Golden: Texas' Chris Beard has new faces to work with, but the same winning formula

UTEP coach Joe Golding has been best buds with Chris Beard for years, and he had no problem adding to the growing expectations surrounding the new-look Texas Longhorns after Monday night’s season opener.

“I’m telling you guys, man, that’s a team,” Golding said. “It’s going to be really, really good in March.”

For now, the 12th-ranked Longhorns (1-0) are tasked with stacking wins in November. After their big win over UTEP in their new digs, they host Houston Christian on Thursday night.

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Beard wore a wry grin for parts of Monday night's postgame media availability, a sure indication that he just may be on to something in his second season in the 512.

The Horns, off last season’s 23-12 mark and 10-8 fourth-place finish in the Big 12, have seven new faces, a tried and true approach of toughness and a new crib to match. A standing room-only Moody Center crowd of 11,313 watched the 72-57 win. The crowd drew raves from Beard and two of his new players, and the Horns left enough on the floor to not only support Golding’s prediction but looked pretty impressive in several other areas.

Newcomers Tyrese Hunter, Sir'Jabari Rice and Dillon Mitchell are bringing some needed swagger to a locker room that had it in good supply last season with Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey. This offense doesn’t have a true back-to-the-basket post presence, but Hunter, a transfer from Iowa State, has shown an ability in this league to break down defenses and score in the paint despite standing only 6 feet tall.

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I asked Rice, a graduate transfer from New Mexico State — and arguably Texas' fastest player with the ball — about the groan he made when he stepped onto the interview podium with Hunter. He flashed a smile.

“This is my sixth year of college basketball, man,” Rice said. “I’ve been doing this for awhile.”

After redshirting as a freshman, Rice played five seasons at New Mexico State, where he  started 74 of 111 games. The Fort Bend Marshall product is back in his home state and ready to push the tempo in his final college stop, as evidenced by his driving layup in transition seconds after he entered the game in the first half.

“Jabari is a good player who has played for good coaches,” Beard said. “He has played in a lot of big games and knows who he is. I’ve never seen Jabari’s mood change based on the stat sheet. He’s all about winning.”

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You will see a lot of Hunter and Rice on the court together. Their chemistry is noticeable, which is not surprising since they're close off the court.

"I knew I was going to jell with him," Hunter said. "Then later, just knowing his will and his reason for being out there, that's kind of my background story, too. We're best friends."

The first month of the season will obviously be about finding the right rotations between the newcomers and returning players Dylan Disu, Timmy Allen, Christian Bishop and Brock Cunningham. In this new era, teams must figure out how to blend quickly. Gone are the days of developing teams through core program guys with one or two first-round picks. Like you’ve read here before, the  transfer portal has become the Carvana of college athletics. Potential contributors are there at the touch of a button and if the coach lands on the right mix, special seasons can happen.

Golding, who just happens to be the brother-in-law of TCU football coach Sonny Dykes, believed Texas is one of 20 teams that has a legitimate chance to win a national championship, given the talent on Beard's team.

“We played Kansas last year. We played Tech when they played for the national championship,” Golding said. “He's gotten old, they're mature, they're physical. They’ve got really, really good freshmen, they’re athletic, they’re good defensively this early in the year and they share the basketball. They play with each other.”

If we’re looking for one potential problem area, it’s a lack of bulk up front. Disu and Christian Bishop are 6-foot-9 and 6-foot-7, respectively, but they're power forwards who'll be forced to guard bigger men on the other end. Centers aren’t falling from the sky in today’s game, but Texas will get a true test next week when Gonzaga and All-America post Drew Timme visits. In last year's season opener, the former Metroplex preps star blitzed the Horns for 37 points and seven rebounds in an 86-74 win in Spokane.

The Miners didn’t have a Timme on their team Monday night, but they still managed to outrebound the Horns 32-27, including a 12-5 edge on the offensive end. Beard said he isn’t one of those coaches who subscribes to the theory of the ball bouncing the wrong way to explain rebounding deficiencies. It’s something he'll undoubtedly stress throughout the season because the Horns are simply lacking in big bangers on the interior.

“We believe in offensive rebounding in getting to be more or our identity,” Beard said. “We did really well against Houston and did really well against Arkansas, but (Monday) not so much. I thought we missed a lot of shots the first half. We’re trying to get 40% of our misses.”

The shots will eventually fall and I expect a big year from Marcus Carr, who'll cede most of the ball-handling duties to Hunter, a natural point guard. Consistent shot-making will always be a concern, but the ability to get cheap buckets off turnovers, as usual, will be a driving factor in if the Horns can figure out how to make it deep into the tourney.

Looking ahead, I’m interested to see if more tempo will add up to more easy buckets. It’s a small sample size, but the Horns have the horses to go much faster than last season’s team that was No. 335 nationally with 66.4 possessions per game. The Horns had 67 in the opener, and to hear Beard tell it, his teams have been up-tempo for years.

That may be the case in his head, but on a national scale, they aren’t exactly Loyola Marymount of the late 1980s. As usual, it will begin and end with defense. The players who sell out on that end will get the minutes, and from the looks of the opener, there's already the needed buy-in in that area.

Beard, who tearfully told reporters outside Texas' locker room following the season-ending NCAA tourney loss to Purdue that he thought the Horns were good enough to go all the way, believes he has the right formula to prove his buddy Golding prescient in his praise. It's been 20 seasons since Texas played in its one and only Final Four.

This would be an ideal time to break through.

“There is a goal,“ Beard said. “This is Texas and we’re trying to get to the third weekend and play on the final night.”

New faces, new season, same philosophy.

Thursday's game

Houston Christian at No. 12 Texas, 8 p.m., LHN, 104.9

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: New-look Longhorns dispatched UTEP in opener, and bigger things await