Austin power

Texas point guard D.J. Augustin’s freshman season ended with a thud in the Longhorns’ 87-68 loss to USC in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

“You watch it all the time when you’re younger, on TV. You always dream of those moments. Then once you get there, it’s kind of scary,” said Augustin, who fouled out with only six points on one-for-eight shooting.

“I felt like once we were on the court, we played our hearts out. But last year we didn’t know much. We’re coming in more experienced this year. Of course, we don’t have Kevin. But everybody else, they’ve done a great job of stepping up.”

Kevin is Kevin Durant, the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft. He scored 30 points in the loss to USC and then moved on.

Augustin has the Longhorns’ back in the NCAA tournament, minus Durant but a year older and wiser. He and his teammates are among the many who believe they might go further.

“I mean, we’re just a smarter team, more mature,” said Augustin, an education major whose 3.64 grade-point average earned him recognition as an Academic All-American. “And our key focus is defense. You’re not going to shoot the ball well every night. So you’ve got to put it all on defense.”

Motivated in part by the USC loss, Augustin spent much of the summer going head to head against Texas alum T.J. Ford in Austin, honing his game against an NBA point guard.

He is averaging nearly 20 points and 5.7 assists after averaging 14.4 points and 6.7 assists last season. But he is also smarter at pacing himself, and he is the new leader at crunch time.

“You know, D.J., him being a primary ballhandler for us, he’s just a master at controlling the game, especially in the last four minutes,” guard Justin Mason said. “We want the ball in his hands in the last four minutes, and he’s going to give us a good chance to win the game.”

Augustin helped carry the Longhorns to one of their biggest victories of the season in December, when they upset then-No. 2 UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, 63-61, on a dunk by Damion James with eight seconds left.

“That gave us a lot of confidence,” Mason said. “Obviously, there was a lot of talk about us not being able to compete without Kevin, but our coach never shied away from scheduling some of the elite teams on our schedule this year and we stepped up to the challenge and are carrying ourselves well.”

Four freshmen started for Coach Rick Barnes last season. One of them wears a Seattle SuperSonics jersey now. The other three are back in burnt orange, and they haven’t forgotten that USC game.

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robyn.norwood@latimes.com