AUSTIN – What if David Ash and Dominic Espinosa had been healthy? What if Kennedy Estelle and Desmond Harrison played more than one combined game? What if Kendall Sanders and Montrel Meander hadn't gotten into trouble?

The answers to those questions could have resulted in more than six wins for Texas in the first season on the job for Charlie Strong. The Longhorns suffered heavy attrition in the offseason with eight players earning dismissals from the program before the first game of the season and then more during the 2014 campaign due to more dismissals, more suspensions and injuries.

Injuries are the true unknown variable to a season and while Desmond Jackson (broken foot) will be back in 2015 the careers of Ash (concussion-related issues) and Espinosa (broken ankle) are over. Aside from the injuries, which are what they are, there's not much Strong would change in regards to the roster he'll take into Monday's AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl against Arkansas.

“There's going to be certain guys that think they're going to do things their way,” Strong said recently. “It doesn't matter who's sitting in that chair as a head coach, you've just got to make decisions on how you want to run your program and once they understand certain things that you're just not going to deal with, then you've got to make a change.”

Despite everything the Longhorns have been through, Strong feels his debut season on the Forty Acres could have been more successful. He's pointed to instances like the BYU game being a one-score contest at halftime and games against Baylor, TCU and Kansas State that were close for stretches but eventually turning into blowout losses.

Of the four worst home losses in program history the 41-7 loss to the Cougars and the 48-10 drubbing at the hands of the Horned Frogs trail only a 50-7 loss to Baylor in 1989 and the infamous “Rout 66” game against UCLA in 1997 (66-3). It was that kind of year for the Longhorns, but Strong insists it didn't have be that way no matter the circumstances.

“We lined up with a football team where we could have played a lot better and it had nothing to do with the guys who we didn't have,” Strong said. “You're going to win with the ones you have and not with the ones you don't have. With us playing with what we had, we were good enough. We just didn't play well. We didn't play well at the right time.”

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