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(University of Texas Athletics)
For the first time in almost a decade, the Texas Longhorns basketball team started its season 9-1 and 3-0 in conference play with a 84-59 blowout win over No. 3 Iowa State Tuesday. Some fans are wondering, with this early success, what has been the difference between this season and previous ones under Head Coach Shaka Smart?
In a season undermined by a pandemic, a lack of fans and game cancellations, you might think that Texas would struggle out of the gate. Other programs have. But the Longhorns have found success by playing with an edge.
Texas might have had the best college basketball win so far this season when they traveled to Allen Fieldhouse to take on Kansas last Saturday. The 25-point win propelled Texas to No. 4 in the country and has the entire college basketball world looking to Austin and sixth-year coach Smart for clues about the turnaround.
"Results on the court are first and foremost going to be a function of the improvement that players have made," Smart said at this week's press conference. "The ability of the players to be connected around winning and around what goes into winning. I think anytime that you're able to win a significant game that's an indication of that."
Smart attributes the early season success on the court to confidence, defense and chemistry.
Confidence
The cliche that "confidence is the key to success" applies to Texas this season.
Texas has found a system on offense that relies on trusting their guards to make the right decisions when running the offense and having their big men rebound and set screens.
"Everything is opening up now," 6-foot-10 forward Jericho Sims said. "I think if I get to the rim and make a lot of people collapse on me, then that really opens up the floor for everybody else."
When you watch the Longhorns play, there is a sense of purpose that may have been missing during stretches last season. Sims and freshmen Greg Brown are both in the top 10 for rebounds in the Big 12 and in the top 50 nationally.
Senior guards Matt Coleman and Andrew Jones and junior Country Ramey on the court. (University of Texas Athletics)
The Longhorns have also found confidence in the formidable trio of senior guards Matt Coleman and Andrew Jones and junior Country Ramey. Together, the three upperclassmen have figured out different ways in every game this season to put the Longhorns in situations to win. Only Texas and Saturday's opponent West Virginia have three players averaging more than 13 points this season in the Big 12.
"I think our guys definitely have more confidence and expect to win," Smart said. "Definitely felt that on Saturday (against Kansas), but it's a fine line. What we like to tell the players as coaches: 'Expect to win, but expect to do what goes into winning.'"
Defense
"When you have a lead, if you keep the other team from scoring," Smart said, "then you're not going to lose the lead."
Every Shaka Smart team has one thing in common, a defensive philosophy that pressures shooters and doesn't allow driving lanes into the paint. The three most recent players that Texas has sent to the NBA—Jarrett Allen, Mo Bamba and Jaxon Hayes—have been shot blockers and defensive standouts who had to work on their offensive games once they got to the pros.
The Longhorns have kept their opponents shooting under 40% early in the season. The Big 12 can be one of the best conferences week in and week out, with different types of lineups and different defensive looks. Texas has to try to match the energy and intensity of each opponent they face.
"On the defensive end our guys have done a really good job playing with energy," Smart said. "But we also know that that's not a given. It's something that we've got to make sure that we bring. As I tell the guys all the time, it starts with our edge. We have to have an edge about us."
Chemistry
With 10 upperclassmen on the team, it's easy to see how teamwork and experience have created successful chemistry.
"We're a group of guys that really worked on our games over the offseason and really looked to improve and be better as a team," Jones said. "We trust each other, we trust our work and we don't really get down about shot selections that guys take. We just trust each player is going to make the right play."
The team celebrates on the court. (University of Texas Athletics)
The group is connected to each other, a foundation laid when Coach Smart came to Texas.
"You got a group of guys who have really bought into the culture and who we are and want to be," Jones said. "I wouldn't necessarily say it's a culture shift, it's more of our culture finally being noticed and brought to light with our connectivity."
And like so many things, the "confidence, defense and connectivity" that binds this team together can be traced back to another CDC—Chris Del Conte, University of Texas at Austin Athletic Director. Many ADs might have cut bait with Smart, who came from success at mid-major VCU, when he missed the tournament in 2017, or when the Longhorns lost by four to Nevada in the first round. Instead, Del Conte stuck with Smart and fans are starting to see the culture that the Longhorns head coach has been trying to build—and some wished to see the football team reflect this growth. Smart has now outlasted two football coaches and is proving to be worth it.
Who knew that Tom Herman was the one holding back the basketball team too? #HookEm— /r/LonghornNation (@/r/LonghornNation)1609613357.0
The Longhorns have a tough test Saturday when they take their undefeated conference record to Morgantown to face off against No. 14 West Virginia Mountaineers. The game tips off at noon on ESPN.
Popular
Radhia Gleis bore the tales of Buddhafield life in her book, "The Followers," and the documentary, "Holy Hell." (Holy Hell)
Although it was Buddhafield, a movement that has been called a cult by a host of ex-followers, that brought Gleis to the Hill Country, the group's Austin presence has diminished to almost nothing. After over two decades in the group, Gleis revealed it all in her first-place PenCraft award-winning book, "The Followers, 'Holy Hell' and the Disciples of Narcissistic Leaders" in which she talks about the dangers of groupthink and the impact that spending years in the Buddhafield cult had on her.
