said<\/a> on The Field of 68 on Monday.<\/p>\nThe team that Miller and his staff ultimately built after retaining a significant portion of Rodney Terry\u2019s roster went through up and downs during the 2025-26 season before making an unexpected run from the First Four to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
Now the program feels more steady as Miller enters his second year in Austin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really healthy to have the perspective of being at that place for a year, being in that league for a year \u2014 you\u2019re just much more sure footed,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI think you know at that point what it\u2019s really about, what you need to be successful, and to some degree, you learn a lot about the place that you\u2019re now at.\u201d<\/p>\n
More importantly, the Longhorns had a plan the staff was able to develop heading into the postseason and finalize in the 12 days between the season-ending loss to the Boilermakers and the portal window opening, which moved to after the national championship game instead of happening during the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really wanted to be super aggressive right out of the gates, knowing that we had some real needs to fill,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
The aggressiveness paid off \u2014 Texas signed five players from the portal to secure a group that 247Sports ranked third nationally in total points and third nationally in average player rating, led by rising junior TCU transfer forward David Punch, the No. 9 player in the portal, and rising sophomore Colorado transfer guard Isaiah Johnson, the No. 14 overall player in the portal.<\/p>\n
The Longhorns also added size on the wing with Auburn transfer Elyjah Freeman, a 6\u20198, 185-pounder, and Tennessee transfer Amari Evans, a 6\u20195, 220-pounder, a significant part of the staff\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have size, you can be more interchangeable \u2014 different players can be on the court with different combinations, not if this one particular player is in the game, then the other can\u2019t play, they platoon for each other. That\u2019s really not what we wanted to do. So I think the size and the versatility of our group is something that we really wanted to make sure that we had,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
But Texas needed lead guards, too, in order to replace Jordan Pope and Tramon Mark, key holdovers from the Terry era.<\/p>\n
Some of that playmaking punch in the backcourt will come from St. Mary\u2019s transfer Mikey Lewis, but landing Johnson, the No. 2 point guard in the portal, was the huge coup \u2014 as an 18-year-old playing in one of the nation\u2019s best basketball conferences, Johnson set the freshman scoring record for the Buffaloes as his 16.9 points per game scoring average ranked third in the Big 12 and 13th nationally among Division I freshmen with the help of nine 20-point performances.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, he\u2019s the modern guard in that he can both score and distribute. From an offensive perspective, skill level, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s too many players that will be playing college basketball that are more skilled than him,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
With splits of 48.6\/37.8\/82.1, Johnson is an elite scorer in terms of his efficiency, but the Texas head coach also believes that the 6\u20191, 190-pounder has more to offer than simply making baskets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also believe that he has the ability to make his teammates better. Understands the game, plays really under control,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
Some of Johnson\u2019s basketball intelligence developed with the help of his father, Chris, a well-regarded NBA trainer who has worked with players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Jimmy Butler, DeMar DeRozan, and Tyrese Maxey.<\/p>\n
Now the next step is to continue that development at Texas as part of a portal class that has elevated the Horns to a potential preseason top-10 program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to get him here because he was so young, I think he\u2019s going to grow and get bigger and stronger, and as he does, I think some of the things he did as a freshman, he\u2019s really going to be even better at as a sophomore,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is no longer Miller\u2019s first rodeo on the Forty Acres. On the day that Miller was named…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,13558,13559,28],"class_list":["post-279098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns-basketball","tag-texas-longhorns-basketball-recruiting","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279098","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=279098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}