The Texas Longhorns men's basketball team represents the University of Texas at Austin in NCAA Division I intercollegiate men's basketball competition. The Longhorns competed in the Big 12 Conference through the 2023–24 season and moved to the Southeastern Conference (SEC) on July 1, 2024.
The University of Texas began varsity intercollegiate competition in men's basketball in 1906. The Longhorns rank 15th in total victories among all NCAA Division I college basketball programs and 23rd in all-time win percentage among programs with at least 60 years in Division I, with an all-time win–loss record of 1,936–1,170 (). Among Southeastern Conference men's basketball programs, Texas is second only to Kentucky in all-time wins and trails only Kentucky and Arkansas in all-time win percentage.
As of the end of the 2025–26 season, the Longhorns have won 29 total conference championships in men's basketball and have made 40 total appearances in the NCAA tournament (ninth-most appearances all time, with a 43–43 overall record), reaching the NCAA Final Four three times (1943, 1947, 2003) and the NCAA regional finals (Elite Eight) eight times. As of the end of the 2024–25 season, Texas ranks fifth among all Division I men's basketball programs for total NCAA Tournament games won without having won the national championship (40), tied with Kansas State and Notre Dame, and trailing Oklahoma (43), Illinois (46), Houston (47) and Purdue (51).
The Texas basketball program experienced substantial success during the early decades of its existence, but its success in the modern era is of relatively recent vintage. After two losing seasons during the program's first five years, Texas suffered only one losing season from 1912 to 1950, achieving a winning percentage of .703 during that span, reaching two Final Fours and one Elite Eight during the first decade of the NCAA Tournament, and the 1932–33 team received retroactive recognition as a top-ranked team by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll; however, the university does not claim any title, and the NCAA does not recognize this designator. From 1951 to 1988, the Longhorns finished with losing records 14 times, recorded a winning percentage of .522, and participated in the expanded Tournament only five times.2014–15 Texas Basketball Fact Book, p. 66 Texas achieved some measure of national recognition during the tenures of head coaches Abe Lemons (1976–82) and Tom Penders (1988–98), but the program rose to its highest level of prominence under the direction of former head coach Rick Barnes (1998–2015). Barnes guided Texas to 16 NCAA tournament appearances in his 17 seasons with the program,2014–15 Texas Basketball Fact Book, p. 65 including a school-record 14 consecutive appearances (1999–2012), as well as fifteen 20-win seasons overall and a school-best 13 consecutive 20-win seasons (2000–12).
Texas plays its home games in the Moody Center, which opened prior to the start of the 2022–23 season. The team is led by first-year head coach Sean Miller, formerly the head coach at Xavier and Arizona, who was hired on March 24, 2025, following the dismissal of former head coach Rodney Terry.
History
The early years (1906–36)
1906–13
The Texas men's basketball program began in 1906 under the direction of Scotland native Magnus Mainland, a graduate engineering student and lineman for the Texas football team who organized, coached, and played on the university's first varsity basketball team. Mainland had been a nationally known basketball player as an undergraduate student at Wheaton College (Illinois) prior to coming to UT. His Wheaton team placed second out of the three competing college basketball teams in the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, the first Olympic Games featuring the young sport (although only as a demonstration sport). Mainland was able to persuade the University Athletic Council to set aside $125 for the preparation of an outdoor basketball court on the southwest corner of Clark Field—the stadium then hosting the Texas football, baseball, and track teams—and to let him organize, coach, and play on the university's first varsity basketball team.
The Longhorns took the court for the first time on March 10, 1906, defeating the Baylor Bears 27–17 on their new outdoor home court at Clark Field.2014–15 Texas Basketball Fact Book, p. 80 Texas traveled to Waco two weeks later for a three-game series with the Bears (also in their first year) and won all three games behind the play of Mainland. The Longhorns ultimately won seven of the eight games scheduled in the basketball program's inaugural season.
Due to inadequate funding, the UT Athletic Council canceled the fledgling program after two seasons, leaving Texas without a basketball team for the 1908 season. The Athletics Council revived the program in 1909, owing in large part to the efforts of Longhorn player Morgan Vining, who campaigned to raise student interest in the game. Vining was supported in his efforts by the UT student newspaper, The Daily Texan, which consistently advocated for the reinstatement of basketball—in part because the game was viewed as good physical training for football players in the latter sport's offseason.
