In July I reckoned that because of the Augustin departure, the Longhorns would be invariably forced to spread the offensive touches around a bit, at least more so than they had to last season, possibly making this group a well rounded offensive juggernaut.

They won’t be so jump shot laden and an important reason why will be the added role of Damion James. Damion will take and make his share of 3’s, but he can pile up the buckets in a variety of ways. He hits the offensive glass with a vengeance and his athleticism allows him to finish at the basket quicker than his usually slower opponents. His mid-range game is very polished, yet was often forgotten because of the volume of shots D.J. and A.J. heaved. If Damion can be that special inside force, then the perimeter will be free for the likes of Abrams and Atchley to do their thing. More touches for Mason will mean more quality opportunities for the gunners.

Dogus Balbay, a Turkish point guard, will have a heavy say in how fast this team gels. He’s feisty, and that’s a positive trait, but the knock on him is his less than desirable shooting stroke. However as far as the 08/09 Longhorn team is concerned, all Balbay needs to do is facilitate the offense, and if he can do that, the offensive weapons on this roster should be strong enough to give any team a run for their money.

ESPN college basketball guru Andy Katz

Texas
Despite losing point guard D.J. Augustin to the NBA draft, the remaining Longhorns make Texas a solid threat to advance to the NCAA tournament for the 11th straight season. A.J. Abrams returns after backing out of the draft and could play either guard position, depending on the development of Turkish point guard Dogus Balbay, who missed last season with a knee injury. Underrated guard Justin Mason is back, along with starting interior players Damion James and Connor Atchley from last season’s 31-7 team that advanced to the Elite Eight. With such a deep returning backcourt, incoming freshman guards Varez Ward and J’Covan Brown won’t get much initial playing time.

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Many folks would rather see about a dozen or so different teams ranked higher than the Longhorns, but for the sake of the experience factor in college basketball, the Longhorns deserve to be ranked pretty high. They return 4 starters from an Elite 8 squad.

The national media might fall asleep on Texas just because Augustin is gone, but reason tells me Texas will benefit from the expanded roles many of the players will be forced into.

Anybody with a pulse has probably been keeping up with what’s been going on at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

The United States basketball team destroyed Spain today 119-82 to advance to the medal round. This should come as no surprise. The U.S. has been abusing the competition since they got off the plane in Beijing and will no doubt bring home the gold and make up for the sins of the 2004 team that had to settle for the bronze.

Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmello Anthony and other members of the “Redeemed Team” are showing the rest of the world that you don’t mess with the U.S. when it comes to basketball.

Ok, so we’ve sent our best professionals to go and beat up on countries like Spain, Greece, China and Angola.

Big deal!

We used to send our best college players to do that. We did for decades and were very successful. But after we came home with the bronze in 1988 with college players, the powers that be thought it was time to send in the big guns and create the ultimate “Dream Team”. That team featured the likes of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, John Stockton, Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan. It may have been the biggest one-sided battle against the world since the U.S. invaded Grenada 25 years ago.

The U.S. has always been a basketball country and always will be. Having said that, I think that if we went back to sending our best college players to Beijing we still would come back home with the gold.

Imagine a college Dream Team or Redeem Team featuring Kevin Love, O.J. Mayo, Michael Beasley, Derrick Rose, D.J. Augustin, Brook Lopez, Joe Alexander, Brandon Rush, Tyler Hansbrough, Chris Douglas-Roberts, Roy Hibbert, and I’ll even throw in George Hill.

Do you agree that this team would not be able to challenge the rest of the world? They may not destroy the field as the current team is doing, but they are certainly good enough to win the gold.

If we are so determined to send in our professionals, then why not add a few college players or go half pro and half college? After Beijing we would have made our point. We’re the best and everyone knows it. It’s now time to reconsider allowing some of our best amateurs back in the Olympics.

Quite a few Big 12 teams have been crippled by the exodus of underclassmen recently, so look for the conference to be severely overlooked this upcoming season.

One team that should have the talent to benefit from the expected hard times in the Midwest is the Texas Longhorns, yep, the Damion James and A.J. Abrams led Longhorns.

Abrams is the most lethal scorer on this team without a doubt, however Damion James, whose name has appeared on multiple 09 draft boards, should be the team’s most dominant player from an all around standpoint.

Abrams has NBA aspirations too, but I clearly believe James’s impact has to be more profound than A.J.’s if the team plans on sticking around for the second weekend of the NCAA’s.

A.J. will get his shots and whether they are good looks or not, he will make a fair share of them.

James will not shoot as much, but boost a much higher field goal percentage while rebounding and blocking shots like many players two to three inches taller do.

While this duo is not exactly ying and yang, they both let the long balls fly, so the threat to feast on defenses will always be available.

Center Connor Atchley should be able to climb into double figures with more shooting opportunities freed up with Augustin gone, but don’t count on the rebounds or blocks to increase, because bigger roles will be cast to big men Dexter Pittman and Matt Hill.

Dexter came on strong in last year’s tourney—had a couple of good games—but aside from that he didn’t impress the coaching staff enough to warrant him more PT earlier in the season.

