Rodney Terry shares initial thoughts on Texas' 2023-24 roster

Texas hoops has been in limbo basically since the start of December. Head coach Chris beard was fired and Rodney Terry stepped in and did a fabulous job under the circumstances, however the school still didn’t commit to him as head coach until after the season. But now they have, so the coaching future for the Longhorns is dealt with. Right as they inked Terry to be the official head coach, the Texas roster entered its own state of flux. Few players have announced their intentions for next season and it’s anyone’s guess who UT lands in the Transfer Portal.

The only certainty is that there will be new names wearing the burnt orange next winter. At the moment, though, Rodney Terry is still trying to figure out which of his own guys are going to stay before he goes all in on portal recruiting. He explained that dynamic on the College Hoops Today podcast with Jon Rothstein.

“Well, I think that’s the biggest part that you have. You know, what returning guys will you have, you know, returning to your program?” said Terry. “Because you got to build around that nucleus of guys and that continuity that you have returning. So with that being said, you know, we always thought, with obviously trying to re-recruit our guys back and identify the guys we’re going to have back in our program next season.”

As of right now, Texas only has one meaningful contributor from last season who has pledged to come back, and that’s rising sixth-year senior Brock Cunningham, who averaged 4.6 points per game. Otherwise, some have already left while others are exploring options with a return to Texas on the table. According to Coach Terry, he wants to know what those guys will do before making any big splashes in the portal.

“And then, from that point, you attack the portal and you try to fill the rest of your needs. We were fortunate to sign some really good young high school players as well that will be joining us next season. So you build your roster out from there. Again Jon, roster management is year to year from here on out in college athletics as a whole.”

Terry taking the slow approach with the Transfer Portal this year. While everyone else is in a rush to reach out to a million portal targets, the Texas head coach would rather know what his current players are doing before stocking up on transfers.