Nine things and one crazy prediction<\/a><\/p>\nEspecially after Texas won three more national championships in softball, rowing and men\u2019s swimming and diving to raise the school\u2019s total of NCAA championships to 71 and Del Conte\u2019s personal total at Texas to 18 since he took over the department in December 2017.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cFor an athletic director,\u201d Del Conte told the Houston Chronicle, \u201cthis is like our national championship. It\u2019s a true reflection of the depth and breadth of our athletic program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Texas also completed its second year in the SEC with six conference regular-season or postseason titles in men\u2019s and women\u2019s swimming and diving, men\u2019s tennis, softball and women\u2019s basketball. Combined with the eight overall championships in 2024-2025, the Longhorns have totaled an SEC-high 14 titles in just two years.<\/p>\n
The accomplishment is even more impressive, given the Texas football team didn\u2019t even reach the College Football Playoff despite three wins over top 10 teams and a strong, ultimate 10-3 record that included a Citrus Bowl win over Michigan.<\/p>\n
Even more remarkable since the men\u2019s basketball team barely made the NCAA Tournament field as one of the last three at-large picks, but then embarked on an outstanding journey that included a spot in the Sweet 16 under first-year head coach Sean Miller and that brought them within seconds of reaching the Elite Eight for the second time in three seasons.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The list of achievements at Texas this academic school year are long.<\/p>\n
Bruce Berque\u2019s men\u2019s tennis team was a national runner-up. Vic Schaefer\u2019s women\u2019s basketball team won the SEC Tournament and tied for third nationally after reaching the Final Four for the second consecutive year.<\/p>\n
Carol Capitani\u2019s women\u2019s swimming and diving team and Stein Metzger\u2019s beach volleyball squad also had second-place finishes on the national level.<\/p>\n
Earning fifth-place finishes were Jerritt Elliott\u2019s volleyball team, John Field\u2019s men\u2019s golf team and Laura Ianello\u2019s women\u2019s golf squad led by national Player of the Year Farah O\u2019Keefe and fellow All-Americans Cindy Hsu and Lauren Kim.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a tribute to our coaches and athletes who put in all the work,\u201d Del Conte said. \u201cWhen you are united in a common goal, great things like this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he couldn\u2019t help but add a disclaimer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we would have won sixth year in a row if geese hadn\u2019t hit our rowing boat in the middle of the (finals) competition,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is pretty awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh, and Jim Schlossnagle\u2019s baseball team is still playing. Not well, as Texas fell in its opening game with a mistake-riddled 7-1 loss to third seed and SEC champion Georgia. But still alive as one of an NCAA-record five SEC teams at the College World Series with a Monday date with Alabama in an elimination game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Longhorns infielders Viviana Martinez (23) and Jaycie Nichols (24) celebrate winning game two of the NCAA Women?s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-336104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336104","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=336104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}