Timmy Allen explains how Texas maintained focus despite coaching change

Texas head coach Chris Beard was fired following an ugly off-the-court incident earlier this season, leaving veteran assistant Rodney Terry as the interim. Despite the coaching change, Texas is thriving in Big 12 play and currently lead the league by a whole game over the scrum of clubs just behind them. It’s a testament to the toughness and resiliency, not just from Terry and the staff, but even more so from the Longhorn student-athletes who have dealt with such a tumultuous year off the court but have banded together to play spectacular basketball.

During Saturday’s edition of College GameDay in Auburn, the crew conducted a remote interview with Texas forward Timmy Allen, who was warming up a few states away for the Longhorns’ game against West Virginia. Though he was participating in team huddles, stretching and getting shots up, Allen gave some great answers to Rece Davis.

First, he discussed Texas’ ability to play through such a strange coaching situation:

“You know, I really think it was just our belief in each other. It’s always been about us, and it ain’t never been about nobody but each other. You know, we play for the guy next to us. You know, that’s really where we’ve kind of stem our goals from and our game plan. Just always looking to defend and help the teammate next to you. But we know if we hang our hat on defense, we can do anything we wanna do, and that’s what we try to do here at Texas.”

Sure, the NCAA Tournament is the ultimate goal, but with Texas leading the Big 12 right now, Davis asked if winning the conference crown has an added meaning for Allen. He answered:

“It’s all that counts, man. We came here to win championships. You know that. Everybody knows that. That’s our main goal. And winning a Big 12 Championship would mean everything to us. We gotta take it one game at a time. We got seven games left, so we just gotta take it one game at a time, one possession at a time. But, you know, that’s big. And we wanna win and we wanna win for our coach, Rodney Terry. So we’re going to do everything we can to put ourselves in position to do that.”

Such maturity from senior Longhorn leader Timmy Allen. A locker room stocked with guys like him make Texas such a mentally tough team on and off the court.