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.

It was only one game, but the future certainly looks bright for the Texas Longhorns.

Led by junior J’Covan Brown, Rick Barnes’ freshman-laden roster settled down after some early adversity and cruised to an easy, 36-point win in front of a home crowd on Sunday night. Brown tied a career-high with 28 points and added eight assists, despite enjoying the final five minutes of the blowout from the bench.

What looked good

Brown’s scoring outburst gives Texas fans a lot to be optimistic about, as there is no doubt that he will have to be the team’s leader this season. He scored in a variety of ways, knocking down three triples, earning his way to the line for five points, and repeatedly sinking a soft pull-up floater. Texas also found success multiple times on backdoor cuts for the junior, giving him easy finishes at the rim.

Perhaps most importantly, Brown finished the night with eight assists. One of the most consistent complaints about his game last season was his troubling habit of dominating the ball to the detriment of the team. Against Boston, he was willing to give up the rock when his teammates were in a position to score. Although Brown took a few bad shots early in the game, most of them came on possessions where the entire team was standing idly in the half-court set.

In addition to Brown’s career night, the team’s defense was another reason for excitement for Longhorn fans. Texas made the Terriers uncomfortable all night, forcing turnovers on a whopping 34.2% of Boston’s possessions. The Longhorns utilized ball pressure well past the perimeter, often making it difficult for the Terriers to even get into their offense.

The active hands of freshmen Sheldon McClellan and Jonathan Holmes earned them each a pair of steals. Both used their lengthy wingspans to simply reach around the ballhandler or disrupt passing lanes on multiple ocassions.

In the post, Alexis Wangmene gave a solid defensive effort to kick off his senior campaign. He did an excellent job standing tall and forcing players to take bad shots, and even blocked five in just 26 minutes on the court. A few of those swats came when he was the help defender, bringing to mind the excellent team defense of last season’s squad.

The only knock on Wangmene’s defensive performance was that on a few instances, it was a little too easy for his man to back him down to the blocks. Fortunately, even on those plays, he typically stiffened up the D at that point and made the Terriers earn their points.

The senior also impressed with his off-the-ball play on offense. He had a few good seals as his teammates were driving to the hoop, giving them easy access to the rim, and he set some stout high screens to free up the guards. While Texas will likely need a little more than his four point output on some nights, fans have to be very happy with his seven-rebound, five-block performance.

Senior Clint Chapman is the other half of the big-man puzzle for Texas, and while he didn’t land on any All-American lists last night, he showed that he might be a serviceable option this season. Chapman utilized some nice face-up skills late in the game, lumbering baseline for an easy dunk and taking another defender to the hole for a layup.

Freshman phenom Myck Kabongo lived up to his billing as point-guard extraordinaire, logging seven assists in just 22 minutes. While he didn’t have any highlight-reel assists, he did showcase excellent court vision on some really nice interior feeds in the second half. Kabongo also added a three pointer and a pair of steals to his stat line.

Guard Julien Lewis was one of three freshmen in the starting lineup, and he unveiled a great catch-and-shoot ability behind the arc. His Longhorn teammates constantly found him open from long range, where he knocked down 4-of-7. Seeing the team repeatedly find Lewis in the flow of the offense was a very welcome sight for Texas fans who have watched some recent teams force things from long range. Lewis also added some easy layups to score 18 in his debut.

Fellow freshman Sterling Gibbs didn’t do anything exceptionally flashy in his 20 minutes off the bench, but he knocked down his one open look from behind the arc and notched three assists.

One of the most exciting developments of the night was at the free throw line. After a season in which the Horns shot just 65.4% at the line, the team’s 75% mark in last night’s game seemed downright unbelievable. Although Brown missed his first attempt — breaking the streak of 28-consecutive makes he began in last season’s Big 12 title game — he knocked down his other five. Kabongo and McClellan were the only other Horns to make it to the line, so only time will tell if Holmes, Bond, or Lewis are comfortable at the stripe.

What needed work

The number one concern for this team heading into this season was its weakness in the frontcourt, and that problem manifested itself in a poor rebounding effort against the Terriers. Although Boston was a smaller team and had just been worked on the glass by Northeastern on Friday night, the Terriers claimed a 43-35 edge on the boards.

