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No. 11 seed Texas beat No. 3 Gonzaga 74-68 on Saturday to advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and head coach Sean Miller’s expletive-laden halftime speech might have been the reason.
Miller, 57, challenged his team to maximize their efforts on the offensive glass and not wilt just because Gonzaga is a higher seed and a good basketball team.
“There you go. The team that gets the most second shots in the second half will win. Again, I want to go back to it. Do you want to take it or are you just going to say – we’re going to say, ‘Like, man, they always seem to go to the Sweet 16. The same thing happened to us.’ No, no. If you haven’t taken it, if you want to be a team, we have to go after the ball more when we miss. It can’t be like, “Damn, we’ll never be able to get an offensive rebound against Gonzaga.” “Yes, we can,” Miller told his team.
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Texas Longhorns head coach Sean Miller in the second half against the Gonzaga Bulldogs in a second round game of the 2026 NCAA men’s tournament at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon on March 21, 2026. (Troy Wayrynen/Imagn Images)
Miller made it clear to his team that if they couldn’t catch it, they had to keep the ball alive by any means possible, and to win the game, they had to steal it from Gonzaga.
“You can’t catch it, hit it, tip it, go up, knock it down, dunk it, up it,” Miller said. “The most aggressive team in the second half. The team that wants to go to San Jose, the team that’s going to steal it and take it from the other mother—–, they’re the one that’s going to win because it’s an even game.”
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Texas head coach Sean Miller reacts on the sidelines during the second half of the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament against BYU in Portland, Ore., March 19, 2026. (Amanda Loman/AP Photo)
Texas took Miller’s advice literally, as they stole the ball four times from Gonzaga and had an 11-2 advantage in points off turnovers. While the Longhorns rebounded 34-29, they shot the ball better than the Bulldogs, draining 52 percent of their shots compared to Gonzaga’s 45 percent.
For Miller, Texas’ trip to the Sweet 16 is his ninth trip in 21 seasons as head coach and improved his overall tournament record to 25-13 in the NCAA Tournament. For Texas, this is their first Sweet 16 since 2023.
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Texas head coach Sean Miller reacts from the sidelines during the first half of the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament against BYU in Portland, Ore., March 19, 2026. (Craig Mitchelldyer/AP Photo)
The Longhorns will look to continue their Cinderella run when they take on No. 2 Purdue on Thursday at 7:10 p.m. ET.
