Texas men's basketball team pulls away from scrappy St. Edward's for exhibition win

It took longer than expected in a spirited exhibition match with St. Edward’s, but the revamped Texas basketball team flashed enough form to look ready for the start of the regular season.

Texas shook off a halftime deficit to the Hilltoppers to pull away for a 84-63 win Monday at Moody Center. While head coach Rodney Terry wasn’t thrilled by the ragged start to the game, he did learn some valuable lessons about this year’s team, which had seven new faces take the court.

Specifically, Terry learned that the Longhorns can’t afford slow starts a week from the season-opener Nov. 6 against visiting Incarnate Word.

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“We just needed to play with more urgency,” said Terry, whose team trailed St. Edward’s 39-32 at the break. “At halftime, the guys buckled down. They knew they had to come out and really set the tone defensively in the second half. I thought we did that. We really changed the game with our intensity, we did a better job rebounding the basketball, and that allowed us to get out and run. We have guys that score in transition and get up and down the floor.”

Guard Tyrese Hunter played lots of minutes off the ball last season while sharing the backcourt with the departed Marcus Carr, and he only topped five assists in a game twice. Prior to transferring to Texas, the 6-foot junior played point guard as a freshman at Iowa State.

He looked a bit like his freshman self while running the point for most of his 33 minutes Monday. Hunter finished with nine assists, including lobs that rim-runners like Dillon Mitchell and Ze’rik Onyema turned into alley-oop dunks. Serving as the primary ball-handler didn’t affect his offensive game, either; he scored a game-high 22 points on 7-of-11 shooing and pulled down four rebounds.

Hunter also seemed to find a rhythm with new guard Max Abmas, a transfer from Oral Roberts who added 18 points.

“I feel like it was just natural at the point,” Hunter said. “But whether I'm at the one (point guard) or two (shooting guard), I feel like I can play both. I had fun tonight with Max just jelling with each other.”

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Rodney Terry's alma mater put up first-half fight

The Longhorns had to jell quickly against St. Edward’s, a Division II school of about 2,700 students in the heart of South Austin along South Congress Avenue. The Hilltoppers have their own winning tradition albeit on a smaller stage; they went 21-11 a year ago and lost in the Lone Star Conference championship game to Lubbock Christian.

“If you told me that when we got on the bus, we'd be up to seven on Texas at halftime, I’d take it,” said Andre Cook, the school’s all-time leader in coaching wins. “We hung in there and, obviously, it was a great experience for our guys.”

Don’t tell the Hilltoppers and the thousands of their fans at Moody Center that the rare matchup with the Longhorns — the teams hadn’t played since 1939 — didn’t count in any standings. St. Edward’s and its supporters treated it like their NCAA Tournament game, and Monday felt like a road contest for the Longhorns. Chants of “Fear the goat” echoed in the arena,  a reference to the school’s unofficial mascot. Fans waved blue-and-white St. Edward’s flags.

The crowd especially enjoyed the first half, when the hot-shooting Hilltoppers made 5-of-11 3-pointers and outrebounded Texas 22-16 while racing to their seven-point lead.

Now, quipped Cook, those fans just need to show up for St. Edward’s home games during the regular season.

“We've had a lot of text messages and phone calls saying, ‘Coach, I'm going to be at that game. I can't wait to go watch you guys play Texas,’” Cook said. ‘Well, we play in Austin. You can come watch us play down in South Austin. I hope they all say that we didn't know much about St. Edward's basketball, but we do now and we liked what we saw and we'll go watch those guys play again.”

Rodney Terry and the Hilltoppers have a history

Terry knows plenty about St. Edward’s, considering he earned his bachelor’s degree from the school in 1990 and played four seasons for the Hilltoppers.

“I think just giving those (St. Edward’s) guys an opportunity to get the exposure and get a chance to play a game against the University of Texas, that's a really big deal,” Terry said. “You know, when I was there, we played pickup with the (Texas) guys, but we never got a chance to play a game.”

And how would Terry and his St. Edward’s team have fared against that famed “BMW” era of Texas basketball with star players Lance Blanks, Travis Mays and Joey Wright?

“We were really good during that time, and they (Texas) were becoming relevant,” Terry said. “We would have loved that opportunity to get a chance to play against those guys. We could have held our own for a little bit, maybe for a half.”

Cook appreciated Terry’s push to schedule the exhibition game.

“I cannot thank him enough,” Cook said. “We're proud of our 1990 alum, for sure. It says a ton about him as a person in the first exhibition game that he could play as the official head coach at the University of Texas that he would schedule us.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Second-half 'urgency' helps Texas men's basketball beat St. Edward's