Some of the rebounding problems were a result of Wangmene and Chapman still struggling to control the ball when it came to them. There was also a surprising number of long rebounds that would fall loose around the free throw line or perimeter, with nothing but red jerseys around to claim it. The Longhorns allowed Boston to reclaim 43% of their missed shots, a number that is going to be absolutely deadly when replicated against a team that makes those second chances count.

There were also stretches of play where the Texas offense seemed to lack any direction or flow. For much of the first half, the Longhorn offense turned stagnant, as players stood around or half-heartedly made weak cuts along the baseline. Oftentimes, those possessions ended with Brown trying to take control and being forced into bad looks.

At halftime, the team seemed to make adjustments, coming out of the locker room with lots of motion in the half-court set and excellent interior passing to the bigs or guards cutting along the baseline. But as the Texas lead expanded, the Horns once again became complacent, jacking up an inordinate amount of threes down the stretch. Hopefully this lack of focus was simply a result of the lopsided score, and not an indication that the youngsters might camp out on the perimeter this season rather than run an offense.

As always, it’s important not to put too much stock into the results of one game, and it’s especially important not to do so after a season opener. But for Texas fans who had a multitude of concerns about this year’s team, it’s a relief to see the team play as well as they did last night.

While the frontcourt will have its share of issues against deeper, more-experienced units this season, the play of Wangmene and Chapman gives fans hope that they can hold down the fort and let the backcourt carry the team. And although the youthful Longhorns will certainly have growing pains as they face tougher teams down the road, all of the freshmen looked confident in Sunday night’s debut.

Next up: vs. Rhode Island (0-1); Tuesday, 3 P.M. CT

Six months ago, the Longhorn basketball season came to and abrupt an unceremonious end. A string of bizarre decisions knocked Texas out of the NCAA tournament, but three more decisions would be made in the coming weeks that would leave the program reeling. Despite the threat of an NBA lockout, Tristan Thompson, Jordan Hamilton, and Cory Joseph all left the Forty Acres early and landed in the first round of the professional draft.

Six months later, there is still no movement on the NBA front. With the three former Longhorns now stuck in professional limbo, Texas fans are left to wonder “What if?” as stars like Jared Sullinger and Harrison Barnes begin their sophomore seasons at Ohio State and North Carolina. Without Thompson, Hamilton, Joseph Gary Johnson, Dogus Balbay, or Matt Hill, the 2011-12 Longhorns are completely starting over. J’Covan Brown and Alexis Wangmene are the only returning players to log any significant minutes in 2010-11, resulting in an endless sea of questions surrounding this year’s team.

Today, fans will finally get a chance to begin answering those questions, as the Longhorns tip off the 2011-12 campaign against the Boston Terriers in the Legends Classic. As is the case with most early-season tournaments, the results of this game have no effect on whether or not Texas advances to next weekend’s semifinals in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Rather, today’s season opener is simply a warm-up for the team, a chance to ease into the season and their new roles.

By the numbers

Although the Terriers are returning four starters from last year’s American East championship team, they have their own set of questions coming into the young season. The cause of the uncertainty was a late coaching change on campus, as Pat Chambers left in June to take the vacant head coaching spot at Penn State. Enter Joe Jones, who had coached Columbia for seven years before spending the last season as an associate head coach at Boston College.

Last year’s team was one that lived and died by the three. The Terriers took more than 40% of their attempts from behind the arc, and rode a 35.5% success rate to a 21-14 record. This year’s team seems to be following the same formula, as Boston took 28 of their 67 shots (41.8%) in Friday night’s season opener from behind the arc. The Terriers managed to make just 17.9% of their long-range attempts, though, and stumbled to an 82-74 overtime loss at home against Northeastern.

“There will be some concepts and some things Patrick was doing that we’ll keep the same,” Coach Jones told Blue Ribbon Yearbook’s Kathy Orton. “We definitely want to play fast. We want to get the ball up the floor.”

Jones’ career numbers make that claim seem slightly dubious, however. In his seven years leading the Lions, his teams averaged just 65.6 possessions per game, including a painfully slow 62.6 possessions per game in 2006-07.

To be fair, his teams at Columbia were far less talented than the current batch of Terriers, and limiting possessions is a solid tactic to use when you are outclassed by the competition. Unfortunately, Jones’ first game at BU seemed to be more of the same, as the team ran at a pace of 65.7 possessions per 40 minutes.

