NCAA Basketball: Reevaluating preseason top 25 power rankings of 2022-23 season

12. Texas (28-8, 2-seed, Sweet Sixteen)

If you’ve been following college basketball, you’re aware that things have not exactly transpired as expected for Texas this season. Head coach Chris Beard was fired a few months ago after a domestic violence incident, but that did not cause havoc on the Longhorns’ season. Interim head coach Rodney Terry, who left his head coaching job at UTEP to join this program, has been masterful in his handling of this program.

Texas beat both Gonzaga and Creighton in nonconference play, with their only loss before January coming in a tough matchup with Illinois. The Longhorns would suffer some forgivable losses in the coming months, including tough road games at Baylor, Kansas, and Tennessee, but certainly emerged as one of the top teams in the Big 12. Even more impressively, the Longhorns won the Big 12 Tournament, getting the job done with a 20-point victory over Kansas in the title game.

Beard has already been hired by Ole Miss, but Terry and company are still playing basketball. The Longhorns got a pretty easy win over Colgate in the first round before holding on for a 5-point win over a very talented Penn State squad in the second round, getting to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in 15 years. Between Marcus Carr, Dylan Disu, and Sir’Jabari Rice, this Texas rotation is playing great basketball and coming together again at the right time. They’ll have an intriguing matchup with Xavier on Friday, hoping to write another successful chapter for this season.