Golden: If Texas does turn to Rodney Terry, the Longhorns should be just fine

Rodney Terry can do this.

Whether or not Chris Beard returns to the bench after his arrest — that ball is in the administration’s court — Texas basketball is in good hands.

The Longhorns staved off an upset over 24-point underdog Rice hours after their head coach was released on bond following his arrest Monday on felony domestic violence charges. The overtime win had to be a cathartic experience for this team, many of whom were brought here to compete for championships under his watch.

After Monday’s shocking revelations, it was mostly quiet on the Forty Acres on Tuesday.

Chemistry can’t be faked and even someone who has never attended a Texas postgame presser could see the genuine admiration shared between teammates and their coaches.

Like I already wrote in this space, there are no winners in this story, but the Longhorns did emerge as 87-81 victors with a veteran head coach at the reins. Terry knows these Austin/Big 12 streets from his days under high school legend Celester Collier and Rick Barnes. Chris Beard was very smart to bring him in as well as former Barnes understudy Chris Ogden to help get things rolling.

Beard’s coaching tenure and career are in limbo, but the show must go on and the Longhorns are plenty tough enough to take this bit of adversity and channel it into their play on court.

Terry, who said he loves Beard “like my own brother,” spoke with his most experienced players on Monday and spoke of the challenges they'll face in life. How one reacts to adversity off the court can actually strengthen resolve between the lines.

“We love being a Longhorn,” Terry told reporters after the game. “(Beard) loves being a Longhorn. An incredible guy. He wants to get this program back to where it was years ago. No one works as hard as he does.”

The question remains if his work at Texas will one day continue.

If not, the Horns are in a good place with Terry at the helm.

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After the 3-1 win over Ohio State secured the program’s 10th Final Four appearance in the last 15 seasons, several of the key players spoke of their love of this year's crew and how togetherness has played a key role in this epic 26-1 run into Thursday's national semifinals.

Coach Jerritt Elliott talked about the journey with his club: the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests and, most recently, the tears flowing down his cheeks as he drove to campus for the final match of the season at Gregory Gym, win or lose.

“I was literally crying on the ride in, not wanting this thing to end because I know what it means to them,” Elliott said. "You know, you end up loving these kids. They’re your own.”

Andrea Nucete-Elliott told me her husband was a bit lacking in the sleep department on game day. “He didn’t sleep at all,” she said. “He spent the whole night watching tape.”

“She had to get her hair did,” Elliott said. “So I watched every single point (Ohio State) played in the Big Ten. She’s always right there and very supportive and always asking me what I need. So I’m very fortunate.”

Chemistry can’t be faked, and even someone who has never attended a UT postgame presser could see the genuine admiration shared between teammates and their coaches. Saige Ka'aha'aina-Torres spoke of how Asjia O’Neal is the one person she looks to when moments get rough as she and O’Neal, seated beside her, wiped away tears.

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"I hold my relationships with every single one of my teammates super close to my heart,” she said. “I'm super thankful to have such amazing women on the court around me.”

There’s the feeling going into the national semifinal against Stanford conqueror San Diego that it just isn’t on the back of senior leader Logan Eggleston. The Horns are deep, talented and fully expecting to bring home the trophy. Belief is a strong emotion and when a deep reservoir of talent is added, it can make for pretty dangerous potion.

“It's really nice to have this team chemistry,” O’Neal said. “I said before, it's really easy to go through these tough moments because it doesn't feel like it's on any one person to take over the game or to put down a ball.”

Elliott has said on several occasions this season that this team is the closest knit of the 22 he has coached at Texas. Final Fours haven’t been a cakewalk in his tenure, but there’s just something about his current crew that just screams championship.

They’re very good.

And they believe in one another.

