Regardless of whether or not Texas can be considered a "Cinderella" team in 2026, they're playing incredibly well right now. Very few teams have been as consistent as Seam Miller's group over the first part of the tournament, and hopefully that carries over to the Longhorns' bout against Purdue on Thursday.
Speaking of the Sweet 16 matchup, we asked ChatGPT to predict both the final score and leading scorer of the game.
AI is apparently a fan of Sean "March Madness" Miller
In what could be seen as an astronomically surprising result, given how well Purdue has been playing lately, ChatGPT has Texas pulling off the upset this week in two of the three simulations that we had it perform.
Simulation #1: Purdue 78 - Texas 71
Simulation #2: Texas 74 - Purdue 71
Simulation #3: Texas 73 - Purdue 70
To be 100% honest, I was thinking that the script would be flipped here based on how incredibly smooth the Boilermakers have been operating on both ends of the court.
With that being said, Texas has been winning these games without even performing as well as they could be. If the Longhorns can have all five guys on the court performing at their best, the sky is the limit for Sean Miller and Co. going forward. There's been one member of the starting five who's underwhelmed each week for some reason, but if that changes, Texas has the potential to be unstoppable with Dailyn Swain and Matas Vokietaitis leading the way.
As mentioned earlier, we also had ChatGPT predict the leading scorer for the game, and it's Purdue's sharpshooting G Fletcher Loyer. He's projected to have 23 points, while making 4 three-point shots against the Longhorns on Thursday night.
Aside from every Texas fan praying that AI's right when it comes to the final score, it'll be incredibly interesting to see how accurate it is with Loyer's projections.