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 – State and federal agriculture officials said highly pathogenic avian flu has been found in a herd of dairy cows in Texas.
What we know:
Officials said the H5N1 virus was confirmed with laboratory tests in late May after cows at an unspecified farm became sick and milk production dropped. The dairy has since been quarantined and an investigation is underway.
This is the first case of avian flu in a Texas dairy herd this year, officials said.
What they’re saying:
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is confident that pasteurization is effective at inactivating H5N1, and that the commercial, pasteurized milk supply is safe,” officials at the Texas Animal Health Commission said in a statement.
A dairy cow is seen at a farm on June 1, 2026. (Tim Evans/Bloomberg / Getty Images)
Dig deeper:
H5N1 has a high rate of severe disease and death in animals that become infected.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk to the general public from avian flu is low. Some sporadic human infections have been reported around the world since 1997. There have been no known cases of person-to-person spreading of avian flu.
The Source: Information in this story came from the Texas Animal Health Commission, the USDA, the FDA and the CDC.
AUSTIN, Texas — Self-driving cars have become a common sight on Austin streets, but a new Texas law is adding tougher requirements for the companies behind the wheelless vehicles.
Senate Bill 2807 imposes stricter rules on autonomous vehicle companies operating in the state, including state authorization, emergency response plans for law enforcement, and a public portal where residents can verify operators and file safety complaints.
The changes come as Austin continues to track incidents involving autonomous vehicles. The city’s autonomous vehicle dashboard shows 75 incidents in 2026, including a collision, eight near misses, and seven incidents of ignoring police direction.
Attorney Drew Gibbs, a partner at Slingshot Law, said one crash involved a Waymo vehicle.
“There was a T-bone collision. A pretty serious T-bone collision where a Waymo just crashed into the side of my client’s vehicle,” Gibbs said.
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One of the incidents of ignoring police direction happened during the mass shooting on West Sixth Street back in March, when three people died, and 15 others were injured.
Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock said autonomous vehicles can struggle in unusual situations.
“It didn’t impede on anything in the moment, but it’s not necessarily uncommon where these vehicles don’t quite know how to deal with these one-off scenarios,” Bullock said.
The new law requires autonomous vehicle companies to be authorized by the state, to provide an emergency response plan for law enforcement, and to participate in a public-facing portal that allows the public to verify operators and submit safety complaints.
Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation and engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, welcomed the added oversight.
“I’m glad that the state is taking this a bit more seriously now,” she said. “It’s important not to just let others slip in without kind of meeting those basic minimums.”
Bullock said the emergency planning requirement may not make a major difference in fast-moving situations. Asked how impactful it is to have a fully laid out emergency response plan, Bullock said, “These plans are great, but it takes time to work through all of those versus the immediacy of having someone behind the wheel.”
The four autonomous vehicle companies operating in Austin — Waymo, Zoox, AV-Ride, and Tesla — are all state-authorized.
The Texas DMV said an autonomous vehicle company can lose its authorization to operate in Texas if the agency deems the vehicles are operating in a way that endangers public safety.
Waymo was contacted for comment, but had not responded.
AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said Tuesday she will leave the post next month.
What we know:
In a statement, Nelson said her resignation will be effective July 17 but did not provide a reason for the departure.
“It has been an honor to serve the people of Texas in this role,” Nelson said. “My time as Secretary came at an important moment for Texas, and I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish as an agency in under four years.”
Nelson has served in the role since 2023.
Among other things, the Secretary of State oversees elections and business filings in the state and serves as the chief diplomat of Texas.
View of Texas State Senator Jane Nelson, during the 80th Texas Legislature, on the floor of the Senate at the Texas State Capitol, Austin, Texas, January 22, 2007. (John Anderson/The Austin Chronicle / Getty Images)
What they’re saying:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott described Nelson as extraordinary.
“I am deeply grateful for her long and loyal service and outstanding leadership. She has represented our state with grace and honor across the globe, and Texas is better because of it,” Abbott said. “Cecilia and I wish her all the best in the next chapter of her distinguished career.”
Dig deeper:
According to the Secretary of State’s office, Nelson has presided over seven statewide elections during her tenure with a cumulative 27 million ballots cast and broke a record with more than 3 million active business filers.
Nelson also served three decades in the Texas Senate, where she remains the longest-serving Republican in state history.
The Source: Information in this story came from the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
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