"Sometimes you keep watering it and watering it and hope that it sprouts," Barnes said.
Then again, sometimes it drowns.
Texas isn't dead yet, but it's a long, long way from being the team that was once considered a favorite to win the national championship.
Everything looked great when Texas was 17-0. But after earning the first No. 1 ranking in school history on Jan. 11, Texas lost nine of its next 16 games and was given the No. 8 seed in the East Region. The Longhorns (24-9) play No. 9 Wake Forest (19-10) on Thursday night in New Orleans.
Despite two months of struggles, Barnes and his players are trying to sound optimistic about the tournament.
"It's been difficult at times, but they have never wavered pulling for each other," Barnes said. "The point is, we're part of 65 teams right now that are still playing. We all start out 0-0 and even our players have seen enough of this to know that anything can happen on any given night."
Senior guard Justin Mason noted that every team faces the same challenge: Win six games in a row to win the national championship.
"It's a new season for every team," Mason said.
The old one started so well for Texas.
The Longhorns were 15-0 when they hit No. 1 and then won their first two games on top. At the time, the players seemed to understand the ranking was nice but might not last. Senior center Dexter Pittman said it was more important to get a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
"If you would have asked me who the No. 1 team was in the second week of January last year, I couldn't tell you. But I do know who won the national championship," Barnes said at the time.
Then the spiral started. Texas suffered its first loss at Kansas State and tumbled farther down the rankings every week. On March 1, the Longhorns became only the fifth team in the history of the AP rankings to fall all the way out after reaching No. 1.
