Rodney Terry shares state of relationship with Souley Boum

The last time current Texas coach Rodney Terry was a head coach before being thrust into the position this season was at UTEP, where he coached from 2018 through 2021. He decided to give up head coaching after 2021 to return to Texas as an assistant under Chris Beard. Following Beard’s ouster earlier this season, Terry became the acting head coach for the Longhorns and helped lead them on a Big 12 title run.

It all comes full circle for Terry on Friday night, too, because his point guard at UTEP in 2020 and 2021 is current Xavier star Souley Boum. Boum began his career at San Francisco but transferred and sat out a year before averaging 12.9 points in 2020 and 18.8 in 2021. He also averaged north of 19 points a game in 2022 a year after Terry left before deciding to head to leave the Miners himself for the Musketeers.

Now, Boum can add All-Big East honors to his trophy case alongside two All-Conference USA appearances. More importantly, Boum finally got his crack at the NCAA Tournament, and advancing beyond the Sweet 16 requires he and Xavier to bulldoze right through the man he used to call “coach.”

There will be no love lost once the ball tips tonight. But in the lead-up, Coach Terry has nothing but love for his former player who has now become a star on the big stage.

“Souley Boum, I just saw Souley in the hallway. You talk about a great kid, one of my favorites to coach,” said Terry at his press conference previewing the Xavier game. “Came to us at UTEP after having a really successful rookie campaign as a freshman at San Francisco. We knew he was coming. He was on the All West Coast Conference rookie team.”

Terry went on to explain that Boum has evolved since their time together as the veteran has rounded into more of a lead guard, when at UTEP he was more of a score-first type of player.

“He was a guy that was wired to score. He was a guy that came in that we played a lot at the two. I made him play a little bit at the point, and he wasn’t really happy playing at the point because he didn’t get to keep the ball in his hands as much as he wanted to.

“Just watching him grow as a player over the years. My last year at UTEP, he played alongside Bryson Williams, Jamal Bieniemy, Keonte Kennedy. They were some really good players. He was a guy that was all about trying to win. Souley is so focused on winning sometimes to a fault. He’s like…’Just give me the ball. Let me go do it. I’ll show you, Coach. We’ll get it done.’

“Just a fierce competitor, great kid. Love him like my own son. We’ll be major competitors come Friday night, though. He wants to win. I want to win. But I can’t say enough great things about him as a person and love his mom as well.”

That’s a heck of a group those early 2020s UTEP teams had. Souley Boum is obviously great at Xavier, but Keonte Kennedy was just a starter for a Memphis team that made the tournament and was sort of the opposite of Boum since he came to UTEP after a year at Xavier. Then you have Bryson Williams, a 2,000-point career scorer who was a star for the Miners in ’20 and ’21 before leading a terrific Texas Tech team last year.

A lot of talent on those old Rodney Terry UTEP teams that’s been spread out on other programs throughout the country. Now, two main pieces of that run will face each other with an Elite Eight berth on the line.