Jordan Pope, G
Coming into this season, I expected junior guard and Oregon State Beavers highly sought-after transfer portal target Jordan Pope to be one of Texas's leading scorers in the starting five. Pope earned his starting role with a solid performance in preseason fall camp for the Longhorns a few months ago.
For the last two seasons before transferring to Texas, Pope was Oregon State's leading scorer, including a career-high mark of nearly 18 points per game for the Beavs in the 2023-24 campaign.
When Pope has scored in double figures this season, Texas is 3-0, including a win over NC State on the road in Raleigh. That stat is a two-way street for Pope and the Longhorns, though, because Texas is 1-2 in the three games when he's scored five or fewer points.
Pope needs to be more confident when he's got the opportunity for open looks from mid-range field goal attempts and beyond the arc on threes.
He's been fantastic at creating his own looks and making them from the mid-range inside the arc and when he gets to the rim on drives and cuts down the lane and the baseline. But Pope hasn't made a single unassisted three-point attempt for the Longhorns this season (per CBB Analytics).
If Pope can step up his scoring and assist efforts to facilitate the offense with the starting unit in the backcourt, that would be a massive boost to support Johnson on that end of the floor. Pope is an important player who needs to be that third or fourth source of leading scorer for the Longhorns in the backcourt unit this season.