Defensively, last year’s team did a good job forcing misses, but their undersized roster proved deadly. Opponents grabbed 33.5% of their own misses, leading to far too many second- and third-chance points. The Longhorns have a rather inexperienced frontcourt this season, but will have the natural height advantage against a smaller BU lineup. Texas needs to exploit this weakness and score a chunk of points off of extended possessions.

Meet the Terriers

In the season-opening loss on Friday night, Boston was led by senior Darryl Partin, who is in his second year with the Terriers after transferring from La Salle. The 6’6″ guard dropped in 25 points in the losing effort and was able to keep a clean sheet in the turnover department. Last year, Partin coughed it up on more than 21% of the team’s possessions, so his ball control against Northeastern is a very welcome development for Terrier fans.

Sophomore D.J. Irving runs the point for Boston, and he logged an impressive 17-point performance against Northeastern. A member of last season’s America East rookie team, Irving had nine games in which he dished out at least five assists. Against Northeastern he logged just one, but the lack of ball movement seemed to be a team problem. On 28 baskets the Terriers had just eight assists, giving them a paltry 28.6% assist percentage. Although the season is less than a week old, that mark is currently the seventh-worst in all of D-I basketball.

Senior guard Matt Griffin also had just one assist against Northeastern, but added 11 points to the cause. At just 5’10”, the Rider transfer is the team’s best long-range threat, having connected on 45.8% of his attempts last season. He was once again the team’s most accurate three-point shooter on Friday night, knocking down 3-of-8 from behind the arc, while the rest of the team was just 2-for-20.

Senior forward Patrick Hazel is yet another transfer on the Boston roster, having joined the Terriers from Marquette. Now in his second season at BU, the 6’6″ Hazel is tasked with facing off against much bigger opponents in the frontcourt. Last season, his 10.8% mark in offensive rebounding was tops on the team, and actually placed him just outside of the top 100 offensive rebounders in the country. Against Northeastern, he grabbed five rebounds to go with his nine points, with three of them coming off of BU misses.

Sophomore Dom Morris rounds out the starting five. At 6’7″, he’s actually the tallest starter, a role he solidified down the stretch last season. As a freshman, he started the final 16 games of the year, and grabbed a combined 21 boards in back-to-back games against Binghamton and Vermont. On Friday night, he led the team with seven boards, six of them coming on the defensive end.

Off the bench, Jeff Pelage and Mike Terry, Jr. both gave significant minutes in the loss to Northeastern. Pelage is a 6’8″ senior who has been plagued by injury, suffering a hernia over the summer after missing 11 games last season due to a high ankle sprain . Despite coming off the bench, Pelage tied Morris with a team-high seven rebounds on Friday night.

Terry, a 6-foot guard out of Philly, provided 18 minutes off the bench against the Huskies. Although he didn’t log any numbers in the offensive categories, the sophomore set a career high with two steals in the season opener.

Freshmen James Kennedy and Zach Chionuma both made their collegiate debuts on Friday night, playing a combined 17 minutes off the bench. Kennedy, a 6’6″ forward, grabbed three rebounds and scored a bucket, while Chionuma added an assist and a basket.

Although the Terrier frontcourt is an undersized one, Coach Jones does have one big option on the bench. Mat Piotrowski is a 7’1″ redshirt freshman from Port Republic, New Jersey, but he did not see the court in the season opener.

Keys to the game

1) Lock down the perimeter – BU’s success depends completely on their ability to knock down the three-pointer, a fact made perfectly clear in their last two losses. Against Kansas in the NCAA tournament, Boston kept the game close until halftime on the strength of 46.2% shooting behind the arc. In the final twenty minutes, they were just a paltry 3-of-12, and the Jayhawks pulled away for a 19-point win. On Friday night, their 17.9% mark from long range again led to a loss.

For the Longhorns, perimeter defense was an issue that seemed to rear its ugly head as the most inopportune times last season. In losses to Colorado and Kansas State, Texas managed to repeatedly lose their opponents’ best three-point shooters, and Levi Knutson and Rodney McGruder made them pay. The pair of sharpshooters went 7-for-13 against Texas, handing the Longhorns back-to-back losses.

On paper, perimeter defense looks to be a strength for this year’s Longhorn team. With a bevy of talented guards and a coach who preaches staunch defense, fans are expecting less defensive lapses at the three-point arc. Today’s game will serve as a very early test of those expectations.

2) Establish an inside presence – This year’s Longhorn team is facing a lot of questions in the frontcourt, as the team’s most-experienced big men are Alexis Wangmene and Clint Chapman. Both have struggled in their limited minutes over the years, with a combined career average of just 3.8 points and 3.7 rebounds per game.

