40 Acres Sports

Texas starts at #16 in ESPN’s week 1 college basketball power poll. Should be moving up if they can take out UTSA.

Basketball opens season with 87-56 exhibition win over Xavier. Augustin and James lead the scoring, freshman Johnson plays 19 minutes.

Kevin Durant and the Seattle SuperSonics are one step closer to moving to Oklahoma City. Sucks for him, guarantee he doesn’t re-sign when his contract is up.

He struggled in his NBA debut last night but [tag]Kevin Durant[/tag] picked up his game against the Phoenix Suns in a loss. He still hasn’t quite found his shot yet but scored 27 points and helped keep Seattle in it until the fourth quarter. Highlights from ESPN are below:

He played more minutes than everyone else, made less than 50% of his shots, and jacked up six threes but showed flashes of what he’s going to be capable of very soon. You know he’s going to be big time when he drops 27 points on a very good team (with an admittedly suspect defense) and all anyone can talk about it is what he’s going to do when he’s really ready.

It looks like we’ll get to see the Sonics a lot on national television this season thanks to Kevin, but you’re going to need to be a night owl to watch them play. Their first two games started at about 9:30 pm Central so by halftime it was already way past my bedtime. The next few games will only by available on Fox Northwest but fans who get NBA TV will be able to see Durant and the Sonics against the Pistons on November 11th.

Texas basketball preview from Barking Carnival. If Johnson is healthy this could be fun team to watch.

Kevin Durant to start tonight against Nuggets. Made it through shootaround on his bum ankle and should be good to go.

He hasn’t been cleared for the regular season yet, but freshman forward Gary Johnson has been cleared to play in Friday’s exhibition game.

Freshman point guard Dogus Balbay has season ending knee surgery. Was expected to play valuable minutes as backup to DJ Augustin.

5-foot-7 point guard Yvonne Anderson commits to Gail Goestenkors. Big get out of Missouri for the women’s basketball team. (via)

Freshman Gary Johnson has been cleared to practice. Rick Barnes called him a more explosive PJ Tucker, quite a compliment.