Dancing for his daughter: Texas football legend Jamaal Charles carved out a great career because he had some of the quickest feet in the sport’s history. Now retired after 11 seasons and the owner of the career record for most yards per carry for running backs at 5.4 — just ahead of the G.O.A.T Jim Brown — the Austin resident will test out those aching footsies when he makes a guest appearance alongside his daughter Makaila as performers in "Duke Ellington’s: The Nutcracker Suite" at the Paramount Theatre on Thursday night.

Makaila, a sixth-grader at Bee Cave Middle School, will star in the production that’s being presented by Ballet Afrique, Austin’s first all-Black dance company. Her dad will star as a special guest dancer, something he agreed to do because he loves his baby girl.

“I don’t want to dance,” the father of three told me Monday. “My body is beaten up and both my knees are bad from two torn ACLs. But life is short and you want to give your kids those good memories, so I’m doing it for Makaila."

Charles was a a magician on the field while dancing past tacklers en route to totaling more than 10,000 yards of total offense and 66 touchdowns. He won’t be on stage long but says wife Whitney provided that little push he needed to make what he says will be his one excursion into the acting field after taking some theater classes at UT.

“This is all about my daughter,” he said. “It will be fun for us to be on stage together.”

The curtain opens at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at tickets.austintheatre.org.

Why not be happy For BG?: WNBA star Brittney Griner was facing nine years in a Russian prison before President Biden negotiated her release, a move that was panned by shortsighted individuals who had never even heard of Paul Whelan — an American who remains imprisoned in Russia — before Griner boarded the flight home.

Instead of being happy that a fellow American is safely within our borders and not facing unimaginable torture over the next nine years, they chose to criticize her release and say celebrity had everything to do with her coming home. Who cares how it happened? If it was your sister living in that hellhole, would you feel the same way or play the political card to maintain street cred with your buddies?

Hate speech is accepted behavior these days and political affiliation has been prioritized over common decency.

Why not just be happy for BG and her family and pray for the release of other Americans who are unjustly imprisoned in foreign lands? The same people celebrating our brief success in the World Cup couldn’t even get on the same page when one of our own has been freed?

It’s heartbreaking to see what we have become.

Farewell to the Pirate and the Judge: Writing for a living has afforded me the opportunity to visit with some of the most unique personalities in sports. We lost longtime coach Mike Leach on Monday, a few days after legendary boxing referee Mills Lane passed.

There are so many Leach stories that I don't even know where to begin, but one that comes to mind was 2008 or so when I was working on something Texas Tech-related and wanted an interview. I got his cell phone number, but it was not set up for voicemail so I chalked it up as a loss.

So later that night, I took in a movie at home and went to bed at about 1 a.m. My phone buzzed and I thought I recognized the 806 area code.

"Hey, this is Mike Leach. Did someone need to speak to me?"

"Hey Coach, it's Cedric Golden with the Statesman," I said in a groggy voice. "Thanks for getting back to me."

We talked for 30 minutes about everything from pirates to gas prices and, eventually, football.

You may not know everything about a person, but you will always remember how they made you feel. Leach always made people happy.

When Lane visited Austin for a local boxing event in the early 2000s, my sports editor asked if I would be interested in writing a profile on the famed boxing referee who drove fight fans nuts with four iconic words: “Let’s get it on!”

Lane famously officiated Mike Tyson’s infamous chomping of Evander Holyfield in 1997 and Holyfield’s rematch with Riddick Bowe, an outdoor fight in Las Vegas marred by the uninvited ringside entrance of paraglider James Miller aka Fan Man four years earlier.

Arguably the most recognizable referee in the sport’s history, Judge Mills was a walking boxing historian who kept things loose the afternoon we talked boxing and enjoyed brisket at Salt Lick.  My favorite part was when I told him my dad was a huge fan.

“Let’s give him a call!” he bellowed.

I dialed up Dad, and for five wonderful minutes they talked like old college friends, about the sport, their families and life in general. Lane wasn’t a very big man physically, but he was a giant when it came to being the third man in the ring.

Hopefully he and Dad can have a longer conversation this time.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: If Texas does turn to Rodney Terry, Horns basketball will keep rolling