Texas Basketball: Re-grading the Longhorns 2022 recruiting class
Arterio Morris, G
The highest-rated guard that the Longhorns signed in the 2022 class was the elite five-star Dallas Kimball point guard recruit Arterio Morris. Texas landed the uber-talented 6-foot-3 and 190-pound in-state guard over other top schools such as the Memphis Tigers and Kansas.
Morris some early during the regular season. He had a couple of solid double-digit scoring outings during the non-conference slate coming against the Houston Christian Huskies and Northern Arizona Lumberjacks in November.
Throughout the next few weeks, we would see some more flashes from Morris here and there. He had a solid game off the bench in Texas’ overtime loss to the No. 17 Illinois Fighting Illini in the Jimmy V. Classic on Dec. 6 with nine points, two rebounds, and one block.
But the biggest two-game stretch where we really got to see Morris show what he can do on the court came at the end of December against the Louisiana Ragin-Cajuns and Texas A&M-Commerce Lions. Morris posted a career-best 25 points in a dominant offensive effort in Texas’ win over Louisiana on Dec. 18.
And then, Morris was solid again with a dozen points on nearly 50 percent shooting from the field along with three rebounds, one assist, two steals, and one block in the Dec. 27 win over Texas A&M-Commerce.
In the first half of the Big 12 slate, though, Morris’ contributions were pretty limited. He hasn’t played more than 12 minutes off the bench in a single Big 12 contest so far this season.
In general, though, we haven’t really seen a whole lot of Morris since Beard was placed on unpaid leave in mid-December. Since Rodney Terry took over as the interim head coach in December, Morris has averaged only 10.9 minutes per game. Meanwhile, Morris was playing around 17.3 minutes per game off the bench prior to Beard’s departure.
I would like to see a little more out of Morris, especially when Texas is up late in games. He’s shown a lot of defensive chops in the last couple of weeks, including averaging a whopping four blocks and four steals per 40 minutes in the last two games.
If nothing else, Morris can still bring a lot of defensive value to the table while the rest of his game develops. I still like what he brings to this backcourt unit for Texas as I never realistically expected him to develop into an NBA first-round draft pick in just one season.