Texas Longhorns Basketball Continues to Impress With Huge Win

Earlier this week, the Texas Longhorns’ embarrassing regular season-ending loss to the TCU Horned Frogs left fans feeling frustrated and hopeless; fortunately, though football will always be king in Texas, the Longhorns’ basketball team’s defeat of the No. 24 ranked UCONN Huskies earlier today could leave them feeling a bit better about the state of Longhorn athletics.

Though the season has just started, this Texas squad has given fans a lot to be excited about.

More from Hook'em Headlines

So far through their first six games, the Longhorns have handled their business. They defeated the then-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes as well as the California Golden Bears (who had just knocked off Syracuse) to win the 2k Classic at Madison Square Gardens earlier this month. They’ve won their other three games, albeit against severely outmatched opponents, by an average of 33 points.

The Longhorns had a pretty daunting task ahead of them as they traveled to Connecticut to face the Huskies this morning in their biggest test of the season. Though the Huskies may not be the Huskies college basketball fans are used to, they are still a very good team, and defeating any ranked team on the road is never easy. Making matter worse was the fact that the Longhorns would be without their starting point guard, Isaiah Taylor, who has been sidelined for an indefinite amount of time with a fractured wrist.

But the Longhorns didn’t let anything stop them. Leading almost the entire first half, Texas had to play from behind most of the second. The Huskies appeared to have all the momentum late in the game, and as the clock ticked down, it looked like the Horns would be handed their first loss of the season. However, trailing by two with less five seconds remaining on the clock, the Longhorns inbounded the ball, and Jonathan Holmes, who had previously had a relatively quiet day, knocked down the game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer to give the Horns a one-point victory.

While the second half wasn’t exactly pretty for Texas, it’s always a big deal to steal a game on the home-court of a ranked opponent. Making the win more impressive is the fact that, until today, the Huskies hadn’t lost at home to a ranked team since 1993.

The Horns will face an even bigger test later this week, with a match-up against the top-ranked Kentucky Wildcats awaiting them on Friday, and once again, it’s likely they will again be without Taylor.