Austin, TX
Texas basketball: How Jayson Kent is helping the Longhorns make an NCAA Tournament push
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.”
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.”
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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AUSTIN, Texas — Austin police say they are still investigating whether terrorism played a role in the Sixth Street mass shooting, describing it as a possible motive that remains under review.
On Thursday, the Austin Police Department released officer-worn body camera footage from the night of the shooting and played recordings of emergency calls placed in the moments after gunfire erupted early Sunday morning.
“Hello, this is Austin 911. There has been a shooting at Buford’s on Sixth Street. There are people dead,” a caller told dispatchers in one of the recordings. Authorities say numerous calls flooded the 911 center after a gunman opened fire, killing three people and injuring more than a dozen others.
Police Chief Lisa Davis said some of the footage investigators reviewed shows the suspect firing into a crowd, but those images are too graphic to release publicly. “Any video showing the suspect firing his pistol into the crowd is too graphic to show, and we will not be showing that publicly,” Davis said.
RELATED| APD releases bodycam footage, 911 calls from West 6th Street mass shooting
According to investigators, the suspect was driving on West Sixth Street toward Rio Grande Street when he stopped in front of Buford’s and fired into a crowd with a semi-automatic handgun. Body camera footage from responding officers captures the chaotic moments as police and bystanders reacted to the gunfire.
“I am with you,” one officer says in the video before shouting, “AR-15. AR-15. Down! Everybody down!”
Police say not all of the victims were inside the bar when the shooting occurred.“One of the victims was outside of Buford’s waiting for an Uber,” I said during a news conference. Chief Davis agreed that the victims were spread out. “These were not all the people who were in the bar,” she said. “Sixth Street is an entertainment area from east to west. It is an entertainment area. People come to walk along Sixth Street.”
Surveillance video shows the suspect later parking a black SUV, getting out with an AR-15-style rifle, and shooting a pedestrian. By that point, officers had already been dispatched and arrived 57 seconds after the first emergency call, police said. Investigators say the suspect then fired toward officers.“The suspect discharged his weapon at the direction of the officers. The three officers discharged their firearm, striking him multiple times,” Davis said. Body camera footage from the scene caught officers asking, “Where is he? Who shot them?” before additional gunfire is heard.
City leaders say the officers’ rapid response helped prevent further loss of life. Meantime, investigators are asking anyone with video or photos from that night to share them with them.
AUSTIN, Texas — An update to the Austin Police Department’s (APD) procedures outlines that officers are not required to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when a person is found to have an ICE administrative warrant if they have no other arrestable charge.
The update follows a controversial deportation from January, when a woman’s disturbance call to APD led to her detainment, alongside her 5-year-old child, who is a U.S. citizen.
The incident led to questions from the community regarding the way APD is supposed to interact with ICE.
In a March 4 memo, APD Police Chief Lisa Davis said that the directives provided by ICE administrative warrants could be confusing in their wording.
According to Davis, officers have not historically regularly encountered administrative warrants while using the National Crime Information Center database, which is used to conduct identity checks. However, in 2025, federal agencies began entering a large volume of administrative warrants into the system.
According to the memo, administrative warrants are formatted in a way that looks similar to criminal warrants in the system.
The APD General Orders have been updated to clearly define the difference between criminal warrants and ICE administrative warrants, as well as specific instructions for how ICE administrative warrants should be handled moving forward.
“APD recognizes the sensitivity of this issue, not only within our city but across the nation. These policies were updated to provide clarity to our officers, ensure compliance with state law, and maintain officer discretion guided by supervisory oversight and operational consideration,” Davis said in the memo.
The updated procedures instruct officers to contact their supervisor when a person is found to have only an ICE administrative warrant, but no other arrestable criminal charge. From there, the officer or their supervisor may contact ICE, but is not required to.
“Austin Police and City of Austin leadership share a paramount goal for Austin to be a safe city for everyone who lives, works, or visits here,” Davis said in the memo. “We particularly want to ensure that anyone who witnesses or is the victim of a crime feels secure in contacting the police for help.”
According to the memo, the entire APD staff will be required to complete new training regarding these updates.
“In concert with the policy updates, APD is launching a public webpage to help people understand their rights and provide links to resources available from the City of Austin and community organizations, such as Know Your Rights training,” Davis said in the memo. “The webpage will also include information on the option of using APD Victim Services as an alternative to calling 9-1-1, when appropriate, and links to all general orders and policies related to immigration.”
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