Texas men’s basketball is an outlier among the qualifying teams that reached the Sweet 16. The Longhorns are the lowest-ranked seed, at No. 11, to reach the third round of the NCAA Tournament this season.
But Texas’ run to the Sweet 16 may have broken millions of brackets. Its sudden rise as this season’s “Cinderella” team can be explained by one thing: the Longhorns are playing their best basketball at the right time.
In its third game in five against No. 3-seeded Gonzaga, Texas had arguably its cleanest performance of the season, recording its third-highest assist total and second-lowest turnover margin of the season. Also, add in the fact that the Longhorns drew only 11 personal fouls against the Bulldogs in a close possession game.
“Our team overall has continued to incrementally get better at not fouling,” head coach Sean Miller said. “Small differences across the board — being a smarter group, perhaps more disciplined in some of the fouls that we would have committed earlier on in the season.”
The most glaring aspect of Texas’ rise in March is undoubtedly its handling of the defensive side of the ball.
Although it was a struggle early in the season, the Longhorns have been able to hold their opponents to an average of 68.3 points per game since the start of the tournament. A vast improvement of the 86.6 points Texas was giving up in its final six games of the season.
The part that has many people scratching their heads is how they figured it out now, in the middle of the tournament, of all places to get hot.
For Texas, it was the strange limbo period between their Southeastern Conference Tournament loss to Ole Miss and Selection Sunday to know their fate in the postseason.
Regardless of whether the tournament experts said Texas would sneak into the tournament as one of the first four in or out, the Longhorns remained at the practice facility working. For Miller, it was that period of practicing for possibly nothing that rallied his team.
“The team and you know, as the coach, that you could be practicing for no reason, and we did that. And I will say this that I believe that our postseason success started in that period of time,” Miller said. “Our team was mature … (and) wanted to get over how we played in Nashville against Ole Miss.”
It was once thought of as a rebuilding year under Miller, but the Longhorns have continued to shock the college basketball world, half-by-half, game by game.
However, it hasn’t really been the players Miller brought in during the offseason. Much of the Longhorns success has come off the back of graduate guard Tramon Mark, senior guard Jordan Pope and senior guard Chendall Weaver.
“We didn’t end the regular season the way that we wanted to, but we never gave up on each other, and that grew us closer,” junior forward Dailyn Swain said. “We all took a different approach. We all kind of stepped up our play, as you can see, a more balanced attack in this postseason. I feel like everybody’s stepping up to the plate.”
Texas is no stranger to playing the nation’s best. Looking at the 16 teams in the remaining field, the Longhorns have already squared off with five. Four of them — Duke, UConn, Alabama and Arkansas — are seeded no lower than four.
If the last three games have proven anything, an Elite Eight appearance is not far out of the realm of possibility.