Gleis now works as a clinical nutritionist and is working on healing through her art. (radiagleis.com)
From a "well-to-do" family in California, Gleis was learning how to make cocktails for wealthy dinner guests shortly after she learned how to walk. She grew up emotionally distant from her parents and only brother; Gleis vividly remembered being called "dopey" by her father, consistently forgotten by her mother and held at knifepoint by her brother.
Needless to say, Gleis grew up without secure connections. On top of that, she grew up in the 1960s and '70s during mass cultural upheaval, the free love movement and obsession with Eastern religions.
"There were these desires to expand your thinking, expand your consciousness as opposed to the 'Leave it to Beaver' kind of paradigm," Gleis told Austonia. "There was a rebellion, a schism in the culture."
She had become interested in the idea of nirvana when she was in high school, so when a friend told her about spirituality sessions with a beautiful woman named Malila who claimed to have experienced God directly, her interest was piqued.
Her experiences with Malila threw her into the spiritual realm. Gleis met Jaime Gomez, the would-be leader of the Buddhafield cult who went by many names, in the early 1980s through a friend of Malila's in California. Gomez, a native of Venezuela, was known to often wear only eyeliner and a speedo in his prime and when Gleis met him, he was clad only in a golden tan, skin-tight jeans and a small vest.
The Shakti scam
Gomez originally began guiding members through an independent spiritual journey but flags were raised when he began to see himself as a godlike figure. (WRA Productions LLC)
Her initiation was subtle—it started as just a group of friends who followed Gomez, a young yogi with a small but growing following, to learn techniques of "The Knowing" that he possessed. Members were initiated via "shakti," a godly transfer of power that opened your third eye. Members would "pranam," or deeply bow to show respect, to God during the first four years of Gleis' time with Gomez.
The initiation started as a relationship between the individual and their "divine birthright" through God.
"Generations were trying to get Shakti from him, they were trying to get his energy," Gleis said. "He was like, 'Whatever you experience in your initiation is between you and God, it has nothing to do with me.'"
Things started to change at the next initiation when Gomez had new members pranam to him and connect to his love, not the divine love they had come seeking.
"He would say, 'Well, Radhia, some people, not you, need a living person they can touch and see and talk to, I am just being that for them,'" Gleis said. "So he considered himself now a living deity like Jesus or Krishna or Buddha."
Although she did not support the pranam to Gomez, the shift was harrowing. While Gomez was a "skilled sociopath," Gleis said, he was also her friend and she was his close adviser; he knew all of her' hopes, dreams, fears and how to keep her around.
"If you go to Disneyland, it's a fantasy, but you're willing to forgo your disbelief for the fun, for the ride," Gleis said. "But what if you don't know it's fake? What if all your friends and all your family are in on it? And the one person that you revere the most is creating the illusion?"
It would take years for Gleis to learn Gomez was secretly taking advantage of members in the group.
The domino effect
The Buddhafield waltzed into Austin from West Hollywood in the late '90s after accusations against Gomez came out, Gleis would later learn. She found out that later that multiple members alleged that Gomez sexually abused them, and it was a pattern of his to jump ship and change his name once people started speaking out.
There were a few reasons the group chose Austin: their new home had to be in a warm climate, near a body of water, full of rich culture and jobs.
Having been in the cult for over a decade, the Austin move had triggered a need to build a life outside Buddhafield for Gleis. The connections she made outside the "family" she had made for herself led her to visit the home of an injured member of Buddhafield, where she says she was greeted by two men who told her tales of Gomez's transgressions.
Tales of Gomez attempting to hypnotize male members of the group into removing their clothes, which Gomez would deny, and his penchant for using the AIDS crisis to scare members into silence came to light. It was a feat in and of itself to tell a single soul about the things the victims had experienced, let alone make formal charges.
Among the victims was Will Allen, who released the documentary "Holy Hell," made from hours of his own original footage, in 2016 to detail his experiences.
The women in the group were untouched to Gleis' knowledge and some of the victims took years to gain the courage to speak out.
"Now it was like dominoes, it was like this was our #MeToo movement. When this guy came out, now all of a sudden, I'm getting phone calls because the rumors spread," Gleis said. "It was very heartbreaking—I started hearing all these stories of what (Gomez) had done and all the secrets that all of these men had been holding, these traumas that they had been holding in for years."
That was her line in the sand—so, at 55 years old, Gleis left Buddhafield, "alone and forsaken." And she has learned a good deal about herself since then—she works as a clinical nutritionist but left all of her friends behind, with no one to fall on but herself.
It has been 15 years since her departure—15 years to ponder how she was manipulated into that place. Gleis often compares those two decades of her life to Trumpism, where Gomez had tapped into her preconceived notions and led her to believe what she wanted to believe.
As someone who grew up not knowing love, it made sense to jump headfirst into the sense of community and protection that Buddhafield offered.
"We have to be careful when we use words like 'brainwashed.' We went willingly. Jaime didn't torture us. He didn't brainwash us," Gleis said. "All he did as a narcissist—he figured out what we were all thinking about and he became that for us. When you pranam to him, which we did, then he becomes bolder. That's what a sociopath does."
Gleis details her story of what led her in and out of Buddhafield in her book, "The Followers." Gomez and certain members who are still connected to Buddhafield have moved on to Hawai'i, but Gleis remains in Austin and is currently working on a children's novella.
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