No. 19 Texas opens the season against Ohio State in Las Vegas

When the 19th-ranked Texas Longhorns open the 2024-25 men's basketball season in the Hall of Fame Las Vegas Opening Night event against the Ohio State Buckeyes on Monday at 9 p.m. Central on TNT, at 9 p.m. Central on TNT, Second-year head coach Rodney Terry always wants the focus to be on his team.

“I think it’s always about our players,” Terry said last week.

“It’s about our program, our organization, period. It will never be about me – I am a small part of what we do. The face of our program is our players and who they are, they represent this university in the right way on and off the field. But it will be about our brand, never about me.”

And some focus will certainly be on his team.

The highly anticipated debut of freshman guard Tre Johnson, who is the No. 5 prospect in the 2024 recruiting class according to the 247Sports Composite rankings and a player Terry often compares to Longhorn legend Kevin Durant for his silky-smooth scoring ability .

Among the six transfers Terry brought in as part of the annual rebuild now taking place across college basketball – Oregon State transfer guard Jordan Pope, Arkansas transfer wing Tramon Marks, who is dealing with a minor injury, and Creighton and Kansas State transfer forward Arthur Kaluma.

About key returning contributors like senior forward Kadin Shedrick, who is expected to make a jump as a sophomore after recovering from shoulder surgery last offseason, and do-it-all junior defenseman Chendall Weaver, the heart of the team.

The team's ability to get out in transition as the guards help out on the glass, a key focus for the Longhorns given the lack of major frontcourt depth behind Shedrick and Kaluma, due in part to the injury he suffered last year has rookie forward Nic Codie and an inability to land an elite transfer like former Oklahoma State center Brandon Garrison, who attended the Forty Acres but signed with Kentucky instead.

Ultimately, however, the focus will also be on Terry as he failed to assemble the squad he took to the Elite Eight in 2022-23 following the suspension and firing of former head coach Chris Beard.

Because there are still questions about the extent to which he was responsible for the culture of this team.

Because last year's group, with a 9-9 conference record and a second-round exit from the NCAA Tournament against the No. 2 seed Tennessee Volunteers and former head coach, never quite made its way to an eighth seed in the Big 12, Rick said Barnes.

That last issue might be the most salient given Terry's questionable track record in his previous head coaching stints at Fresno State and UTEP, two difficult situations he was able to navigate without really making a breakthrough – it's a summation of his competence, but nothing strong enough to get him the job in Texas without Beard's anger management issues helping him.

Even if Terry doesn't want to admit it publicly, he has a lot to prove as a top-flight head coach in the third year of his five-year contract, which will likely have to be extended next offseason if he gives enough reasons to Texas government.

The hope is that the “EBE” mentality adopted by the team – which stands for “EveryBody Eats” – will help players like Pope and Indiana State transfer guard Julian Larry become more comfortable in reduced roles, allowing them to stop Need to push points.

“I can just come in and play my game at a relaxed pace,” Larry said.

For Pope, that means passing the ball with a ready-to-shoot attitude at times and generally reducing a usage rate that was 26.3 percent last year, ninth in the Pac-12. Both players said playing together will help ease the pressure on them.

Last week, Pope also said all the right things about the team's burgeoning culture and roster construction.

“We have great versatility in a lot of different positions, a lot of different skill sets that complement each other – I think we all play really well together,” Pope said.

Terry's team prepared for the opener with matchups against TCU and Colorado, which unsurprisingly had some ups and downs in those performances. After turning the ball over 21 times in the first scrimmage, according to Terry's recollection, the Horns reduced that number to nine in the second. Rebounding was strong in the first scrimmage, while the numbers in the second scrimmage were skewed by poor shooting by Texas. In the first scrimmage, the Longhorns struggled to defend without fouling, allowing them 31 free throws. In the second scrimmage, Texas got to the free throw line more often while reducing the number of opponent free throw attempts.

Texas is in its first season under 38-year-old Jake Diebler, who served as interim coach after his former boss Chris Holtmann was fired, as full-time head coach. Under Diebler, the Buckeyes went 8-3 and reached the NIT quarterfinals.

Ohio State is currently rated as the No. 33 team nationally according to BartTorvik.com's adjusted efficiency metric and is projected to finish eighth among the 18 Big Ten teams in the preseason media poll. Ohio State is led by junior guard Bruce Thornton, who is entering his third year as a starter after averaging 15.7 points and 4.8 assists per game last season.

“What excites me is that Bruce has stepped up his game and raised his level this offseason,” Diebler said. “It's not going to be the case where you're dealing with a guy who just goes from second year to second year and is a little bit better. I think he's going to take a leap, and he and I have talked openly about him improving his efficiency and his pace and things like that, and he's embraced that.”

Meechie Johnson will complement Thornton after returning from South Carolina, where he was a standout last year, averaging 14.1 points per game, while Oakland and San Diego State transfer Micah Parrish is expected to start on the wing when He was able to outperform the competition with the returning starter in Evan Mahaffey.

The frontcourt has much less experience but plenty of recruiting accolades – 7'1 Duke transfer forward Evan Bradshaw and Duke transfer forward Sean Stewart, both former consensus five-star prospects.

BartTorvik.com gives Texas a 62 percent chance of winning Monday's game. Before tipoff, the Longhorns announced that Marks (right ankle) and sophomore forward Devon Pryor (left ankle) would both be sidelined against the Buckeyes.