Aug. 30, 2011

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ARLINGTON, Tex. - UT Arlington breezed through its summer exhibition tour of Canada, winning all five games by an average of nearly 50 points.

Mavericks head coach Scott Cross knows the talent will be on a different level when his team gets into the 2011-12 season. At the same time, he saw plenty of encouraging themes during the weeklong trip.

Specifically, the play of first-year UTA players Kevin Butler and Jorge Redmon gave the Mavericks reason for optimism. Butler, a transfer from TCU, averaged 15.7 points and 7.7 rebounds per game while playing less than 20 minutes per contest. Redmon, a junior-college transfer, scored 13.0 points per game while shooting 61 percent from the field and 63 percent of his 3-point attempts.

Cross and his staff had an idea of what those two players were capable of, but he enjoyed seeing it in game action.

Perhaps more importantly, Cross saw significant improvement in the play coming from the point guard position, whether it was Redmon, Shaquille White-Miller or Cameron Catlett.

"I think the best thing of the whole trip is it seems like our assist-to-turnover ratio woes from last year have been rectified," Cross said. "I think a big part of that is just having three point guards that are all playing significant amount of minutes and playing two of them at a time really helps in that area. I think it becomes contagious. Shaq, Jorge and Cameron were incredible on their assist-to-turnover ratio and that was our biggest Achilles heel of all last year."

Ironically, the upgraded point guard play came at the same time as UT Arlington emphasizing an up-tempo, style intended to increase fast-breaks and apply pressure to defenses.

"Sometimes with more talented guys when you have them think and try to slow things down they end up turning it over," Cross said. "Whereas when they are just playing off of instinct, they're being fast, they're being aggressive they play better. You would think it would cause you to turn the ball over a lot more but it seems like the faster we play and the more aggressive they are, the less we turn it over."

Cross said he expects to carry over that style of play into the regular season.

The point guards were not alone in benefitting from the faster tempo. Cross half-joked that LaMarcus Reed III had more fast-break opportunities in five games than he had throughout the 2010-11 season. Reed, a senior, finished as the team's leading scorer with 17.2 points per game while also averaging 5.6 rebounds per contest.

In all, eight players averaged double-figure point totals.

Another element that stood out to Cross was how well his defense played at times - specifically during the second half against Fraser Valley. The Mavericks used a suffocating brand of man-to-man defense to hold Fraser Valley to a total of 15 points after halftime.

"I think we'll be a very high-paced, fast team that really plays hard man-to-man defense," Cross said. "We still want that to be our bread-and-butter. We showed signs of it, especially in the last game in the second half, of our defense being really, really good. We're going to hang our hat on the toughness, hustle aspect of it and give them a lot of freedom on the offensive end to play their game and take advantage of their talents and abilities."

Regardless of what UT Arlington would have accomplished in the exhibition games, Cross said the extra practice time allotted for the tour would have been worth the trip alone.

"I think it gets everybody's mind about three months ahead of time," Cross said. "It forces us to play and practice. It forces us to prepare our guys for games and it forces us to think X's and O's during the offseason. At the same time it helps the players because all they're usually thinking about is getting stronger and playing pickup games. Now all of a sudden they have to run plays, they have to remember stuff, they have to play defense, they have to do the things that are necessary to win games. I think it puts us a couple of months ahead of schedule."

UT Arlington opens its final season in Texas Hall in November with a home game against East Texas Baptist.