Rodney Terry defends Tyrese Hunter after off-night against Kansas

Texas came into this week in sole possession of first place in the Big 12. After Monday’s loss to Kansas, they still are, but now have just a one-game lead on both the Jayhawks and Kansas State. The game itself was a thriller, an 88-80 scoring explosion in the most legendary arena of them all. However, KU outlasted UT in the barn-barner, thanks in part to an off night from Texas guard Tyrese Hunter.

He’s a double-figure per-game scorer in his sophomore season and averages almost three assists. But on Monday night, he scored just six points and didn’t record a rebound or assist. When asked about his quiet performance after the fact, Texas interim head coach Rodney Terry refused to blame Hunter for the loss.

“At the end of the day, Tyrese is going to be a steady guy for us in terms of … we don’t need Tyrese to go win the game for us,” shared Terry in the postgame presser. He then went on to explain Hunter’s role and why he’s not too bothered by his small stat line in the road loss.

“Tyrese is the point guard and his job is to make guys around him better. I thought he made some really good decisions in terms of being aggressive and trying to attack the basket as well and create for his teammates. But at the end of the day, a point guard’s job is to try and run the team and try to make guys around him better and try to win the game. That’s where you’re measured as a point guard. I don’t get caught up in how much Tyrese scores.”

Marcus Carr is still the team’s leading assist man, but he’s definitely taken on more of a primary scoring role this season, evidenced by his 16.4 points per-game. Meanwhile, Texas brought in a guy like Hunter, who’s more of a true lead guard, to offset Carr so he doesn’t have to shoulder such a heavy scoring and distributing load.

Per Terry, Hunter still played fine in his role. Just because he didn’t score much doesn’t mean he was a net negative. He didn’t jack up 15 shots and make three of them. Instead, he only found space to take four and hit half of those. So he wasn’t even inefficient, just had trouble getting to his spots on that particular day.

Not a ton of worry from the Texas coach about his younger starting guard. Maybe we’ll see a Tyrese Hunter outburst this weekend.