NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Pros and cons of 5-star SG Isiah Harwell final 4 teams

Texas Longhorns

Pros

As last season’s leading scorer Max Abmas showed, a guard can be the feature guy in a system for Coach Rodney Terry. The team has senior guards Tramon Mark and Julian Larry leading the way, along with junior Oregon State transfer star, Jordan Pope.

Even without top-40 guard Cam Scott, the Longhorns have a 5-star shooting guard prospect joining the team in Tre Johnson, who is expected to be a “one and done”. As long as that remains true, then Harwell can simply replace him and his role for the 2025-26 squad.

Cons

Texas is moving from the Big 12 to the SEC and while that shouldn’t be much of a change from a competition standpoint, it’ll still be interesting to see how the program adjusts. Plus, Coach Terry did take the Longhorns to the NCAA Tournament but are players still sold on him? He wasn’t able to develop former 5-star prospect Dillon Mitchell well enough, with him now at Cincinnati.

From a prestige and certainly a resource standpoint, Texas is up there with Houston and Gonzaga. But Coach Terry isn’t on the same level as Coach Few or Sampson. That could play into this factor but if the playing time is figured out, the Longhorns still should have a chance here.