Two months later, I stand by the remark.
With the Texas men's basketball team getting ready for its NCAA Tournament game against Virginia Tech on Friday, it's time to acknowledge some of the elephants standing in a very crowded room.
As far as seasons go, the Longhorns have had a pretty good one. Finished fourth in the Big 12. Enjoyed a few big wins (hello, Kansas!). Plays hard every night. Sometimes struggled to find offense for long stretches of games. Heads to the post-season with the fan base's confidence waning.
Yeah, we've seen this before. If you didn't know I was talking about this year's team, you might think we were talking about any of the teams that Shaka Smart produced while he was in Austin.
What Chris Beard has a chance to do this week is provide the Texas basketball program something it hasn't seen in the last decade ... success in the NCAA Tournament.
It's a bit cliché to say that nothing that happens before the NCAA Tournament really matters in college basketball and I hate to completely belittle the importance of everything that has happened this season up until now, but if the Longhorns win two more games this year and advance to the Sweet 16, nothing that happened prior to this week will have mattered.
Getting to the Sweet 16 matters. That's something we haven't seen in waaaaay too long. Therefore, forgive me for the clichés, but ... yeah ... this week has a chance to significantly matter.
Winning this week is exactly why Beard was brought in from Lubbock and Smart was sent packing.
The good news is that Beard's history suggests that the Longhorns have a fighting chance this week to accomplish the most important hurdle in front of this team. Beard's history shows that he's undefeated as a head coach in the NCAA Tournament as the higher seed, which needs to serve the Longhorns well in the opening game of the Tournament.
Assuming the Longhorns can accomplish what all of Beard's other teams have done as seeding favorites, the team will likely find itself facing 3:2 odds to advance in its next game.
Again, Texas hired Beard because it believed when March rolled around it would be Beard Time.
Failing to win a couple of times this week in the Tournament won't be an indictment on the future of the program under Beard, but it will mean that his first season in Austin did produce less than Smart's final season. Given the buzz going into the season and the huge expectations, that would be a disappointing truth to live with going into the 2022-23 season.
All of that can be avoided this week.
No. 2 - Texas women slay the dragon ...
Hot damn, Vic Schaefer.
Double hot damn, Rori Harmon.
A month after getting beaten twice in 72 hours by a Baylor program that has owned the soul of the Texas program for more than a decade, Schaefer, Harmon and the rest of Texas women's basketball team were able to free the program from the clutches of a very tight grip with a 67-58 win.
Down came the nets in Kansas City from burnt orange scissors for the first time since 2003, which also happens to be the last time the Longhorns made it to a Final Four.
Suddenly, the program under Schaefer and his all-everything freshman point guard appears poised to do some real damage in the looming NCAA Tournament. Wins over Stanford, Baylor and Iowa State (three times!) this season point to a team that can take down anyone on any night.
You can't say enough about this team's coach and star point guard.
You know Schaefer was bristling behind the scenes of the inability to get beyond the Baylor shadow that has loomed over this program, but there could never be any doubt that it would eventually happen. He's too good. His teams are too tough. It felt like just a matter of time.
Yet, time can be a funny thing. Sometimes it stretches on forever and other times it flashes by in the blink of an eye.
The arrival of Harmon into the Texas program is almost as much of a program-changer as the hire of Schaefer, both of which go hand in hand together. In order for a program to truly accomplish greatness in women's college basketball, there has to be a star willing to carry the heavy stuff and while Harmon's shoulders might appear slight, she has emerged as this program's modern-day Atlas.
In the final two games of the Big 12 Tournament against elite-level competition in the Bears and Cyclones, Harmon dropped a cold-blooded 50 points and committed zero turnovers in the pair of wins.
Suddenly, there's zero talk of what the Longhorns haven't done. Now the talk is about what they might just do in the coming weeks.
Behind the steady hands of Schaefer and Harmon, anything is possible.
No. 3 - Future-Casting Manning to Texas ...
YOLO!
Yup, I went ahead and did it, submitting a future-cast of Manning to Texas just before publishing this column.
Nothing has really changed in the last few weeks since I last wrote that the Longhorns would land Manning as long as the program doesn't throw up on itself in the 2022 season.
I simply figured I would make things official since Manning predictions seem to be a growing rage.
No. 4 - Spring Football Battle to Watch ...
It's not that junior linebackers Jaylan Ford and David Gbenda haven't proven that they are capable players for the Texas defense going into the upcoming spring practices.
It's just that neither has proven that they are more than just capable at this point in their collegiate careers.
Ford was third in tackles on a poor Texas defense a year ago. Yet, he had zero sacks. Zero forced or recovered fumbles. Zero interceptions. Zero game-changing impact.
The same is true of Gbenda, who recorded 27 tackles last season. While he did have 1 1/2 sacks in 11 games, he also finished the season without getting his hands involved in a single turnover.
With the coaches being incredibly active on the linebacker transfer market, there's a good chance that the upcoming spring workouts will be the last chance for both players to send a message to the coaches that they can be players to build around in the upcoming season.
