of the nine recruited scholarship players on Texas’ roster are freshmen, and there appears to be a serious lack of depth in the paint. Still, if Barnes is searching for a team strength, it may be a safe bet to look in the backcourt, where highly touted freshman point guard Myck Kabongo will team with junior J’Covan Brown , who is easily the team’s top returning player. Barnes said Kabongo has all the tools to become the next great point guard for a program that has produced standouts such as T.J. Ford and D.J. Augustin. “He’s somewhere in between those two,” Barnes said of Kabongo. “He’s extremely fast like T.J., but T.J. would pace his game. Myck is a more full throttle. Forget the cruise control. He’d be great this weekend at Talledega. He can beat everyone down the floor with the ball, but he’s going to learn to change his pace from time to time so our team can get into a flow.” As much as he needs him to excel with the ball in his hands, Barnes is also counting on Kabongo to assume a leaderhip role for a squad that also lost senior forward Gary Johnson along with the three draft picks. That’s fine with Kabongo, who played high school ball for hard-nosed coach Dan Hurley at St. Benedict’s Prep. “He got me ready, mentally,” Kabongo said of Hurley. “Some of these [freshmen] have never been at schools where coaches are going to get after them every day. That’s what Coach Barnes does. I just let the young guys know, ‘You can’t take it personal. It’s part of the game. You’ve got to be coachable.
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Mature Myck Kabongo will lead young Texas
Filed under Basketball by on Oct 21st, 2011. Comment. 
Our friends at The Mag are previewing one high-profile school per day for their Summer Buzz series . For the sake of all that is synergistic, yours truly will be attempting the same, complementing each comprehensive preview with some analytic fun. Today’s subject: Texas . It’s safe to say Texas fans did not see this offseason coming. During the NCAA tournament, forward Tristan Thompson made a convincing case that he indeed planned on returning to school. Small forward Jordan Hamilton followed suit. Let’s take a trip down memory lane : “I’m coming back another year,” Thompson said repeatedly in the Texas locker room at BOK Center, where the team was going to practice in preparation for its Sunday round-of-32 game against Arizona. “I’ve already signed up for summer classes.” “I’m coming back next year,” Hamilton told the Austin American-Statesman. “I think we will have a great team.” Texas officials cautioned that one or both of the players could change their minds and opt to enter the draft. Those Texas officials sure were prescient. When Thompson found himself rocketing up draft boards, he quietly reversed his decision and entered the NBA draft. When Hamilton saw that a handful of highly ranked players — Harrison Barnes , Jared Sullinger and Perry Jones would all have been selected well ahead of the Longhorns sophomore — decided to stay in school, Hamilton leapt at the chance to boost his draft stock. In retrospect, these decisions weren’t shocking. Players say what they say during the season, but when the NBA comes calling, you have to listen. Fair enough. No, the true shocker came when guard Corey Joseph — a solid but unspectacular point guard who had a solid but unspectacular freshman season — declared his intentions to join Thompson and Hamilton in the NBA draft. Even more shocking? It worked out. (Which is to say, it worked out until the NBA lockout got so serious. Sigh.) Joseph was drafted by the best franchise in the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs, and Texas coach Rick Barnes added another three first-round picks to his long résumé of Texas-borne pro talent. (One quick fun fact: Hamilton and Joseph’s selections marked the first time two Canadians had been selected in the first round of the same NBA draft.) But happy as he surely was to see his three players achieve their lifelong dreams, Barnes couldn’t celebrate for long. Hamilton was right: If everyone came back, the Longhorns would have had a great team. But everyone didn’t come back. Basically, everyone left. And that has made life suddenly quite difficult for Barnes and his staff. Of course, it’s not as if the Longhorns won’t be talented. Texas is a recruiting powerhouse, and the arrival of Myck Kabongo, the No. 2-ranked point guard in the class of 2011, will immediately make up for (and perhaps eclipse) the loss of Joseph to the NBA. J’Covan Brown will be an excellent scoring two-guard, and incoming freshman shooting guard Sheldon McClellan should be able to contribute minutes right away. In other words, the Longhorns’ backcourt should be just fine. The frontcourt is an entirely different story.
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Summer Buzz: Texas Longhorns
Filed under Basketball, News by on Aug 19th, 2011. Comment.
Here’s the thing about the upcoming college basketball season in the Big 12. Not only will it be tighter and tougher than ever — the realignment defections of Colorado and Nebraska saw to that — but it also looks set to be the most wide-open race the league will see in years. There is no clear favorite. Baylor, arguably the most talented team in the conference, disappointed in nearly every way in 2011. The team with the most returners, Missouri, will be led by a new coach with a new style. Kansas lost the Morris twins, Josh Selby and a bevy of stalwart senior guards.
