Many thought new Texas men’s basketball head coach Sean Miller’s first season in Austin was purely dedicated to a rebuild, a wasted but important year in Miller’s grand vision of the program.
The roster is filled with older players, and with only two meaningful transfers performing at a high level, it was reasonable to hold that belief. But it’s not how you start, it’s about how you finish, and it seems the Longhorns have found some magic in a bottle in the middle of conference play.
Their 88-85 victory over LSU on Tuesday marked the first time since March 2020 that the Longhorns won five straight conference games.
“I think we’ve improved. We’re just better overall,” Miller said. “We’re just more sure of ourselves, more steady.”
In early January, the Longhorns started Southeastern Conference play 0-2 and took two tough losses in December. The conversation about sneaking into the NCAA tournament was preposterous to even consider.
Although the win over the Tigers came as expected, as the team was 2–10 in conference play heading into Tuesday’s game, there was an all-too-familiar feeling with how the second half played out.
“I think we found a way,” Miller said. “There’s often games that I can point to where we were better in the second half than we were in the first, or there’s a pocket of four to eight minutes that just seemed to let the game get away from us, and because of that, we end up maybe not being able to get to the end. Tonight was a lot like that.”
Memories of the conference opener against Mississippi State quickly appeared in the mind. Unlike that hard-fought overtime loss at the Moody Center to the Bulldogs, the Longhorns were able to pull away with a one-possession win despite the lack of banking free throws late.
“It did remind me a lot of (the Mississippi State game),” Miller said. “It was like you had this lead, and you felt being that you’re the home team, and you’re a play away from being able to secure the victory, and yet you weren’t able to get the key stop or make the play.”
The parallels from the Mississippi State game were hard to deny, the biggest being junior forward Dailyn Swain finding himself in foul trouble. Against the Bulldogs, he fouled out late, ending a career night short.
In the LSU game, Swain only played in 21 minutes, but was able to lead Texas in points. The Longhorns have learned a lot, though, and were able to rely on their other productive players to carry the weight.
Graduate guard Tramon Mark, senior guard Jordan Pope and sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis were able to keep the Longhorns’ offensive efficiency without the team’s missing piece.
“We roll with the guys who get hot,” Mark said. “Whether it’s me, Pope, Swain, Matas (Vokietaitis), we just roll the guys that are high. We try to attack the team the best way we can.”
The Longhorns’ “Dayton Jones Locker” fate is quickly fading away, game by game. Texas has started to roll late in the season, inching closer to a permanent spot in the NCAA Tournament rather than fighting for a play-in spot in Ohio.
Still, the Longhorns have five regular-season dates remaining, two of them being ranked teams and another date with Texas A&M, but if the Longhorns can stay hot, March Madness is in the realm of possibility.
“We’ve been doing a great job of just attacking teams in the paint, scoring down low,” Mark said. “We just gotta keep doing that and get better on defense. But I think we’re almost there.”
