When six freshmen make up the majority of your roster, you’re bound to have some growing pains. Texas coach Rick Barnes might not have expected them to happen so soon, however. His Longhorns made it interesting against Rhode Island yesterday afternoon, building and then conceding a 17-point lead before finally finishing off the Rams, 100-90.

Texas fans were able to see brief glimpses of their team’s problem areas in a thoroughly dominating win over Boston University on Sunday, but the flaws came out in full force as the Horns slowly gave up their double-digit lead against Rhode Island. Poor rebounding, failure to control the ball, and a cold spell from long range allowed Rhode Island to erase that 17-point deficit and briefly claim a 59-58 lead early in the second half. Fortunately, the backcourt of J’Covan Brown and Myck Kabongo took charge and attacked a pesky Rhode Island defense, guiding Texas to the win.

What looked good

After tying his career high with 28 points against Boston, Brown upped the ante with an impressive 35-point performance against the Rams. He was 5-of-10 from behind the arc and earned 10 points at the line by pressuring the aggressive Rhode Island D with dribble penetration.

But while his epic scoring totals are impressive, Brown’s assist numbers are just as important. J’Covan dished out six assists, giving him 14 on the season. Opponents are going to be keying on the junior guard this season, so it’s a good sign that he is already looking for and finding his open teammates. When other teams start throwing double teams at Brown, he’ll have to make them pay with timely passes.

The Longhorns also found a spark in freshman Jaylen Bond. When the team was having difficulties on the glass, he simply went out and got the basketball. Bond showed nice hops and ripped his rebounds out of the air, not allowing the ball bounce to around like many of his teammates have been. In just 17 minutes on the floor, the freshman secured six rebounds, four of them on the defensive end.

The team leader in rebounding was Clint Chapman, who grabbed eight boards on the afternoon. He also showed a little more agility with the ball than fans have seen in past seasons, unveiling a few nice face-up offensive moves. He finished with seven points, which is really all that Texas can expect at this point from the big man. While he still was beat for some rebounds that he should have controlled, overall it was a satisfactory performance.

On the perimeter, Julien Lewis picked up right where he left off, knocking down a triple to open the scoring for Texas. He took one ill-advised three early in the first half and was promptly removed and talked to by Barnes, but he learned from the mistake and stuck to open looks the rest of the way. Lewis finished 3-for-7 from long range, giving him a cool 50% success rate for the season.

Texas also found success at the free-throw stripe, a welcome sight for fans used to seeing the team struggle there in recent years. The team earned a whopping 44 free throw attempts and missed only nine of them. Bond and Jonathan Holmes, who didn’t make any trips to the line in the season opener, combined to go 9-for-10.

Not only are Horns knocking down 78.6% of their free throws so far this year, they showed great awareness in getting there against Rhode Island. With the refs calling a very tight game and the Rams playing even tighter defense, the guards put the ball on the floor and drew a hefty share of fouls all the way out on the perimeter. As a result, Texas’ free-throw rate — measured as free throw attempts per field goal attempts — was a ridiculous 74.6%. For comparison, last year’s national leaders at Northwestern State posted a 50.6% FTR.

What needed work

Unfortunately, Texas made this game much closer than it ever needed to be. The Horns were sloppy in the transition game, costing them a lot of points on turnovers and bad shots. They often careened right into the defense on the break, forcing up challenged looks or getting into positions where their only option was to throw a terrible pass at the last minute.

Kabongo was one player who especially had issues with this, and it underscored the fact that he isn’t quite the inside finisher that former point guard D.J. Augustin was. If Myck isn’t strong enough yet to score amongst the trees in the paint, he will have to be more under control on his drives. Flying headlong into good interior D with no passing options to bail him out simply won’t work.

Texas also had trouble with the transition game on the defensive end. As Rhode Island put together their late first-half run, their speedy guards were able to get deep into the defense and often all the way to the rim without a single Horn trying to stop the ball. When Texas did manage to turn away dribble penetration, often someone else failed to pick up an assignment coming down the court, leading to mismatches and open threes.

The Rams also utilized a ton of full-court pressure during their comeback, and the Longhorns had quite a few issues against it. Rather than beating it with the pass, their only solution was to wait for Brown or Kabongo to beat the press with their dribble. Once Texas can learn to move the ball quickly with smart passes, they can score a lot of easy points against aggressive defenses like this one.

While Chapman had a generally positive game, Alexis Wangmene struggled early and saw his playing time diminish. Early on, he had a rough time keeping up with the quicker Orion Outerbridge when the forward played face-up against him, and Barnes elected to go with Chapman and Holmes instead. Wangmene also continued to have issues hanging on to the ball on passes, rebounds, and loose ball situations. Fortunately, he did do quite a few little things right, taking a charge, setting some good screens, and sinking the midrange baseline J he took late in the game.

Finally, it is also worth mentioning that different players had defensive lapses at different times throughout the game, which is to be expected with such a young team. Barnes was liberal with the hook and took advantage of the teaching opportunities, talking over the mistakes with each player as they came off the court. Even though these Longhorns are going to have to run-and-gun to beat quite a few teams, Barnes is still very focused on teaching sound defense.

Up next: vs. Oregon State (2-0) in East Rutherford, NJ; Saturday, 8 P.M. CT

On Sunday afternoon, the Longhorns opened the season in impressive fashion, discarding the Boston Terriers in a 36-point blowout. The freshman-laden Texas roster looked active, athletic, and managed to at least temporarily placate the preseason fears of many Longhorn faithful.

