Sir'Jabari Rice came to Texas like a lot of his teammates, for the chance to win championships -- Big 12 and NCAA.

He couldn't help but wonder, if only for a brief moment, whether his dreams were ruined on the morning of Dec. 12, when he received word that the coach he joined the Longhorns to play for, Chris Beard, had been arrested.

"It was a whole bunch of emotions, a whole bunch of things going through your head,'' said Rice, the Longhorns' second-leading scorer. "How the day was, how the routine was, those things were knocked off.

"With things like that, either you want them or you don't. We wanted these things so bad. We wanted them more than anything. When you're in that position, you're either going to fold or you're not. We did a great job of not folding, looking past that and focusing on every day.''

Texas went on to finish second in the Big 12 regular season and won the conference tournament with a 20-point victory over top-seeded Kansas.

The Longhorns are still alive as the No. 2 seed in the Midwest Regional in the NCAA tournament for the biggest prize of all. After wins over Colgate and Penn State in the first two rounds, Texas will face Xavier in the Sweet 16 on Friday in Kansas City, Missouri.

For this, Rice and his teammates give credit to not only a talented roster that showed some steely resolve with the unusual circumstances surrounding Beard, but also a 54-year-old Texas assistant who was a calming influence during a tumultuous time.

Rodney Terry was named interim coach and took over under conditions far less than ideal. Beard was arrested after his fiancé called 911 and told police Beard had strangled, bit and hit her during a confrontation in his home.