{"id":418216,"date":"2026-08-27T13:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/418216\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T13:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:28:18","slug":"texas-basketball-coach-sean-miller-praises-jordan-pope-tramon-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/418216\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas basketball coach Sean Miller praises Jordan Pope, Tramon Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now, with college basketball just a few months aways, does he think about it as a missed opportunity like that or does he reflect on the journey to get to the Sweet 16, where Texas lost to Purdue 79-77<\/a> in\u00a0the final seconds on a tip-in from Trey Kaufman-Renn.\u00a0Miller\u00a0answered that question in an episode of on college basketball insider Jon Rothstein’s podcast<\/a> that published this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think it’s hard to reflect on ‘if we just did this one thing we could’ve won’ because you take for granted the things you did to be in that position,” he said Tuesday. “We had a couple amazing plays to be in the position to win that game.”<\/p>\n

The Longhorns were one of the last teams in the NCAA Tournament and won their First Four<\/a> game against North Carolina State to be the 11th seed. What followed were wins over BYU<\/a> and Gonzaga<\/a> to claim a spot in regional semifinals\u00a0while star players\u00a0Jordan Pope<\/a> and Tramon Mark<\/a> battled injuries.<\/p>\n

Pope suffered from a broken foot and Mark is out “the next four months from the ankle injury he had in that game,” Miller told\u00a0Rothstein. Due to the severity of those injuries, Miller said that Pope and Mark would have been unavailable to play in the Elite Eight match against No. 2 Arizona.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was remarkable the courage, the unselfishness those two kids showed,” Miller said. “… I think sometimes fans and people can get disgruntled to where (they assume the games are) just about money. There are two guys that gave an example of how much it means to play and to be a part of a team, to be apart of a university you love.<\/p>\n

“I’m telling you, 90% of people in their position would not have finished the game or played the game. Both did.”<\/p>\n

Miller, who has been to the\u00a0NCAA Tournament 14 times over a career that began in 2004 with Xavier, said that dedication is an example of the culture being built at UT.<\/p>\n

“I think that’s a true testament to No. 1: why we had the run we did, because of their leadership,” Miller, 57 said. “But again, when you move forward, you move forward in a good way knowing that a culture was created where both guys wanted to keep playing under amazing duress.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Texas men’s basketball begins its season Nov. 2 against Chicago State at Moody Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, with college basketball just a few months aways, does he think about it as a missed opportunity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,48876,3112,32495,50141],"class_list":["post-418216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-march-madness","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-purdue-basketball","tag-texas-longhorns-mens-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418216","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=418216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}