Language professor, German native, and Longhorn football head coach W. E. Metzenthin (1909–11), who had argued strongly against the cancellation of basketball at UT, assumed head coaching duties for three seasons following the re-establishment of the program. The Longhorns played just 10 of their 27 games under Metzenthin (and only four of their final 18) on their home court, outdoor Clark Field—with its stubbornly uneven surface and total vulnerability to weather conditions—being particularly ill-suited as a basketball venue. Metzenthin finished with an overall record of 13–14; not until 1959 would another UT basketball coach leave with a losing overall record. After Metzenthin relinquished coaching duties following the 1911 season in order to serve as UT Athletic Council chairman (precursor to the athletic director position), former Texas track coach J. Burton Rix—coaching without financial compensation, just as had his two predecessors—led Texas to a 5–1 record in his single season as head coach (1912).
Professor Carl C. Taylor, also the Texas track coach, assumed basketball head coaching responsibilities for the 1913 season. Taylor arranged for the rental of the theater of the Ben Hur Temple and its conversion into a miniature basketball court and arena so that his team would have an indoor venue for home games and practice, with UT paying the Shriners and Scottish Rite Freemasons a sum of $75 for the season. Taylor came to UT with a strong reputation for basketball expertise, acquired during his years at Drake University. His Texas team finished with an overall record of 8–4 and, beginning with a 70–7 rout of Southwestern in San Marcos, contributed the first three victories to what would become a national-record winning streak. At the conclusion of the 1912–13 academic year, the UT's Cactus yearbook declared, "Basketball is no longer a minor sport at the University of Texas. It always has been so considered until this year Prof. Carl Taylor took charge of the work and infused new life into it."
1914–27
L. Theo Bellmont, the first athletic director at The University of Texas—and a man instrumental in the formation of the Southwest Conference—took the reins as head coach from 1914 to 1915, for the first of his two stints leading the basketball team, and directed the Longhorns to 11–0 and 14–0 records in the 1914 and 1915 seasons, respectively, as well as the inaugural Southwest Conference championship during the latter season. Bellmont's teams contributed 25 victories to a winning streak that would ultimately grow to 44 games.
After his teams extended the UT winning streak to 28 games, Bellmont stepped away from coaching to focus on his work as athletic director and appointed Roy Henderson to the still-unpaid Texas basketball head coaching position. Henderson's team recorded Texas' third consecutive undefeated season in 1916 to extend the total to 40 consecutive victories. Senior center Clyde Littlefield, the linchpin of the three consecutive undefeated teams—and a towering figure in UT athletics history who would later coach the football team for seven seasons (1927–33), serve as the head coach of the UT track team from 1925 to 1960 (winning 25 conference championships), and found the Texas Relays—would later receive retroactive recognition as Texas' first consensus All-American in basketball for his play in the 1916 season.
UT alumnus and former regent Thomas Watt Gregory had begun campaigning a decade earlier for the construction of a permanent gymnasium for the benefit of the student body and faculty—one in which the basketball team would be able to play and practice as well—but fundraising for the $75,000 project had lagged, even more so with Gregory's departure from Austin to serve as the U.S. Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson in 1914. The project was shelved, but the need remained acute, and, following the 1916 season, the UT Athletic Council decided to allocate $8,500 for the construction of the temporary and rudimentary all-wood Men's Gym, which was finished for the second game of the next season.
Theo Bellmont hired Eugene Van Gent from Missouri in 1916 to lead the Texas football, basketball, and track programs. Van Gent's single basketball team at Texas recorded a 13–3 overall mark and won the Southwest Conference championship for the third consecutive year, with the season highlighted by the first-ever basketball games between Texas and the Texas A&M Aggies, following the resumption of athletic relations between the two schools. The Longhorns began the basketball rivalry with wins in both home games and in one of two games in College Station. Van Gent's 1917 Texas team also added the final four wins to the Texas winning streak that had begun in 1913 before suffering a 24–18 loss to Rice in Austin. Texas' winning streak stood as the NCAA record for consecutive wins in men's basketball for almost 40 years (until Phil Woolpert's Bill Russell-led San Francisco teams won 60 consecutive games from 1955 to 1957), and the achievement today remains the fifth-longest winning streak in Division I history.NCAA 2015 Men's Basketball Record Book, p. 55 Van Gent departed after coaching for one season in each sport—winning the conference championship in both—to join the military following the United States' entry into the First World War in April 1917.
Following Van Gent's single year as head coach, Roy Henderson returned to coach Texas for two additional seasons. With several players from the 1917 team having left for military service, the 1918 Longhorn basketball team had only one returning player in sophomore Al DeViney. Henderson scouted talent in the intramural ranks and nonetheless assembled a team that finished 14–5 overall and missed winning Texas' fourth consecutive SWC championship by a single game. Henderson guided the Longhorns to a 17–3 overall record in his final season (1919), splitting the four-game series with the second-place Aggies to win the SWC championship—Texas' fourth basketball conference championship during the five years the conference had existed.
From 1910 through 1919, Texas recorded an overall winning percentage of .789. Only three NCAA schools—California, Navy, and Wisconsin—achieved higher winning percentages for that decade.