The men’s basketball offices at the University of Texas simmered with quiet preparation.
Rodney Terry watched Marquette.
Frank Haith studied Kansas.
Russell Springmann examined Syracuse, the Longhorns’ opponent in New Orleans in the NCAA semifinal game.
Rewind. Stop. Fast forward. Stop. Pause, Stop, Play.
For the three 30-something assistants under head coach Rick Barnes, the season comes down to those buttons and the secrets that can be divined from a television screen. The players report for practice. The assistant coaches figure out what they’ll do.
At games, you see the assistant on the bench in their pressed two-piece suits, clutching clipboards and managing 14 temperaments. What you don’t see are the unglorified hours they spend scouting other teams, editing film, administering drills and evaluating recruits. You don’t see them tossing luggage into an airplane the night after an aching loss.
At Texas, the assistants do it all, because, they say, everyone does it all. That includes Barnes, who preaches unity and the idea that no one is above any mundane detail that is required to win. It includes strength and conditioning coach Todd Wright, who now sits on the bench with the three assistants during games.
“If I’ve ever done anything right, I’ve always hired good people to be with me,” Barnes said. “I always wanted to hire people who wanted to be head coaches. They don’t work for me. They work with me. We’re all on the same page.”
At midday Tuesday, when most folks were at lunch, Springmann was hunched over a laptop.
He was trying to figure out a way to defend Carmelo Anthony and score against a vaunted 2-3 zone. It’s a tough assignment. If Syracuse beats Texas on Saturday, there’s no need to have a plan to play Nick Collison of Kansas or Dwyane Wade of Marquette.
“It doesn’t get any better than this for me,” Springmann said.
And that’s not just because he’s newly engaged to his girlfriend Neissa Brown — whom he met last summer in church — or because he’s going to the Final Four at age 33. It’s also because he’s “living a dream,” laboring with and for like-minded coaches who work together, play together and hope together that this is the year the Longhorns win a national championship.
In the next office, Terry sat behind his desk and wondered how he would play Marquette.
Terry is in his first year as an assistant at Texas. Before joining Barnes, he was an assistant for four seasons at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, including last year, when the Seahawks jarred Southern California in the South Region for the school’s only victory in an NCAA tournament
Terry knows Austin. The 35-year-old Angleton native earned his degree at St. Edward’s University, where he started three years at point guard.
“They’ve really embraced me,” said Terry, who, with Springmann, works with centers and forwards.
Next door, Haith reviewed the regular-season game between Texas and Kansas. The Longhorns lost the nationally televised game, 90-87. What, Haith imagined, would happen if they met at the Louisiana Superdome?
At 37, he is the oldest assistant, a family man with a wife named Pam and a 9-year-old son named Corey. Haith was an assistant at Wake Forest, Texas A&M, Penn State and UNC-Wilmington before joining Texas in 2001. He supervises recruiting and works with perimeter players.
Later Tuesday, the coaches broke for lunch. They walked across campus for a sandwich.
They talked some basketball. They talked some other things.
“The chemistry amongst the staff is just important as it is with the team,” Haith said. “I think it flows through the team.”
It flows through Wright, too. Everything does.
A former football player who joined Barnes’ staff at Clemson nine years ago and came with him to Texas, Wright is an architect of bodies built for the purposes of playing basketball. He analyzes posture, flexibility — even a player’s gait. He likes to talk about eliminating problems before they start.
Last year, after Texas lost to Oregon in the Sweet 16, the players voted to work with Wright through the summer. That’s exactly what they did.
Talk about eliminating problems.
“That’s when you know you have a chance to be special,” Wright said of the players’ commitment.
Like the other coaches, Wright finds himself loading luggage into airplanes, too. No one is above anything.
“And you realize: there’s a lot more that goes into this than just yourself,” he said.
