The End, 2026 Edition

If anyone asks me what my favorite season of Texas Longhorns football was, the answer is never 2005. That season had the best ending and 4th & 5 will always hold a special place in my memory, but that season was a season of dominance, a season where two Goliaths - even if ESPN only recognized one of them as such - were basically on rails to meet each other. Each team had their moment of being pushed (Texas metaphorically, USC literally) but it was pretty evident that this was probably going to be the title matchup from early in the year.

No, my favorite season was 2008. Not the year that ended in a title game where Colt McCoy’s body became the ultimate what-if question for Texas football fans, but the year before. For being a team that started the season ranked in the top 10, it felt to me like a squad that wasn’t really in line for any real title aspirations. Oklahoma was #1, Texas was good but not that good, and when you combine that with Mack Brown’s generally terrible vibes going into the Red River most years, it felt like a season where Texas would end up in the Sooners’ shadow again. The four-game run from Oklahoma to Texas Tech was one of the most fun stretches of football I can remember, and even the anguish of watching Michael Crabtree run into the end zone was still fun because the game it happened in was incredible.

The reason why I enjoyed that season so much is pretty simple: they exceeded expectations. Being a Texas fan historically occupies a somewhat unique spot in the fandom spectrum; the football program is generally good enough that the upside in a given season is much smaller than the potential downside, but the program isn’t quite the blue blood as someone like Ohio State so it’s not quite at the “we’re always in the discussion for a title” stage and it’s nowhere near the “just happy to be here” stage of a lot of programs. It leaves the football fans in a spot where a season that will make them happy is a pretty small slice of possible outcomes, much less one where they feel like they’re playing with house money. There’s variance in a particular season (hello, John Mackovic!) but over the last 50 years Texas has been in a spot where the fans end a season giving out a “meets expectations” or “needs improvement” performance review more often than not.

(As an aside: this is why being a Duke/Kansas fan seems like it would be low-key awful; when your program performs so well that nearly every year you expect to be a top-3 seed and make the Elite Eight, how often can you be pleasantly surprised?)

(As an aside aside the other aside: lol fuck Duke)

Texas basketball is in a somewhat similar boat as football, albeit with fewer instances of reaching nirvana than their football counterparts so the expectation within a given season is commensurately lower. While their goals aren’t usually as lofty as a program like Kentucky, it’s not a program whose fans are generally just happy to make the tournament, nor are they happy with being a mid-tier SEC program. So when Texas hit conference play and Jekyll & Hyde’d their way through the SEC schedule, most of us expected them to either miss the tournament or spend about 2 hours experiencing a burnt orange March Madness.

To wit, I present the following number: 6%

That was the probability of Texas making the Sweet Sixteen going into the tournament, per KenPom. Between the coin flip outcome against NC State and being likely underdogs in any round afterwards, Texas was not expected to make it this far.

The probabilities for the teams Texas faced:

NC State: 6.6%

BYU: 23.8%

Gonzaga: 63.3%

Yes, random friend of my internet acquaintance, I did enjoy the run. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Putting a letter grade on a season with vibes as discordant as they were between the regular season and the tourney run is difficult, because weighing the joy of the Sweet 16 run against 3+ months of mediocrity means one has to decide what matters more to you, personally. I can understand people who are all about the tournament thinking this season was a success, and I can understand people who are watching from the opening game being much less generous with their views. As much fun as the tourney run was all the way to its conclusion, it’s difficult not to recall how literally 10 days prior I was extremely done with this team. They don’t cancel each other out, exactly, but one rounds the other up or down depending on your priorities. That’s before we even get into whether you really enjoyed the tournament run on its own merits, or because the team’s roller coaster regular season pummeled your expectations down to a point that you were more likely to be pleasantly surprised. There’s not really an objectively ‘wrong’ answer here, but then there’s also not really an objectively ‘right’ answer here, either.

(Are you beginning to understand why my poor wife tries not to ask me open-ended questions?)

