Texas men’s basketball has its November date with Baylor on the books.
Texas Athletics announced that the Longhorns will face their former Big 12 rival on Sunday, November 15, at the San Antonio Hoops Showdown in the Frost Bank Center.
The matchup brings Texas back to San Antonio for the first time since the 2003 NCAA Tournament, according to the school. It also adds another chapter to a rivalry that has been woven into the Longhorns’ schedule for generations.
Texas Athletics noted that Baylor is Texas’ most common opponent in program history, and that the two programs played in the same conference from 1915 until Texas moved to the SEC before the 2024-25 season. The only season since 1906 in which the Longhorns and Bears did not meet before 2024-25 was 1908, when Texas did not field a team.
Texas also had a busy day elsewhere across the athletic department, with the date set for Cole Hutson’s injunction hearing and the Longhorns being picked to finish second in the SEC while placing 11 players on All-SEC teams.
Around the program, there’s no shortage of Texas chatter. Arch Manning discussed why last year’s early struggles will help in 2026, while another piece examined what “The standard is the standard” means for Texas. On the football side, there was also a look at three under-the-radar statistics to watch along the defensive line in 2026, plus a report on the confidence building inside the program before fall camp.
In recruiting and roster news, Texas baseball’s transfer tracker continued to move with Georgia, TCU and Tech landing ex-Longhorns, and four-star shooting guard Justin Wise discussed his final six schools.
Across the SEC, Texas remains a central storyline. Media members have high hopes for the Longhorns in the 2026 football season, and there were also fresh takes on the preseason media poll and on the 10 best Longhorns who didn’t make a preseason All-SEC team.
Elsewhere around the league, Missouri basketball was sorting out its 2026-27 rotation, LSU was predicted to finish fifth in the SEC, Ole Miss was drawing three key takeaways from SEC Media Days, Tennessee’s projected SEC finish was up for discussion, Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea was not naming a starter, and Alabama’s 2026 football opponents were being projected against South Carolina.
And in other reading around the sports world, the Panthers got off to a nightmare start to training camp.
In Other News...
Texas Landed A Transfer Whose NIL Value Is Turning Heads Nationwide
Texas has become part of a national NIL arms race that keeps widening, and one of its newest additions is right in the middle of it. David Punch, a Texas native who transferred in after two seasons at TCU and was ranked the eighth-best available transfer by 247Sports, is projected to be one of the biggest college basketball earners in the country as the Longhorns continue building around high-end talent.
The broader picture is even more striking for Texas, because Punch is not the only player on the roster drawing that kind of attention. Spears, a former top prospect, is also being mentioned as a potential major NIL earner before he becomes NBA draft eligible, which only adds to the sense that Texas is operating in a different financial lane than most programs. The numbers attached to both players are eye-opening, and they raise the obvious question of just how far this roster can go if the on-court production matches the off-court investment. [Read more 🡒]
Texas Fans Wont Believe Sarkisian Is Already In This Conversation
Steve Sarkisians name is already getting pulled into a bigger conversation than most Texas fans would expect this early, and it starts with the kind of outside speculation that tends to follow any high-profile program after a rough stretch. Michael Bratton raised the idea of what a failed season could mean for Texas, using James Franklins firing at Penn State as a reminder of how quickly expectations can shift when a team falls short of the standard.
Chris Del Contes track record suggests Texas has not been quick to panic with its coaching hires, which makes the chatter feel more theoretical than immediate. Even so, the fact that Sarkisian is being mentioned at all says plenty about the pressure that comes with the job, even if the current read is that he is not being pushed into a must-win corner this season. [Read more 🡒]