26 games played, only 6.8 min/gm, not exactly Sasha Kaun type minutes.

Guard Justin Mason is the prototypical role player on D and O, but his role needs to expand. His “glue guy” label is all fine and everything, but he needs to supply scoring at the guard position to somehow make up for D.J.

Expanded minutes at the point could be awarded to Mason because of his experience at playing the position last year.

Unless Turkish point guard Dogus Balbay can supplant him.

Back in June Mark Rosner from statesman.com wrote about Balbay’s chances of taking over point guard duties after suffering a tough knee injury that kept him out all of last season.

All indications, and they seem consistent, point to Dogus as a gritty and confident guard, eager to penetrate the lane, but an unflattering side note mentions his lack of an outside shot, usually an oxymoron label for a foreign player.

Though Texas had playing time in store for Dogus in 07, so I don’t see why he couldn’t become the facilitator the team could afford, provided the above players live up to or better their resumes.

He will be very different from Augustin, obviously, so it’s up to the others to rise up and know when to be the aggressors on offense.

The D.J.-less transition could mean some early defeats, but the squad has the depth and the added scoring punch to beat teams in March.

After all this Texas forecasting, I will put my hand down and state that anything less than an Elite 8 appearance will be a travesty, because in light of the opening paragraph, the assertion is not straying far from the truth, the Big 12 will not exude “power conference” fear in people next year.

Texas and Oklahoma– that’s it.

If Blake Griffin had left for the Association we might be talking about Conference USA receiving more bids in March.

Think about it.

Anyways, I pick the Longhorns to advance to the Elite 8.

Photo credit: Newscom

And the list keeps growing and growing and growing…

Three more underclassmen declared late Wednesday: Memphis juniors Antonio Anderson, Robert Dozier and Texas junior guard A.J. Abrams.

Anderson and Dozier were role players on Memphis’ team this year, and their early entries come as a big surprise to me. Neither player signed with an agent, so I would expect both to return to school next season.

If Dozier and Anderson were to stay in the draft, that would mean that the entire starting 5 for the Tigers would be in the draft. Let the rebuilding in Memphis begin…

Abrams joined fellow Longhorn guard D.J. Augustin in declaring for the draft on Wednesday. Abrams averaged 16.5 points per game last season, but at 5′11″ is a little short to play shooting guard in the NBA.

Two more notable underclassmen declared for the NBA draft on Wednesday: Texas sophomore guard D.J. Augustin and Kansas guard Mario Chalmers.

Many NBA draft experts peg Augustin as a lottery pick, so his early entry should not have surprised anybody. Augustin was a consensus first team All-American this season and averaged 19.2 points and 5.8 assists per game for the Longhorns.

Chalmers became an instant legend in Kansas folklore when he hit a game-tying 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds left to send the national championship game against Memphis into overtime. Chalmers averaged 12.8 points and 4.3 assists per game for the national champion Jayhawks.

I’m a little surprised that Chalmers declared and would not be at all surprised to see him withdraw from the draft and return to Kansas for his senior season.

The Friday night games are winding down, and here are my thoughts on today’s action:

- Even though the game is far from over, I want to extend my congratulations to the Michigan State Spartans for laying the biggest egg of the tournament thus far. Extremely disappointing effort by the Spartans.

- Very convincing win by Texas over a pretty good Stanford team. DJ Augustin is as good as advertised.

- Note to the rest of the teams in the tournament - Don’t let Stephen Curry touch the ball. Period. End of story. Deny him the ball constantly or he will destroy you.

- There is still 14 minutes left in the Kansas/Villanova game, but Villanova hasn’t impressed me that much tonight. For some reason, their guards are convinced that they can beat the Kansas guards off the dribble, which just isn’t happening. Why they don’t work on passing the ball around the perimeter and move without the ball is beyond me. Far too much one-on-one play from Villanova.

There are some fabulous match-ups on the college basketball schedule for this week. Here are some great games for your viewing pleasure…

Thursday December 20th - #7 Duke at #9 Pittsburgh. The young Dookies will face a huge test as they travel to Madison Square Garden to face the Sam Young, DeJuan Blair and the Panthers. Both teams have played pretty easy schedules up to this point, so this game will be a great gauge of just how good they really are.

Saturday December 22nd - #4 Georgetown at #2 Memphis. A fantastic top-5 battle will take place at the FedEx Forum in Memphis when Roy Hibbert and the Hoyas come to town to face Chris Douglas-Roberts, Derrick Rose and the high-flying Tigers. If there is one game you watch this weekend, it is this one. Hibbert is the premier center in all of college basketball, and Rose is making a big splash in his freshman season.

If a battle of top-5 teams isn’t enough to satisfy you, may I also recommend watching #5 Texas at #10 Michigan State. The Longhorns have successfully survived the graduation of Kevin Durrant, thank you very much, with D.J. Augustin leading the charge. The Spartans are always tough to play at the Jack Breslin Arena, and the Longhorns know they will be in for a battle.