Rather than crack open yet another spreadsheet to hash out how I feel about this season, I’ll hand out some grades:

Regular season: C-

Conference tournament: YOU LOST TO CHRIS BEARD, IS THERE A GRADE BELOW F

March Madness: A

This season should not be the norm for an optimized Texas Longhorns basketball program, but we’ve all experienced enough seasons roaming the desert of mediocrity that I think a season like this one every so often is acceptable if it is surrounded by better years. I’m thinking of that injury-shortened freshman LaMarcus Aldridge season where Texas scuffled its way to 20 wins and a first-round tourney exit which was the only year in a 4-year span where Texas failed to make the second weekend of the tournament, as a relevant example. It’s also Sean Miller’s first year on campus, so a little patience is in order; time will tell if he’s capable of producing better years in Austin.

There have been recurring comments elsewhere about both Jordan Pope & Tramon Mark this season and they show up in a few forms. Some of them are couched in a more general sense of wanting to move on from the last vestiges of the Rodney Terry era, others are specifically about those two players and their contributions or lack thereof. To a certain extent, I get it; there have been times when Jordan Pope’s scoring felt a bit like empty calories, and the way the ball tends to stop when it ends up in Tramon Mark’s hands can be frustrating if he’s not hitting shots. That said, after the Purdue game, nobody should ever again question their effort or desire.

I mean, look at this shit:

Jordan Pope scored 14 points in 33 minutes on a goddamn broken foot! I’d call it some Willis Reed shit, except Pope scored 10 more points and played 6 more minutes than Willis Reed did in his famous game. I do not know how much cortisone it takes to get a dude to be able to play college basketball at even half-speed on a broken foot, but good on him and RIP his digestive system, which to this day probably smells like somebody set fire to a pool of brake fluid.

And then there was Mark, clearly hobbled through most of the second half, injured enough that we watched him get back on defense like he had a Lego stuck in his foot after every possession, gutting his way to 29 points (on 15 shots!) by being the only dude Purdue could not stop. It didn’t matter that one of his ankles was transported to another plane of existence, he was going to get to his spots and nothing Purdue defenders did made a difference. I don’t know what to tell you about Tramon Mark that’s more illustrative of his abilities than the fact that noted-offensive-savant Sean Miller repeatedly went full Rodney Terry mode with a guy on one good ankle because it worked. Mark is going to spend the next 30 years terrorizing pick-up games with that free throw jumper.

Put some respect on their names, they earned it.

I will go on record saying it’s probably for the best that Texas lost that game; as much as Texas winning would’ve immortalized those two, playing Arizona with Pope & Mark at half-speed probably would’ve ended in the sort of loss that involved Cole Bott getting 8 minutes of playing time in the second half. Also we don’t need Sean Miller having another Elite Eight loss on his mind, that monkey on his back is already a couple hundred pounds as it is.

He’s only played 4 seasons, somebody get him a brochure for the Global Policy Studies Masters program already. I am not ready to live in a world without Chendall Weaver soaring 14 feet above the ground on my TV.

A special shout out to our resident John Wick minor henchman, who is already driving half of the SEC insane with his foul antics. The amount of people who already hate him is pretty impressive and I hope Texas brings him back, even if it means hearing Gene Steratore call him “Vokulitis” 10-15 times as he has to break down the four different flagrant foul referee reviews per tourney game involving Matas. I hope he comes back next season with tattoos on each of his elbows, with the left elbow saying ‘F-1’ and the right elbow saying ‘F-2’. Really lean into your role as SEC antagonist, man. It would be fun!*

*(It would not be fun, basketball games would take 3 hours because the refs would review every rebound in retaliation. Refs are included in ACAB.)

I don’t know what next season will look like yet; with the transfer portal and recruiting being what it is in the NIL era, I would not be surprised if next year’s squad has fewer than half the current roster on it. It also remains to be seen what kind of team Sean Miller wants to have going forward. I wouldn’t hate it if he took some cues from Arizona & Michigan as they’re conveniently both really good and play really fun styles of offense. We’re still a few months from finding that out.