Texas Guard Goes Scorched Earth in Loss to Arkansas

Wednesday night featured a loaded slate of collegiate basketball games, with conference rivals facing off one after the other.

Two of those teams were Texas and Arkansas, who are both grappling to find their footing in the toughest conference in basketball, the SEC.

While Arkansas ultimately had the last laugh — winning in an 86-81 barn-burner — Tre Johnson certainly got his. Across the five-star freshman’s 38 minutes, he poured on a Texas freshman record 39 points, shooting 50% from the floor and hitting on a blistering seven of 11 triples.

The Longhorns looked to him again and again to create offense, and he did just that in scoring near 50% of the team’s total points.

Offensively, he showed true versatility. He pulled up for quick-fire threes, came off screens for smooth jumpers, stepped-back to create space and showed some improvements on his slashing game.

The added benefit of his white-hot night was his passing, which again was shown to be more than meets the eye for a pure scorer. He dished four assists overall, and boasts a near-16% assist percentage on the year.

Per an earlier scouting report on Johnson: “He won’t play much lead guard, Johnson does have passing chops that will prove to be useful moving forward. Especially if he ends up being a primary scorer at the NBA level and has the ball in his hands at a high rate, his ability to set up and find others will be very valuable. When he doesn’t have the ball in his hands, Johnson will need to continue to find ways to impact the ball and do more than just score.”

Losers of five games in their last six tries, Johnson and the Longhorns next take on Georgia fresh off a win over the third-ranked team in the country.

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