Of course, there were certainly areas for concern. Texas big men had issues on the boards, while the guards were repeatedly outhustled by the Terrier backcourt for long rebounds. The offense looked stagnant at times, particularly in the first half against the BU zone.

A week from today, Texas will be squaring off with either a highly-talented Vanderbilt team or an NC State squad that looks rejuvenated under first-year coach Mark Gottfried. Today’s opening-round game against the Rhode Island Rams provides one last chance to work on the early-season kinks before facing major-conference opponents in New Jersey next weekend.

By the numbers

Rhode Island Coach Jim Baron, now in his 11th season at the helm in Kingston, loves to push the tempo. In the team’s season opener against George Mason, his Rams played at a pace of nearly 69 possessions per 40 minutes. In six of his 11 years on campus, Baron has fielded teams with adjusted tempos of more than 68 possessions per game, with the 2007-08 squad racing out to a breakneck adjusted tempo of 71.1 PPG.

This year’s team lacks size inside, and will likely have issues on the glass against bigger teams. Today, that might not come into play, as the Longhorns were outrebounded by a smaller Boston University team on Sunday evening. Rhode Island and George Mason were nearly even on the glass, with the Patriots holding a +1 rebounding margin on Friday.

Defensively, Rhode Island’s numbers were rather vanilla. While they allowed a pedestrian 1.001 points per possession, they blocked just 5.2% of George Mason’s shots and forced turnovers on 21.3% of the Patriot possessions. The Longhorns, meanwhile, had a suffocating defensive performance against Boston, posting block and turnover percentages of 25% and 34.2%, respectively.

Meet the Rams

Having lost three starters and two reserves from last year’s team, the Rams can relate to the rebuilding situation on the Forty Acres. Rhode Island welcomes a five-man freshmen class this season and will add two juco transfers in December.

The infusion of fresh blood means that former role players will have to step up this season for Rhode Island. In their season-opening overtime loss to George Mason, senior Jamal Wilson took charge. He exploded for 38 points, an unexpected career-high for a guy who averaged just 5.1 per game last season. The 6’5″ Wilson is an all-everything guy for the Rams, as he can play the 3 or either guard position, and provides rebounding from the wings.

Although Wilson was the headliner in Friday night’s game, the starting five all managed to provide double-digit scoring. Serbian sharpshooter Nikola Malesevic chipped in 12 points, but was only 2-of-7 from behind the arc. As a sophomore in 2010-11, Malesevic’s 45.8% mark from long range was tops in the A-10 and was in the top 20 nationally.

The only other upperclassman in the starting five for Rhode Island is big man Orion Outerbridge, who missed a potential game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer on Friday night. The 6’9″ forward scored 11 points and grabbed seven boards against the Patriots, a significant improvement on his 5.1/3.0 averages as a junior. On a smaller team that lost 67% of its rebounding, Outerbridge will have to be a double-double threat on a nightly basis.

Fortunately for the Rams, freshman Jonathan Holton was a rebounding machine in his collegiate debut. The Miami product snagged 14 boards in his 39 minutes and scored 12 points in the losing effort. In high school, he averaged 25.5 points and 15.5 rebounds as a senior, and scouts were high on his shot blocking skills. True to form, he swatted two George Mason attempts on Friday night.

The other freshman in the starting five is point guard Mike Powell, who struggled a bit in his collegiate debut. While he scored 11 points, he was just 1-of-6 from long range and had a troubling five turnovers to go with his six assits. At just 5’10”, the left-handed Chicago product might run into problems against taller, lengthy backcourts.

Against George Mason, the Rams ran nine deep, although freshman guard T.J. Buchanan played only five minutes. Fellow freshman Dominique McKoy made the biggest impact, scoring six points to go with two steals in 15 minutes. The Atlanta swingman shot 75% from the floor in his debut.

Sophomore Levan Shengalia played 14 minutes off the bench against the Patriots, grabbing five boards. He also committed four fouls, giving him a personal every 3.5 minutes. After missing all but one minute of last season due to a knee injury, it’s safe to say he was a little too amped up in his return to the court.

Freshman Rayvon Harris rounds out the rotation for the Rams. He didn’t make much of an impact in his collegiate debut, picking up three fouls and missing his only shot while leaving the rest of the stat sheet empty.

Keys to the game

1) Get back in transition – The Rams will force the issue this afternoon, looking for easy buckets before the defense gets set. The Longhorns did a great job disrupting the half-court offense of Boston on Sunday afternoon, but they’ll have to change their approach against the up-tempo look from Rhode Island. It will be interesting to see if Texas can once again put up impressive defensive numbers this afternoon.

2) Control the caroms – While Alexis Wangmene and Clint Chapman did grab 11 combined rebounds against Boston, they had even more in their mitts that they failed to control. Whether the ball was knocked out of bounds or it just bounced off their fingertips, it often seemed to be covered in Crisco when the Texas frontcourt was involved. Both big men need to secure the boards that come to them and give Texas a rebounding advantage against a smaller team.

3) Limit the damage from Malesevic – Although the junior was just 2-of-7 in his season debut, his career numbers underscore just how dangerous he is from behind the arc. The three-pointer is widely referred to as the great equalizer, and there’s no dobut that a big game from Malesevic could make things dicey for Texas. If the Horns can replicate their perimeter defense from Sunday, when they limited the Terriers to just 16% from long range, a Rhode Island upset will be much harder to manufacture.