Rodney Terry shares how Texas responded from UCF loss so quickly

Emotions were all over the place inside the Moody Center on Wednesday when Texas lost to UCF on their home court.

After the loss, Texas had to turn its attention toward Saturday’s matchup against No. 9 Baylor having lost three of its last four games. A back-and-forth affair eventually saw the Longhorns upset the Bears 75-73 thanks to a buzzer-beating driving layup from guard Tyrese Hunter to win the game.

After the game, head coach Rodney Terry credited his team with their quick turnaround from the weekday loss to the Knights to defending Texas’ home court against a top-10 team.

“We knew coming in that we were going to have a huge challenge to deal with a team that could put pressure on scoring the basketball at a very high level,” Terry said postgame. “Again, at the end of the day, this race is going to be every night. There’s not one bad team in our league whether you’re at home or on the road. You’re going to have to play 40 minutes against a really good team.”

With Texas falling out of the AP Top 25 poll during its slump, the Longhorns can get right back on track if they can follow their win over the Bears. If they can follow that up with another victory against No. 15 Oklahoma, things will be looking up for the Longhorns heading into the back stretch of the regular season.

Still, things won’t be any easier or the Longhorns coming up, either as Texas rounds out January with two more ranked opponents on its schedule in a road trip next Saturday against No. 20 BYU before a quick home turnaround the following Monday against No. 5 Houston. Follow that up with No. 19 TCU and No. 24 Iowa State directly after that — and the next three weeks could make or break the Longhorns under first-year head coach Rodney Terry.

“Our mentality was that we were going to come in and have a survivor’s type mentality,” Terry continued. “We were going to come in and continue to compete, continue to get better and continue to work the game.

“It didn’t fall the way we wanted to the other night in terms of finishing the game and with the outcome we wanted. … But I thought our guys did a great job of regrouping, coming back and working through some of the things we did well in the previous games while also working through some of the things we didn’t do so well in that previous game.”