About Texas

The Texas Longhorns men's basketball team represents The University of Texas at Austin in NCAA Division I intercollegiate men's basketball competition. The Longhorns currently compete in the Big 12 Conference.

The University of Texas began varsity intercollegiate competition in men's basketball in 1906. The Longhorns rank 18th in total victories among all NCAA Division I college basketball programs and 25th in all-time win percentage among programs with at least 60 years in Division I, with an all-time win-loss record of 1791–1088 (.622). Among Big 12 Conference men's basketball programs, Texas is second only to Kansas in both all-time wins and all-time win percentage.

The Longhorns have won 27 total conference championships in men's basketball and have made 34 total appearances in the NCAA Tournament (11th-most appearances all time, with a 35–37 overall record), reaching the NCAA Final Four three times (1943, 1947, 2003) and the NCAA Regional Finals (Elite Eight) seven times. As of the end of the 2017–18 season, Texas ranks sixth among all Division I men's basketball programs for total NCAA Tournament games won without having won the national championship (35), trailing Kansas State (37), Notre Dame (38), Purdue (39), Illinois (40), and Oklahoma (41).

The Texas basketball program experienced substantial success during the early decades of its existence, but its success in the modern era is of relatively recent vintage. After two losing seasons during the program's first five years, Texas suffered only one losing season from 1912 to 1950, achieving a winning percentage of .703 during that span, reaching two Final Fours and one Elite Eight during the first decade of the NCAA Tournament, and receiving retroactive recognition as the 1933 national champion from the Premo-Porretta Power Poll; from 1951 to 1988, the Longhorns finished with losing records 14 times, recorded a winning percentage of .522, and participated in the expanded Tournament only five times. Texas achieved some measures of national recognition during the tenures of head coaches Abe Lemons (1976–82) and Tom Penders (1988–98), but the program rose to its highest level of prominence under the direction of former head coach Rick Barnes (1998–2015). Barnes guided Texas to 16 NCAA Tournament appearances in his 17 seasons with the program, including a school-record fourteen consecutive appearances (1999–2012), as well as fifteen 20-win seasons overall and a school-best thirteen consecutive 20-win seasons (2000–12).

Since 1977, the team has played its home games in the Frank Erwin Special Events Center, where it has compiled a record of 507–126 (.801) as of January 7, 2019. The team is currently led by fourth-year head coach Shaka Smart.