Sean Miller is as surprised as anyone.
“If you’d have told me before the season that we score the points we can score and we don’t get assists, I’d be like, that’s impossible,” Miller said last Saturday.
The Texas Longhorns had just won a fourth straight conference game by scoring 85 points in a 17-point win over the Missouri Tigers in Columbia despite recording just eight assists on 29 made baskets, an assist rate of 27.6 percent.
Now with a five-game winning streak heading into Saturday’s matchup against the Bulldgos in Athens, the Longhorns accomplishing one of the most remarkable feats of Miller’s coaching career — producing an historically efficient offense at Texas despite a roster construction that renders it unable to achieve that feat within the perceptual orthodoxy of what good offense looks like.
In Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, it’s the most efficient Texas offense in almost 30 years and better than the 2007-08 team led by point guard DJ Augustin that went to the Elite Eight. In the similar adjusted efficiency rankings from Bart Torvik, the Horns are eighth nationally at 126.2, significantly better than any of Miller’s offenses dating back to the 2007-08 season, his fourth season at Xavier.
Looking at Miller’s 2022-23 offense with the Musketeers, which produced his third-highest adjusted efficiency since 2008, provides a contrast in style while still reflecting an offensive philosophy that has evolved since early in his tenure with the Wildcats.
That Xavier team produced elite efficiency thanks to an effective field-goal percentage of 55.2 percent (13th), fueled by 39-percent shooting from three-point range (fourth), which was in turn enabled by the nation’s No. 6 assist rate at 63.6 percent. Playing at the No. 31 adjusted tempo helped, an area most reflective of Miller’s philosophical evolution.
Meanwhile, the Musketeers ranked 100th in turnover rate and offensive rebounding rate while slotting 178th in free-throw rate.
Consider the 2025-26 Longhorns polar opposites, playing at a median adjusted tempo, taking relatively few three-point shots, and ranking 348th in assist rate while excelling in areas of weakness for that team three years ago.
“The way our team is constructed, we score from the free-throw line, we score in the post, we have a number of guys that in that middle area — Tramon Mark, Jordan [Pope]’s pretty good. Dailyn [Swain] — that’s where we’re good,” Miller said.
Texas is also 15th in offensive rebounding rate, a team effort that ranges from Vokietaitis in the middle out to the guard corps, including Mark and senior guard Chendall Weaver.
The Horns aren’t just good at getting to the free-throw line, they’re the best in the country with a rate of 47.6, fueled by sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis, who is eighth nationally with 214 free-throw attempts per game and is so difficult to defend in the post that he often puts Texas into the bonus almost single-handedly.
As a team, that numbers are similar with the Longhorns ranking eighth in free-throw attempts per game at 27, although Texas isn’t an elite free-throw shooting team at 75 percent, 89th nationally. But because the Horns average 85.2 points per game and 20.1 made free throws per game, Texas averages almost a quarter of their points scored from the free-throw line every contest.
The high free-throw rate also impacts the team’s abysmal assist rate — as Miller noted on Monday, Vokietaitis gets fouled so frequently that regardless of the quality of the pass to him, it’s not credited as an assist when he converts at the line.
But if watching Texas doesn’t pass the eyeball test or the vibes test as one of the nation’s most efficient teams, it’s because getting to the line and making free throws and securing offensive rebounds isn’t aesthetically pleasing.
“I don’t want to use the word ugly, but those two things don’t make your offense look beautiful, pretty, or wow, the ball’s moving around, the things that are associated with a really good offensive team,” Miller said.
Another factor that isn’t pretty?
Avoiding turnovers, as Texas ranks 71st in turnover rate.
The low turnover rate and the high offensive rebounding rate ensure that the Longhorns are able to take shots when they have the ball, whether from the floor or for the line, and get extra possessions, making up for the overall possessions that are lost from the team’s deliberate pace.
Within games, however, Texas hasn’t always consistently taken care of the basketball.
“I think the final piece for us late in the year is where we don’t have those halves where we have high turnovers, like we’ve done so many times, or in the first half, we did a great job of taking care of the ball, but it got away from us in the second half,” Miller said. “If we could be a single-digit turnover [team] again down the stretch, I think it keeps us in a good place on offense.”
When referencing how different the Horns are constructed offensively, Mark was the first player mentioned by Miller. The sixth-year guard is only shooting 30.2 percent from the three-point line, his worst mark since a small sample size during his 2021-22 in which he only played seven games, but he’s an elite mid-range shooter.
“Where Tramon is at his best is right in that middle area, 15 to 17 feet. Those are sometimes some shots that just aren’t good shots for teams. But for Tramon, they’re very good shots. It’s where he’s at his best,” Miller said.
In the modern analytics era of basketball, many teams have abandoned the mid-range shot in favor of taking three or getting to the rim. In that way, Mark is a throwback — according to College Basketball Analytics, Mark is in the 92nd percentile in taking 23.6 percent of his shots from the mid range and in the 90th percentile in hitting at 51.6 percent in that area, 15.1 percent above the Division 1 average.
As Miller and his staff have learned Mark’s tendencies, an in-season process because the Houston and Arkansas transfer spent most of the offseason rehabilitating from offseason labrum surgery, they’ve schemed to allow him to work in his favorite mid-range areas in the middle of the court just above the free-throw line.
Because those aren’t areas where players typically catch the basketball against man defenses, Mark gets to his spots off the dribble, producing an assist rate of 17.9 percent on his two-point baskets that ranks in the 28th percentile nationally.
