What did Rodney Terry learn from Texas' two closed-door scrimmages?

College basketball’s preseason either features charity exhibitions or closed-door scrimmages. The Texas Longhorns chose the latter route this year.

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Rodney Terry‘s squad elected to face two Big 12 teams during the behind-closed-doors lead-up to the season. As the Longhorn football team was preparing for a matchup with Georgia, the Texas men’s basketball squad defeated TCU 80-52 in San Antonio, according to Jon Rothstein. Then, battled Colorado a week later and emerged victorious, per Trilly Donovan. The Longhorns won 79-75 over the Buffaloes thanks to 31 points from Tre Johnson, according to On3’s Jamie Shaw.

What coaches are and aren’t allowed to say about these scrimmages becomes murkier by the year, but on Wednesday Terry explained what his biggest takeaways were from the two preseason matchups ahead of Texas’ season-opener on Monday night against Ohio State in Las Vegas.

“I think we had great effort, great energy,” Terry said Wednesday. “I thought we had great bench energy. I thought we didn’t have any guys moping around or pouting about playing time. I thought everybody was really connected and locked-in together in both of the scrimmages.”

Turnovers were where Terry focused next, saying there was improvement between scrimmages.

“I thought we did a better job in our second scrimmage taking care of the ball than we did the first one,” Terry said. “Again, to be expected especially earlier in the year. Just learning the value of taking care of the basketball and making simple plays.

“Then at the day, just getting used to playing with each other and familiarity in game situations. You can only assimilate so much in practice. When you get out there between the lines in the game situation, guys have to have a feel for what guys are capable of doing, what they’re not capable of doing, what positions they’re good at, positions on the floor, all that comes in game situations.”

Texas was No. 93 in turnover margin last season, No. 94 in turnovers forced per game with 12.88, and No. 149 in turnovers per game with 11.6. The Longhorns made progress in that area against Colorado.

“I think we had something like 21 turnovers in the first game,” Terry said. “Last game we had nine turnovers. We had three at the half. We did a much better job of keeping the game simple. It was an area I thought we really improved and we can work on getting better.”

Next up on Terry’s mind was rebounding.

“Our rebounding was really good in game one,” Terry said. “Thought our rebounding was just okay in game two but the rebounding was a little different in that game because we missed a lot of shots. You miss a lot of shots, they get a lot of defensive rebounds. They had a lot of defensive rebounds, so the rebounding was a little skewed because of that in the second game.”

That’s an area where Texas could improve from a bottom-half standing in college basketball. The Longhorns were No. 184 in rebounding margin, No. 215 in defensive rebounds per game, and No. 200 in offensive rebounds per game.

Finally, Terry explained he needs to see better from his team in terms of not allowing the officials to blow the whistle.

“One other thing we got better with from one game to the next? Fouling,” Terry said. “You can’t put teams on the free throw line. I thought in game one, they shot 31 free throws. In game two, we shot 30 free throws and I think we gave them 22, 23 free throws. We were a little better. We have to quit fouling, we can’t foul as much. Again, that’s early in the year, getting your hands back, playing with your feet, and not putting your hands on guys.”

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The Longhorns will begin Terry’s second full season as head coach of the Longhorns. They’ll do so at 9 p.m. on Monday night when they take on the Ohio State Buckeyes as part of the Hall of Fame Series Las Vegas Opening Night in T-Mobile Arena.