Brock Cunningham stresses need for Texas to handle failure

The Texas basketball team is coming off a 74-67 loss at Texas Tech and one thing being stressed in the program is the need for Texas to handle failure well.

It was only the sixth loss of the season and the fourth in conference play, with the Big 12 conference title race still wide open.

“Yeah, 100%. In this sport and especially in life, your life is going to be determined by how you handle failure,” forward Brock Cunningham said. “We’re coming off a loss and we’re getting better and we’re moving into this next game, but we’ll be better coming out on Saturday.”

If Texas handles failure well it should be in good shape, but it needs to get things right in a hurry. The closing slate will do the Longhorns no favors.

Up next is Oklahoma, then there’s a murderer’s row of ranked opponents to close out the regular season: vs. No. 19 Iowa State, at No. 9 Baylor, at No. 22 TCU and vs. No. 5 Kansas.

There won’t be much room for anything less than Texas’ best.

Texas cleaned up the turnovers

One thing interim coach Rodney Terry was happy to see was that Texas cleaned up some of its recent turnover problems.

Terry dropped to a 13-5 record since taking over the head coaching duties, and he has wanted to make a point of emphasis on the team’s turnovers lately. The Longhorns may have left Lubbock with a loss, but Terry explained after the game that ball security was not the reason why.

“We did a great job of taking care of the ball tonight, it wasn’t so much turning the ball over tonight, we did a great job of taking care of the basketball,” Terry said. “I think tonight the first half I thought we just didn’t have great one-on-one defense, our pick-and-roll defense wasn’t where it needed to be in the first half.”

Texas will be back in action against Oklahoma on Saturday with a 2 p.m. ET tipoff on ESPN+.