Filed under Basketball by on Jul 21st, 2011. Comment.
And while the former Texas Longhorns standout waits for word to head back to the Mile High, heâs been holding it down in the gyms of his hometown Los… Source: Dime
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DimeTV: Jordan Hamilton’s L.A. Sneaker Stash
Filed under News by on Jul 14th, 2011. Comment.
Itâs a good thing for Barnes that basketball is not seen as big as football in Texas . The Longhorns wouldnât put up with someone like that running their football program! And donât give me this, âRick Barnes is a great… Source: The Big Lead
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Jordan Hamilton Thinks He Fell in the Draft Because of Something Rick Barnes Said
Filed under Basketball, Football, News by on Jun 27th, 2011. Comment.
As a sophomore for the Longhorns , Hamilton was the team’s top scoring option. He responded by pouring in 18.6 points… Source: MLive.com
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University of Texas’ Jordan Hamilton possesses skills to be an offensive force in the NBA
Filed under Basketball, News by on Jun 14th, 2011. Comment.
As a sophomore for the Longhorns , Hamilton was the team’s top scoring option. He responded by pouring in 18.6 points… Source: MLive.com
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University of Texas’ Jordan Hamilton possesses skills to be an offensive force in the NBA
Filed under Basketball, News by on Jun 14th, 2011. Comment.
Hamilton was named a third-team AP All-American after leading the Longhorns in scoring (18.6 points per game) as a sophomore. Hamilton recently worked out for the Charlotte Bobcats , who own picks No. 9 and 19. Hamilton said it was “definitely one of… Source: Oregon Live
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NBA draft 2011: Should the Trail Blazers draft Jordan Hamilton?
Filed under News by on Jun 6th, 2011. Comment.
Terrence Williams , Chase Budinger and Marqus Blakely did not produce collectively on the wing. Jordan Hamilton had a breakout season for head coach Rick Barnes as a sophomore at Texas . Hamilton averaged 18.6 points and 7.7 rebounds as a sophomore for… Source: Bleacher Report
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2011 NBA Mock Draft: Jordan Hamilton stays in Texas goes to Houston at pick 14
Filed under News by on Jun 3rd, 2011. Comment.
It’s strange, the kinds of questions that pop up most frequently in the mail inbox and the SportsNation chats. This offseason, one such question has been a surprising constant for the past month or so: “Do you know where DeAndre Daniels is going to sign?” No, friend, I do not. Apparently, neither does DeAndre Daniels. Daniels, a native of Woodland Hills, Calif., is the top unsigned player in the class of 2011. According to our own recruiting analysts, he’s a four-star talent with great length and shooting ability, solid rebounding skills, and loads of promise as a wing player (or a stretch power forward) who should only improve with college-level weight training and instruction. He is also a somewhat indecisive lad. Daniels reportedly narrowed his college choices to Duke, Texas and Kansas months ago, but he hasn’t come any closer to signing with any of the three. On May 12, our own Dave Telep wrote on his Insider blog that unlike most players, Telep couldn’t get any feel for where Daniels was in his decision process. After speaking with a few people, I’ve settled on the phrase “paralysis by analysis.” To be clear, I have no hard hitting inside knowledge. Frankly, I can’t even tell who is really in the mix. Could it be Texas? Duke? Kansas? Someone we’ve never heard of? All of the above are possibilities. Since no one knows where he’s going to go, I asked a simpler question: will he sign? An assistant coach recruiting Daniels told Telep the answer to that question was probably “no.” That was perceptive: On May 18 — two days ago — Daniels was supposed to announce his decision, but decided to put it off a day. Then, on Thursday, he decided to put it off again. That put him past the spring signing deadline. It won’t affect his college eligibility, but it does mean that he’s formally unable to lock himself into a scholarship agreement before he arrives on campus this fall. The schools interested are likely, as Telep wrote, to “wait him out.” Duke fans have been hoping Daniels would agree to come to Duke despite the commitment of small forward Alex Murphy. Kansas fans are hoping Daniels will want to team with two high school teammates who are already Jayhawks . Texas fans are just hoping the loss of forwards Tristan Thompson and Jordan Hamilton sway him toward Austin, Texas. But no one, not even the schools involved, seem to have a ready on where he’ll end up. Meanwhile, Daniels’ post-deadline indecision creeps along for yet another day. Will we find out today? Then again, when you’ve waited this long, why rush the choice now?
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Top unsigned recruit still waiting it out
Filed under Basketball, News by on May 20th, 2011. Comment.
