{"id":222704,"date":"2026-03-27T06:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T06:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/222704\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T06:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T06:33:13","slug":"texas-guard-jordan-pope-reveals-he-played-through-broken-foot-in-sweet-16-loss-to-purdue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/222704\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas guard Jordan Pope reveals he played through broken foot in Sweet 16 loss to Purdue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jordan Pope didn\u2019t really hesitate on Thursday when it came to whether or not he was going to take the court at the SAP Center in San Jose, California.<\/p>\n

Despite his broken foot, the Texas star was going to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t break it any more, so there wasn\u2019t much of a high risk in terms of the actual injury,\u201d Pope said. \u201cObviously you can hurt other things, but I had nothing to lose. It was the Sweet 16, I\u2019m back home in front of my family \u2026 I\u2019ll never have this opportunity again. I couldn’t let that pass. I think I would have regretted that a lot if I would have.\u201d<\/p>\n

With about five minutes left in No. 11 Texas\u2019 win over Gonzaga last weekend, which propelled the Longhorns into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2023, Pope broke his foot. Specifics of the injury aren\u2019t clear, but Pope described it as a \u201cclean break.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The senior had 17 points and three assists in Texas\u2019 74-68 win over the Bulldogs. He played 33 minutes on Thursday night in San Jose, too, finishing with 12 points and two rebounds.\u00a0Pope averaged 13.1 points and 2.1 rebounds per game this season while shooting just shy of 40% from the field.<\/p>\n

Pope, though, couldn\u2019t quite lift the Longhorns past Purdue. The Boilermakers escaped with a 79-77 win on a game-winner from Trey Kaufman-Renn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pope spent his first two seasons at Oregon State before transferring into Austin ahead of the 2024-25 campaign. He was a four-star Rivals.com recruit coming out of high school in Oakley, California \u2014 which sits on the other side of the Bay Area from where the Sweet 16 games were being played on Thursday night. Pope is considered a fringe NBA Draft prospect after a senior season in which he averaged 13.1 points as Texas’ starting point guard. He had 45 points in four NCAA tournament games.<\/p>\n

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The decision to play was Pope\u2019s, according to Texas coach Sean Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many guys that I\u2019ve coached under these conditions on this stage would have chosen to play \u2026 He gave us everything and gave us the opportunity to win,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n

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While Texas is headed home early, the Longhorns did end up on a very long and surprising NCAA tournament run. They started in the First Four round, after all.<\/p>\n

And Pope got to play until the end near his hometown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt good, somehow. I had a lot of fun,\u201d Pope said. \u201cI thank the Lord I was able to get through that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jordan Pope didn\u2019t really hesitate on Thursday when it came to whether or not he was going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3267,39519,3112,6457,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-222704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-california","tag-jordan-pope","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-san-jose","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}