After a disappointing first season in the SEC, Texas is quickly searching for a new men’s basketball coach.
The school announced on Sunday that it had fired Rodney Terry after he had been in charge for nearly three seasons. Terry became the head coach of Texas eight games into the 2022-23 season after Chris Beard was suspended and later fired due to a domestic violence accusation, though the charges were dropped.
Soon after Terry’s firing, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Xavier’s Sean Miller would be named the new coach for the Longhorns.
Texas barely made it into the 2025 NCAA tournament, securing one of the last spots in the field. It was a bit of a surprise that they made it, but they lost to Miller’s Xavier on Wednesday night in the First Four.
The Longhorns lost 86-80 after leading by eight points at halftime. They were up by 10 with 13:04 left, but Xavier came back and took the lead with just over five minutes left.
Texas finished the 2024-25 season with a 19-15 record and 6-12 in the SEC. This followed a 21-13 season and a No. 7 seed in the 2024 NCAA tournament, which was their last season in the Big 12. Texas won their first-round game against Colorado State but lost by four points to Tennessee in the second round.
The Longhorns were 7-1 in 2022 when Terry became the interim coach and went on to finish second in the Big 12. After winning the Big 12 tournament title with a strong victory over Kansas, the Longhorns earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, but they lost 88-81 to Miami in the Elite Eight.
That tournament performance led to Terry being promoted to the team’s permanent coach. However, Texas was unable to keep up that level of success, even after they signed five-star recruit Tre Johnson ahead of the 2024-25 season. Johnson became the team’s top scorer with nearly 20 points per game.
The decision to part ways with Terry means that Texas will need to pay a $5.4 million buyout as part of the five-year contract he signed after the Elite Eight appearance.
Sean Miller spent three seasons at Xavier after returning to the school ahead of the 2022-23 season.“I am so appreciative to have served the University of Texas and our men’s basketball program for 13 seasons,” Terry said in a statement. “It was a dream of mine to be the head coach of the Longhorns, and I’ve been able to live that dream.
I want to thank all of our coaches and current and former players who not only helped us win a lot of games but more importantly, represented this great university in a first-class manner.”
Miller just completed the third season of his second stint at Xavier. He returned to the school before the 2022-23 season after taking a year off from college basketball. Miller was at Arizona from 2009 to 2021, but he was fired at the end of the 2021 season.
During that season, Arizona had to take away wins from earlier in his time there because of the FBI’s investigation into corruption in college basketball. As part of the investigation, Miller was accused of being involved in (then) illegal payments to ensure DeAndre Ayton went to Arizona instead of Kansas.
During his time at Arizona, the team made the NCAA tournament seven times, but they missed the tournament in both 2019 and 2021. At Xavier, the Musketeers made the NCAA tournament six times in his eight seasons, and they lost to Illinois in the first round on Friday night after beating Texas.
At Texas, he would be expected to succeed in a program with a lot of resources, but where big success has been difficult to achieve in the last twenty years. Texas hasn’t made it back to the Final Four since 2003 and has lost in the first weekend of the tournament 13 times since then.
That Elite Eight trip in 2023 was just the fourth time Texas had reached the Sweet 16 since the 2003 team, which T.J. Ford led, lost to the eventual national champion Syracuse in the semifinals.