It's a massive moment in both of their careers because once these 15 practices are completed in April, there might be a new face on campus that will step in front of them when the first practice in August begins. Neither can control what the coaches do in the transfer market. What they can control is what they do in these 15 practices.
If they can't flash their highest upside on more than a few random occasions during this time, the viability for both to emerge as foundational building blocks for the defense over the course of the next two seasons will be a serious question.
Time to find the light switch, fellas ...
No. 5 - Welcome back to earth ...
A week ago, the Longhorns were off to an 11-0 start and seemed to be on the verge of a storybook season.
Eight days later, the Longhorns no longer have starting pitcher Tanner Witt and have lost four of six games, including two out of three at South Carolina over the weekend.
Momma always said there would be days ... er ... weeks like this.
There's no need to overreact in my mind, but it's clear that this season is going to be a marathon and there's a lot of baseball to be played. When you consider that the team has played in four cities against five different teams in the last nine days, we might be looking at a team that simply needs to spend a few days in their own beds.
Everyone take a deep breath. Everything will be fine.
No. 6 - March Madness Randomness ...
... Texas got a brutal bracket. Virginia Tech just chopped down North Carolina and Duke on back-to-back nights, having finished the season with 13 wins out of its last 15 games. If the Longhorns can survive that game, the Boilermakers will be one of the toughest second-round opponents the Longhorns could have landed.
... I've been writing about Jaden Ivey all year. Of course, the Longhorns will potentially meet him in the second round if they can get that far.
... Pooooooor Aggies.
... Love Texas Tech's side of the bracket in the West. Looks like a possible Elite 8 to me for the Red Raiders.
... No. 4 Arkansas/No. 13 Vermont feels like must-see TV. Same with Illinois/Chattanooga.
... The Bryant Bulldogs? The Longwood Lancers? Who the hell are these guys?
... Feels like the South is there to be won for Rick Barnes and the Vols. So, they lose in the first round, right?
... The Midwest Regions feels loaded. The Big 12 champs. The Big 10 champs. The SEC Champs. The Big 10 Tournament champs.
... Scott Drew really has done one hell of a job this season.
... The committee didn't do Shaka Smart ANY favors.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Sell) The Manning family doesn't want to be in a position where it has to worry about entertaining that kind of situation. It's not about taking criticism as much as it’s not engaging in Mickey Mouse behavior.
(Buy) It would be a bad sign if OU is better in year one under Brent Venables than Texas is in year two with Steve Sarkisian, especially after all of the turnover from a team that finished third in the Big 12 last year.
(Buy) Duh.
(Sell) I just don't see it unfolding like that. I expect Quinn Ewers to win this without game reps being split early in the season.
(Sell) Coast to coast as the No. 1 team in the country is a hard thing to pull off. There's no way I can assume that this team wouldn't have some adversity along the way that would have them drop out of the top spot at some point, Witt injury or not.
(Sell) There have been a couple of million-viewed threads over the years.
(Sell) It's my second favorite from Melendez in his career. He's very good at them.
(Buy) Absolutely. It'll be a disappointment if they don't.
(Sell) I think the Longhorns are the underdog in its 6/11 game.
(Buy) Pretty much.
(Buy) Maybe for him, there has been. Lincoln isn't incapable of whipping up some money for football players. In general, I would imagine Texas would be a better situation for most.
(Sell) This is going to require more patience.
No. 8 - Scattershooting on the sports weekend ...
... Props to Rick Barnes on winning the SEC Tournament, the first conference tournament title for the Vols since 1979.
... Was the original trade for Amari Cooper worth it for the Cowboys? Probably. That I have to ask the question and give it more than a brief thought means it wasn't the overall success story that we wanted. He's a very, very good player, but never quite an elite one. His departure puts a lot of pressure on Ceedee Lamb to truly emerge as the player the Cowboys thought they were getting when he was drafted, which he hasn't quite been yet.
... I don't even know what to say about the DeShaun Watson situation.
... The only thing standing in front of Sam Ehlinger and the starting job in Indianapolis might just end up being Marcus Mariota.
... As soon as I saw this yesterday, I knew Tom Brady was coming back...
... Man, this is a hard way to make a living.
... The Nets are 35-33 this season and yet it still feels like no one will want to play them in the playoffs ... if they can make the playoffs.
... Austin FC lost in Portland this weekend, but I thought #TeamVerde showed a lot in the loss. This might just be a playoff-level team.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Batman Movies ...
After watching The Batman last weekend and then listening to about a half-dozen podcasts about it over the course of the last week, I'm ready to rank the Batman movies.
10. Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016)
9. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
8. The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)
7. Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm (1993)
6. Batman Begins (2005)
5. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
4. Batman Returns (1992)
3. The Batman (2022)
2. Batman (1989)
1. The Dark Knight (2008)
No. 10 - And Finally...
Feels like the Texas men's and women's track teams deserved the final section this week after taking home the title on the men's side and second-place on the women's side at the Indoor National Championships.
