Dylan Disu back permanently in starting lineup for Texas basketball, says coach Rodney Terry
In Tuesday’s thrilling 74-73 road win over Cincinnati, Texas forward Dylan Disu started for the first time this season in place of the injured Kadin Shedrick and exploded for a career-high 33 points.
After watching Disu go 13-for-23 from the floor and make four of his 10 3-point attempts, Texas men’s basketball coach Rodney Terry didn’t need to see any more to make a decision about his starting lineup moving forward.
“It was time to go ahead and insert (Disu) back in the lineup,” Terry said Thursday. “Regardless of whether Kadin is available or not, he’s back in the lineup.”
That’s good news for Texas (12-3, 1-1 Big 12), which will continue a two-game road swing through the Big 12 borderlands Saturday against West Virginia. The 6-foot-9 Disu, who started every game last season until a foot injury sidelined him during the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, emerged as Texas’ best player in the 2023 postseason. He didn’t return to the court after his surgery until six games ago, and his ability to stretch the floor from his forward spot separates him from the other Texas big men, including starters Dillon Mitchell and Shedrick as well as bench banger Ze’Rik Onyema.
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“He’s become a green-light shooter for us,” Terry said. “And he needs to be a stretch guy for us. Through his hard work and the amount of time he's put in, he's become that guy.”
A graduate student from Pflugerville in his third season at Texas after two years at Vanderbilt, Disu said that “starting the game versus coming off the bench is two different feels.”
“From the bench, I guess you can kind of see the way the game is flowing and you’re trying not to interrupt the flow of the game,” he said. “Whereas when you are starting, you are establishing the flow of the game and what's going to happen. So I would say that's the biggest difference.”
Disu knew he’d have to play bigger minutes, especially with Shedrick nursing a sore back after a hard tumble in the home loss to Texas Tech in the Big 12 opener last Saturday. Disu garnered 34 minutes against Cincinnati, 12 more than his previous high Dec. 22 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
“I knew that without Kadin, I would have to be a little bit more aggressive,” Disu said. “We knew that they were going to drop on the pick-and-rolls and that was going to give me top-of-the-key 3-pointers. We thought eventually they would make an adjustment, but they decided not to, so with those continued looks, I was able to get into rhythm and had a good game.”
But Disu quickly pointed out that a good game doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of points. He led the team in deflections as well as floor burns while banging with a big Bearcat squad, and he said that physical approach is needed in a rugged Big 12.
“I just think that we get a different mindset going in as a team on Tuesday, and that's what was the difference in the game” against Cincinnati, he said.
Terry credited Disu for “leading the team in energy and activity,” which helped spark a squad desperate to bounce back from the loss to Texas Tech.
“I was really excited about how hard we got after it and competed,” Terry said. “That was a physical game against a good team on the road in a hostile environment, and I thought they stood toe to toe and laid it all out; they really did. We got loose balls. We were on the floor and first to the floor. We were physical with our blockouts. We played a physical style; we played Texas basketball.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Dylan Disu back in starting lineup for Texas basketball, says Rodney Terry
