Tre Johnson deserved so much better.
On Senior Night at the Moody Center in Austin, the future lottery pick played his last home game in burnt orange and white, a 76-72 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners as the eight-game winning streak for the Texas Longhorns against their Red River rivals pushed head coach Rodney Terry’s team farther off the NCAA Tournament bubble ahead of the SEC Tournament.
Whether Texas can get past Vanderbilt in a hometown environment seems immaterial to the reality following the final regular-season contest for the Longhorns capping their inaugural SEC campaign — that Johnson’s all-around excellence demanded so much more from the coaching staff and so much more from the roster that they assembled, areas of major failure.
Johnson works so hard on his shot — quite literally at every opportunity — that he generally makes his own luck in his shotmaking margins, but the basketball gods delivered a sharp rebuke of that belief on Saturday with an assist from Johnson’s Texas teammates in an 0-of-14 effort by the freshman.
At one point in the second half, Johnson had to jump and yell at senior guard Julian Larry to make an easy pass to him for an open three as Oklahoma went to a zone defense. Larry didn’t make the easy, and Johnson missed an easy opportunity for a rhythm shot.
The most egregious example of a teammate ignoring Johnson came at one of the game’s most critical moments.
After Texas was awarded a loose-ball offensive rebound on review with 30 seconds remaining and trailing 73-69, the Longhorns staff drew up a play for senior wing Tramon Mark to serve as the middle triggerman to Johnson coming off stagger screens on the wing. Instead of delivering it to Johnson, who had a step on his defender, Mark took a a mid-range jumper instead.
It bricked off the front of the rim, marking the second time in the last two games that Mark looked off Johnson when he was open in critical late-game moments — on Tuesday against Mississippi State, it was Mark declining to pass to an open Johnson with the game tied at regulation, taking and missing the shot in that instance, too.
It wasn’t just bad basketball from Mark, a two-time transfer who was playing his fifth season and 132nd game of college basketball, it was shockingly bad while also emblematic of how things went for Terry and his staff in assembling this roster around Johnson, a hugely important imperative for this season and the program’s overall trajectory under Terry.
The failure here is not effectively building a one-year roster in the new one-year roster era of college basketball, now a baseline job requirement.
If Mark can’t follow the most simple basketball directions at the biggest moments in his 132nd game, then why is he at Texas? Somehow Kelvin Sampson and Eric Musselman failed to get through to Mark about those simple things before Terry and his staff experienced the same failures, so why is he the guy out there who can’t do the simple most important thing for this year’s Texas basketball team — pass Tre Johnson the basketball every time he’s open and shot prepared.
That’s it. But no.
Of course, the inability to do the single most important thing for the team also results in the inability to do other important things. For Mark, that bled through into other mistakes, like committing a bad foul with a little over five minutes remaining as Texas trailed 63-62 in a back-and-forth game that ultimately included 13 lead changes and 12 ties.
Mark had just forced a steal but failed to make an effective outlet pass to senior guard Julian Larry that resulted in the ball going back to Oklahoma. After missing a three on the next possession by Texas, Mark had guard Miles Duke trapped in the corner. Instead of maintaining his positional advantage defensively, Mark jumped in the air, bailing out Duke, committing his fourth foul that forced him to the bench, and producing two made free throws by the Sooner.
Not a winning play.
It left Terry on the sideline mouthing, “Don’t foul,” before making the only face deserving of the moment.
It’s a defining face for this season of Texas basketball, which now ends the regular season with a 6-12 conference record and a litany of crimes against the basketball gods by experienced players who should know better but somehow don’t.
Tre Johnson deserved so much better.