Rodney Terry looking for continued improvement as Texas enters 'separation month'

As we head into February, there’s one month left for college basketball teams to get right before the postseason. That timeline is something that Texas’ interim head coach Rodney Terry is trying to emphasize to his players as they come down the stretch of their season in the Big 12.

After defeating Baylor 76-71 on Tuesday, Terry said the Longhorns are just taking things one game at a time. However, he also wants his team to feel the clock starting to tick as they head into this next month which, in his mind, is all about separating yourself from the pack through improvements.

“We take it one game at a time…We have 40 minutes in front of us,” Terry said. “That’s all we had on our minds today in terms of really trying to close out January. We call it ‘The Grind’. We’ve embraced it all year long as we head into February which, really, is the month of separation. As you head into separation month, you gotta continue to improve in areas where you need to improve in.”

One way in which Terry wanted to see improvement from Texas was on the defensive end. After losing by 11 to Tennessee, the Longhorns showed exactly that during this week’s win. Following the game where they allowed the Volunteers to shoot 55.6%, they held Baylor to just 71 points on 36.8%.

That was exactly the kind of performance that Terry wanted to see after their previous loss. It shows growth in an area that, for now, looks like less of a weakness than it did. From here, though, Texas has to keep proving itself in February with a pair of Top-10 road trips to Kansas up next with Kansas State in Bramlage Coliseum as well as Kansas for a faceoff in Allen Fieldhouse.