Rodney Terry has been fired by Texas after three seasons as head coach. (David Buono/Getty Images)
A disappointing first season in the SEC has led Texas on what appears to be a very brief search for a new men’s basketball coach.
The school announced Sunday that it had fired Rodney Terry after nearly three seasons in charge. Terry took over as Texas’ head coach eight games into the 2022-23 season when Chris Beard was suspended and ultimately fired for a domestic violence accusation that ultimately resulted in dropped charges.
Not long after news of Terry’s firing broke, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Xavier’s Sean Miller would be the Longhorns’ new coach.
Texas scraped its way into the 2025 NCAA tournament as one of the last teams in the field. The Longhorns were a somewhat surprising inclusion in the field, but lost to Miller’s Xavier on Wednesday night in the First Four.
The Longhorns fell 86-80 after leading by eight at halftime. Texas led by 10 with 13:04 to go, but Xavier chipped away at the lead and moved ahead with just over five minutes remaining.
Texas went 19-15 overall in 2024-25 and were 6-12 in the SEC. That came after a 21-13 season and a No. 7 seed in the 2024 NCAA tournament a year ago in their final season in the Big 12. Texas beat Colorado State in the first round of the tournament but then lost by four to Tennessee in the second round.
The Longhorns were 7-1 in 2022 when Terry took over as the interim coach and went on to finish second in the Big 12. After winning the Big 12 tournament title in dominating fashion over Kansas, the Longhorns were a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament before losing 88-81 to Miami in the Elite Eight.
That tournament run was enough to get Terry promoted to be the team’s permanent coach. But Texas couldn’t sustain that success, even though the school signed five-star prospect Tre Johnson ahead of the 2024-25 season. Johnson was the team’s leading scorer with nearly 20 points per game.
The decision to move on from Terry means Texas will pay a $5.4 million buyout as part of the five-year deal he signed after that Elite Eight run.
“I am so appreciative to have served the University of Texas and our men’s basketball program for 13 seasons,” Terry said in a statement. “It was a dream of mine to be the head coach of the Longhorns, and I’ve been able to live that dream. I want to thank all of our coaches and current and former players who not only helped us win a lot of games, but more importantly represented this great university in a first-class manner.”
Sean Miller spent three seasons at Xavier after returning to the school ahead of the 2022-23 season. (Photo by Jack Dempsey/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Miller just finished the third season of his second stint at Xavier. He returned to the school ahead of the 2022-23 season after a year out of college basketball. Miller was at Arizona from 2009 through 2021, but was fired at the end of the 2021 season.
During that season, Arizona vacated wins from earlier in his tenure because of the FBI’s corruption investigation into college basketball. As part of that investigation, Miller was accused of being involved in (then) illicit payments to make sure DeAndre Ayton went to Arizona instead of Kansas.
Arizona made the NCAA tournament seven times in Miller’s tenure though the Wildcats missed the tournament in both 2019 and 2021. At Xavier, the Muskateers have made the NCAA tournament in six of his eight seasons and lost to Illinois in the first round on Friday night after beating Texas.
At Texas, he’ll be tasked with succeeding at a resource-rich program where big success has been hard to come by over the last two decades. Texas hasn’t been back to the Final Four since 2003 and has lost on the first weekend of the tournament 13 times since then. That Elite Eight trip in 2023 was just the fourth time Texas had advanced to the Sweet 16 since that 2003 team led by T.J. Ford fell to eventual national champion Syracuse in the semifinals.
