Texas basketball coach Rodney Terry, a point guard during his playing days at St. Edward’s University in South Austin, understands the value of having a veteran floor general. He says it’s especially important in the transfer era, when almost every team seems to have a new lineup every season.
So luring in two proven guards during this past offseason in former Oregon State star Jordan Pope and Indiana State’s Julian Larry? That’s twice as nice for Terry and the No. 19 Longhorns, who will open the season Monday in Las Vegas against Ohio State.
“They’re guys that complement each other,” said Terry, who’s entering his second full season as the Longhorns’ coach after replacing Chris Beard on an interim basis during the 2022-23 campaign. “Jordan’s one of those guys that can score off the ball, and Julian’s more of a traditional kind of point guard who can score a little bit as well. They both make open shots, and they both make other guys around them better.”
And they both should ease the pain of losing last year’s starting backcourt of Max Abmas and Tyrese Hunter, who combined for 27.9 points and 8.2 assists per game. Both Pope and Larry have a proven ability to get points, and both have more size than either Abmas or Hunter. They might not both start since freshman phenom Tre Johnson already seems locked in at shooting guard, but they’ll share the floor plenty this season — and they plan on sharing plenty of wins.
“I would think we would be on the court together a lot,” Larry said. “We’ve played together a lot in the summer and in the fall, and it’s gone well just with me being able to get downhill and create off action, and then being able to kick to him for an open shot, and then him doing the same thing for me. Just being able to help each other get easier shots, that’s big.”
Julian Larry brings good size, savvy, defense to Texas basketball
Larry, a 6-foot-3 graduate transfer, returns to Texas as one of the most experienced point guards in the country with 108 career starts and 130 career games. Fittingly for his position, he also played quarterback for Lone Star High School in the Dallas suburb of Frisco before focusing on basketball.
“It’s good to be back home,” he said. “I don’t know if I have a fan club or anything (from Frisco), but it will be good to get to play in front of my family more often.”
Larry boasts an offensive game that’s more efficient than explosive, which should work well on a squad with lots of scorers. He averages 7.3 points for his career but shot better than 50% from the floor and 40% from 3-point range over all four seasons at Indiana State. He also earned all-defensive first-team honors in the Missouri Valley Conference a year ago and brings welcomed size to a Texas backcourt that often got bullied on the defensive end last season.
Jordan Pope a proven scorer who wants to share the ball
The 6-2 Pope started 63 games over the past two seasons for Oregon State and provides more offensive pop than Larry, as evidenced by a scoring average of 17.6 points last season. But Pope says he welcomes a chance to again be “a natural point guard.” Swinging the ball to Larry or Johnson or Tramon Mark — who averaged 16.2 points last season for Arkansas — will feel like old times for Pope, who played on a star-studded high school team in California that included current Houston Rockets player Jalen Green.
“I played with a lot of great players my whole life, so it’s nothing new to me,” he said. “I took a few years at Oregon State to really have the show focused on me, and that was good. But now I’m glad to be in a position like this, to play with other great scorers and being able to be a second, third, first option, whatever it may be any given night.”
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