AUSTIN, Texas — After first being reported on Sunday, it was made official on Monday: the Texas Longhorns have hired a new basketball coach.
Sean Miller is set to take the reins of the Texas Longhorns’ basketball program, signing on to take over a team that was in an apparent need of a retool following a 2024-25 season that saw them finish with a 19-16 record overall and a subpar 6-12 record in SEC play.
Miller’s been a head coach in college basketball for 20 seasons, and is the most accomplished basketball coach Texas has employed since Rick Barnes, who coached the team from 1998 until his firing in 2015.
In 20 seasons as a head coach, Miller has a 487–196 record, a 71% winning percentage.
How he got started in basketball
Miller is a Pennsylvania native, and his father was a high school basketball coach.
Miller played high school basketball at Chippewa High School, the school his father coached at, and played collegiately at Pittsburgh from 1987 until 1992. While at Pitt, he became one of the program’s most prominent players, playing in 128 games across four seasons and becoming the program’s all-time leader in free throw percentage.
After college, he began his coaching career, starting as a graduate assistant at Wisconsin ahead of the 1992-93 season. He then had a number of assistant coaching stints prior to his first head coaching gig:
- Miami of Ohio, from 1993-1995
- Pittsburgh, during the 1995-96 season
- North Carolina State, from 1996-2001
- Xavier, as an assistant from 2001-2004
His brother Archie Miller, who is also a college basketball coach, played collegiately at North Carolina State while Sean was an assistant coach. Archie is currently the head coach at Rhode Island, and previously served as the head coach at Dayton and Indiana.
Xavier, 2004-2009
Miller became a head coach for the first time in 2004, when he was promoted by Xavier after previous head coach Thad Matta took a head coaching job at Ohio State.
In his five seasons at Xavier, Miller qualified for the NCAA Tournament four times, making the Elite Eight in 2007-08 and the Sweet 16 in 2008-09.
Arizona, 2009-2021
Miller left Xavier in 2009 to take the head coaching job at Arizona, and Tucson is where he had his most success as a head coach.
Miller served as the Wildcats head coach for 12 seasons, earning an impressive 302-109 record, a 74% winning percentage. He led Arizona to seven NCAA Tournament appearances, including five Sweet 16 and three Elite Eight appearances. The Wildcats also won at least a share of five Pac-12 regular-season championships under his watch.
Miller was fired by Arizona in April 2021, following three consecutive seasons where the Wildcats missed the NCAA Tournament. Under his watch, Arizona was also one of a handful of college basketball programs that was implicated in a corruption scandal, and he had 50 wins vacated from his record as part of the fallout.
Xavier, 2022-2025
Miller returned to coaching in 2022, rejoining Xavier. He qualified for the NCAA Tournament in two of his three seasons, and coincidentally faced Texas in both tournaments.
In 2022-23, Miller’s Musketeers made it to the Sweet 16, where they lost to the Rodney Terry-coached Longhorns. The Longhorns would subsequently lose to Miami in the Elite Eight.
Miller and Xavier faced off against the Longhorns in the NCAA Tournament again in 2025. Perhaps poetically, his last win at Xavier was against the team he is now taking charge of, as the Musketeers beat Texas in the First Four before losing to Illinois in the First Round.
In eight total seasons at Xavier, Miller finished with a 185-87 record, a 68% winning percentage.
NBA players Miller has coached
A total of 27 players Miller has coached have played in the NBA. Among active college basketball coaches, only Arkansas head coach John Calipari has sent more players to the NBA than Miller.
Of those 27, 12 were first round picks and six were lottery selections, meaning they were taken in the first 14 picks.
Some notable NBA players who played under Miller include:
- Aaron Gordon (fourth overall pick in 2014, 2023 NBA champion)
- Lauri Markkanen (seventh overall pick in 2017, NBA All-Star in 2023)
- DeAndre Ayton (first overall pick in 2018, 2018 Pac-12 Conference Player of the Year)
- Josh Green (18th overall pick in 2020)
- Zeke Nnaji (22nd overall pick in 2020, 2023 NBA champion)
- Bennedict Mathurin (sixth overall pick in 2022, 2022 Pac-12 Conference Player of the Year)
Texas, 2025
Miller will now attempt to revitalize a Texas basketball program that’s only been to the Elite Eight five times in the last 35 years, and hasn’t appeared in a Final Four since 2003.
He will be tasked with turning around a Longhorns program that finished third-to-last in the SEC this season and barely qualified for the NCAA Tournament as one of the Last Four In.
The Longhorns are set to face quite a bit of roster turnover. Seven seniors and graduate students – as well as freshman Tre Johnson, who is expected to be a lottery pick in the 2025 NBA Draft – are set to depart the program.