Coach Rick Barnes doesn’t need either player to be great this season, but he does need both to be serviceable. Against a smaller BU team, Wangmene and Chapman have an excellent opportunity to get their season off to a good start. If they both struggle against the Terrier frontcourt, the long-term prognosis will be troubling.

3) Get the freshmen involved – Rather than a key to the game, this point is a foregone conclusion. With six freshmen making up the bulk of the roster, there’s absolutely no way that the Longhorns could field a team without relying on first-year players. With much more difficult opponents looming on the schedule, these early-season games will serve to get the youngsters a taste of college basketball before the pressure is ratcheted up.

Although the college basketball season tips off in just six days, the question marks surrounding the 2011-12 Texas basketball team still loom large. Not since Kevin Durant’s 2006-07 season have the Longhorns been this young, and in a frustrating bit of coincidence for Texas fans, the influx of youth happens to coincide with a season in which there is no clear-cut favorite in the Big 12.

Texas and Kansas finished a combined 27-5 in conference play last season, and were simply a cut above the rest of the league. Third-place teams Texas A&M and Kansas State were both a distant three games behind Texas in the conference standings and four behind the champion Jayhawks. Fortunately for the rest of the league, that dominance is unlikely to continue, as the two teams lose a combined nine of their ten starters this season.

The Longhorns are certainly in much worse shape than the Jayhawks, as Texas loses its entire starting five and will have six freshmen making up the core of what should be a nine-man rotation. While Kansas loses four of their starters from last season, the winning ways will likely continue in Lawrence as eight players return, including Tyshawn Taylor, Thomas Robinson, and Elijah Johnson.

Who’s back

The most-experienced returning player for Texas is mercurial guard J’Covan Brown, who came off the bench in all 36 games last season. While he averaged just 10.4 points in 21.5 minutes per game, he had a breakout performance in the NCAA tournament. In those two games, Brown created off the dribble and repeatedly earned trips to the line. He didn’t miss a single attempt at the stripe, scoring 44 points in the two games while sinking 25 free throws.

In the frontcourt, big man Alexis Wangmene returns with a lot of room for improvement. The senior has yet to average 10 minutes per game in any of his three previous seasons and set a career high with just 2.3 points per game last year. Wangmene has always had issues with catching passes and corraling rebounds, so Texas fans will have to hope that his hands have become much softer over the summer.

The only other returning player — outside of the mop-up duo of Dean Melchionni and Andrew Dick — is Oregon product Clint Chapman. He sat out the entire 2010-11 campaign and used a redshirt, delaying his senior year in the hopes of alleviating the team’s frontcourt issues this season. Unfortunately, recruiting top-flight big men proved difficult for Rick Barnes and company, meaning that Chapman won’t be simply one piece of the frontcourt puzzle. Instead, he will have to make an immediate impact.

Chapman’s best season to date was his sophomore campaign, where he appeared in 32 of the team’s 35 games and averaged just two points in eight minutes per game. For a player who was a consensus top-100 recruit coming out of the Portland suburbs, his career has so far been a disappointment. With such a thin and inexperienced frontcourt, the Longhorns will need him to finally live up to expectations this season.

The newcomers

While Texas had a hard time filling its needs in the frontcourt, their backcourt-heavy recruiting class was still ranked fourth nationally by ESPN and eighth by Rivals. With four of the six freshman ranked in the top 100 of the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, the Longhorns have a very solid nucleus to build upon for the future. In the meantime, there are bound to be growing pains.

The jewel of the class is point guard Myck Kabongo. A McDonald’s All-American, the Canadian was also selected for the Jordan Brand Classic Game, and was described by many scouting services as the best pure point in his class.

For a player headed to Texas, that has invariably drawn comparisons to standouts T.J. Ford and D.J. Augustin, who led Texas to the Final Four and Elite Eight, respectively. While neither is a perfect parallel for Kabongo, there’s no debating the fact that Barnes’ teams excel with a solid coach on the floor. The mature, level-headed Kabongo certainly fits that bill.

Myck brings an offensive skillset that Dogus Balbay sorely lacked, and fortunately also has the defensive tools to make him a Barnes favorite. Kabongo can create off the dribble and boasts a preternatural ability to find open looks for his teammates. He’s also known for a solid three-point shot, which only serves to increase the effectiveness of his penetration game.

