Fittingly, Jayson Kent is finally starting to look at home on the court for Texas basketball.

And it couldn’t come at a better time for the Longhorns and Kent, an Austin native who transferred back to his childhood home in the offseason after spending the previous two years at Indiana State.

Over the past two games, Kent, a 6-foot-8 graduate student, has gotten the start for a banged-up Texas squad. He scored a season-high 19 points in a then season-high 25 minutes in a Feb. 11 103-80 loss to Alabama. The points outburst seemed to give Kent a confidence boost when the Longhorns needed it most Saturday against No. 21 Kentucky; in a crucial 82-78 win that boosted the Longhorns’ NCAA Tournament hopes, he played 29 minutes with six points, a season-high eight rebounds and plenty of big plays that don’t get tracked by stats.

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Banging on the boards proved especially critical for a Texas team playing without leading rebounder Arthur Kaluma, whom Kent has temporarily replaced in the starting lineup. The Longhorns have struggled to match up with the long, physical frontcourts found throughout the SEC, and Kent helped Texas edge the Wildcats 41-40 on the glass.

“Obviously, people look at the scoring, but I always look at other things that he does that impact winning,” coach Rodney Terry said. “He’s rebounding the basketball for us, giving us second-chance opportunities. Trying to (have) a guy that can defend these physical forwards in this league has also been a challenge. It’s something that we needed him to do for us.”

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Jayson Kent: Smaller role, larger stage in SEC

Serving as a role player wasn’t something Kent did last season with Indiana State when he averaged 13.5 points and 8.1 rebounds in 30.3 minutes a game as a starter. But the fifth-year player knew this season he’d play a lesser role in a much bigger league than Indiana State’s Missouri Valley Conference.

Kent said he came to Texas to pursue a graduate certification in communication and leadership from UT’s School of Communications while testing himself in the SEC and helping the Longhorns reach the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s just understanding what the team needs,” Kent said. “We have a lot of highly skilled guys on the team, and we all want to be successful. But, for me personally, I’m adjusting to this different role of just finding ways to impact winning, to help the team benefit. Whatever my minutes are, I’m going to do what I can in those minutes to leave an impact.”

Kent didn’t make much of an impact early in the season. He averaged a little over six points and three rebounds in 19 minutes a game in the first three contests of the campaign before suffering a wrist injury that sidelined him for eight games. By the time Kent returned to the court for the final nonconference game Dec. 29 against Northwestern State, Terry said Kent needed to adapt from a role he had carved out in the preseason as a big who could step out to the 3-point line.

“It was tough for him, and it was tough for us,” Terry said. “We had already been playing, and now he’s got to try to etch out his identity of who he really needs to be for us. It may not be the same that it was going to be to start the season. Maybe we didn’t need him to stretch the floor for us now. Now, we need him to be more of a flow guy for us.”

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Rodney Terry: Coach’s kids ‘cerebral’ players

But things have been flowing for Kent over the past two games as Texas (16-10, 5-8 SEC) makes a push for an NCAA bid. Kent has never played in the NCAA Tournament during his previous stops at Indiana State and Bradley; ending his collegiate career with a March Madness appearance would be a fitting end considering his start.

Kent was born in Austin in 2002, when his father, Jason Kent, served as the head basketball coach at Huston-Tillotson University in East Austin and his mother, Anna Kent, worked in the University of Texas athletics department. The family moved to the Chicago area in 2004 when Jason Kent took a job as Chicago State’s head coach.

And why the same name but a different spelling from his dad?

“My dad wanted a junior, but my mom didn’t, so they compromised,” Jayson Kent said with a laugh.

Basketball runs deep in Kent’s family. Both parents played collegiate basketball, with Jason suiting up at Ohio and Charleston while Anna competed at West Virginia. His sister, Janae, was a highly touted youth player who signed with LSU before transferring to Texas A&M this season.

Terry, himself the son of a coach, knew Jason Kent while he coached at Huston-Tillotson. And even before Jayson Kent returned to Austin, Terry anticipated what type of player the Longhorns were getting in a coach’s son.

“They always think like a coach, they always have a cerebral understanding of the game, because they’ve been around the game their whole lives,” he said. “It’s just instinctive; if you’re sitting there watching the game with your dad, you’re looking at the game through a different lens that maybe a kid that doesn’t have a dad that’s a coach. So, I think there definitely are characteristics of being a coach’s son, just having a great feel for the game. Jason has that cerebral feel for the game and understanding of how to play defensively, cut offensively and space on the floor.”

Saturday’s game

Texas at South Carolina, 7:30 p.m., SEC Network, 1300, 98.1

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