Joining Kabongo in the backcourt is guard Sterling Gibbs, the younger brother of Pitt’s Ashton Gibbs. Once committed to Maryland, Sterling decommitted following the retirement of Gary Williams and eventually signed to play on the Forty Acres.

At 6’1″, Gibbs has the body of a point guard, but he carries himself with the confidence of a two-guard. With both Kabongo and Brown in the backcourt, Sterling’s ability to both create and score will allow Barnes to tinker with his lineups. Considering the questions Texas faces in the frontcourt, it wouldn’t be surprising to see all three on the floor at times.

At the wing, Texas welcomes 6″5″ Sheldon McClellan and 6’3″ Julien Lewis. Out of Houston’s Bellaire High, McClellan is an athletic slasher with solid handles and a good — albeit streaky — track record behind the arc. Lewis is a strong 190 pounds, a necessity for a guy his size to finish against bigger players. Like Gibbs, Lewis is undersized for his primary position, but his ability to play both the two and the three will provide Coach Barnes more flexibility with his rotation.

In the frontcourt, Texas will need immediate contributions from freshmen Jonathan Holmes and Jaylen Bond. Holmes is a 6″8″ power forward out of San Antonio whose good ball handling skills and three-point range make him a difficult matchup for other bigs. He brings shot blocking skills that Texas will sorely need following the departure of Tristan Thompson, but scouts fear that he’ll need to bulk up to be able to battle down low in the Big 12.

Bond is a less-polished player, but has impressed coaches with his summer improvement. At the Big 12 media day, Coach Barnes guessed that Bond would be the team’s second-leading scorer, noting that Jaylen’s play over the previous two weeks had vaulted him past McClellan. In addition to inside scoring, the one-time Pitt commit will be asked to come up big on the glass.

At forward, Texas was also counting on big things from the 6’8″ lefty Kevin Thomas. Yet another product of Texas’ new Canadian pipeline, Thomas unfortunately failed to qualify academically and will now be forced to play at the JuCo level this season. Only time will tell if and when he can make his way back to Division I basketball.

The big picture

Not since the 2006 season has a Texas team been such a mystery heading into the year. Coming off of an Elite Eight appearance, that team was also gutted by early departures and had to be built on a foundation of seven freshman. Of course, one of those freshman was Kevin Durant, who became a cult hero during his impressive season at Texas.

Without a once-in-a-lifetime talent like Durant, this year’s Longhorn team will likely have a bumpy ride. With so many freshmen being counted on to play significant minutes, there will certainly be a lot of learning on the fly. Kabongo is already a very mature player, but he will have to adjust to the college game. His fellow freshmen will find that adjustment to be an even tougher task.

The Texas frontcourt is definitely going to be a weakness this year, which means fans will likely see their fair share of a three-guard look. Even when the Longhorns stick with a traditional lineup, they will probably be outsized by their opponents at almost every position. With all of the questions surrounding the production of the Texas frontcourt, perhaps we will even see Barnes experiment with a small, four-guard lineup like Villanova was forced to run in 2006 following Curtis Sumpter‘s injury.

In the backcourt, we’ll be watching to see how Brown and Gibbs play off the ball. J’Covan has found a lot of success in the past when he’s on the ball, creating with dribble penetration. Gibbs, meanwhile, is fairly small for a shooting guard, so his effectiveness might be limited against taller backcourts.

With an athletic roster and small frontcourt, it would seem like an up-tempo, high-pressure approach would play to Texas’ strengths. But with only nine players in the rotation, that strategy could easily lead to late-game and late-season fatigue. Foul trouble would also be a concern with any high-pressure defensive approaches, so look for the Horns to play sound, conservative half-court defense with a tendency to push for transition buckets.

The young Texas roster will have little time to ease into things, with non-conference road tests at UCLA and North Carolina set for December. Before that, they could even face a formidable Vanderbilt team in the final round of the Legends Classic on November 21st. Following that non-con is the first-ever round-robin schedule in a very deep Big 12 Conference, so this could be a very rough year for the Longhorn faithful.

Texas hasn’t had to sweat the NCAA bubble since 2005, when the team won 20 games and went 9-7 in conference play after an injury sidelined LaMarcus Aldridge and grades spiked P.J. Tucker. Depending on how quickly this young team matures, Selection Sunday might once again be a nervous one for the Longhorns and their fans.