“He’s way more efficient to get him the ball in that area, but it’s not going to be on an assist, right? It’s going to be putting him in a position to kind of make his own play, which he’s very good at,” Miller said.
Wanting to dribble into his shots is a consistent feature of Mark’s game offensively — 64.3 percent of his made threes are assisted, putting him in the 12th percentile — but the graduate guard’s ability to get into his preferred areas to make shots helps him bail Texas out of stagnant offensive possessions.
In November, neither Mark nor the staff were comfortable enough to put him in positions to succeed.
“We started him at point guard at Duke, and if you think about how he would have played in the Duke game, he was non-existent,” Miller said. “And a lot of it was just simply due to you have to realize what he’s good at, what he isn’t, and then he, on his end, had to get more comfortable, but he had no chance in November to play well.”
Mark certainly wasn’t good in the loss to the Blue Devils, taking just two shots and recording one assist in 25 minutes. In the next nine non-conference games, Mark had some strong performances, but also managed just three points against Rider and played just 16 minutes in the upset win over NC State in the Maui Invitational.
Since the middle of December, he’s been more consistent as the variability of his performance has largely hinged on the difficulty of the shots he likes to take.
Miller put Swain into a similar category of creating his own shots off the bounce.
“Dailyn with the ball in his hands, he scores more driving it, and he scores more in the open court, he scores more using a ball screen or driving the ball at the end of the clock, right?” the Texas head coach said.
Because Texas doesn’t have a true point guard, Swain has become the team’s primarily facilitator, leading the team with 87 assists, 32 more than junior guard Simeon Wilcher, who also has a lower assist rate than the Xavier transfer.
But, like Mark, Swain is at his best creating for himself with a true shooting percentage of 66.2 percent that ranks in the 91st percentile and is all the more remarkable because he ranks in the first percentile with only 14.4 percent of his two-point shots assisted and in the second percentile with 25.8 percent of his three-point shots assisted.
Swain also helps the Longhorns turn offense into defense. Although Texas ranks No. 336 in forced turnover rate, the junior wing is in the 97th percentile at 2.2 steals per 40 minutes, helping him shoot 16.7 percent of his shots in transition, which ranks in the 92nd percentile.
After gaining 40 pounds since enrolling at Xavier, Swain has improved his physicality to complement good quickness off the bounce and a knack for shaking opponents with his crossover. As the coaching staff puts Swain in positions to succeed with ball screens or isolation opportunities, Swain can get into the paint off the bounce seemingly at will, where he unleashes an arsenal of shots enabled by high-level patience and footwork.
Miller often refers to Swain as a throwback because he recruited him out of high school and has now developed him over three college seasons, but the 6’8, 220-pounder is also a throwback in that he fulfill’s one of legendary head coach John Wooden’s favorite basketball maxims — “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
Because Swain plays with incredible pace, he shoots 57.9 percent in the paint, 15.8 percent above the Division 1 average, and 72.2 percent at the rim, 9.8 percent above the Division 1 average, both areas where his ability to finish through contact stand out.
The CBB Analytics shooting map for Swain highlights spots where he’s shooting up to 40 percent above average.
Beyond the arc, Swain has gone from a non-shooter in high school to 15.4 percent on 26 attempts as a freshman to 33.3 percent on 72 attempts as a junior.
Similar to Mark’s mid-range shots, Swain has developed a knack for making late-clock threes off the bounce, often from his preferred spots on the left wing or in the middle of the court, where five of his six made threes have been unassisted.
“Those two are great examples of guys that they’re not going to be a recipient of a pass that leads to a shot very often,” Miller said.
Put senior guard Jordan Pope in that category, too. The Oregon State transfer relies heavily on shooting the ball off the bounce in the halfcourt — the assist rate of 57.4 percent on Pope’s made threes is in the seventh percentile. Also in the seventh percentile? Pope’s percentage of shots at the rim.
As a mid-range shooter, Pope is in the 89th percentile in taking 21.6 percent of his shots from that distance and in the 67th percentile in making 40.7 percent.
What about Pope’s assist rate, despite telling Miller that he’s a point guard? At 11.2 percent, he’s in the 40th percentile.
Texas does have a Golden Boy of the analytics era, though, as junior forward Cam Heide isn’t just an efficient player, he has the nation’s highest offensive rating with the help of a 72.4 true-shooting percentage that ranks 10th nationally because he’s shooting 50 percent from three with 75 percent of his attempts coming from distance.
Unlike Mark, Heide doesn’t take mid-range shots — of his 26 two-point attempts, 24 classify as close twos, including eight dunks on nine attempts.
And because Heide attacks off the bounce so rarely, his turnover rate is only 8.2 percent with 11 on the season.
The Purdue transfer rarely uses possessions, but when he does, he’s probably making a three, a floor-stretching ability that allows players like Mark and Swain room to work off the bounce and helps make defenses think twice about which help defenders are sent to disrupt Vokietaitis working in the post.
Also an efficient player whose biggest offensive weakness is a turnover rate of 17.9 percent, Vokietaitis is shooting 69.7 percent on close twos, shots that make up 81.2 percent of his attempts. And Vokietaitis is also the team’s most effective offensive rebounder by volume with 21 more than graduate forward Lassina Traore — the big Lithuanian is a singular force of nature on the block in Texas basketball history and across the country this season.
A consistent theme from Miller since the start of the season has been, “Time is not on our time,” a reference to the difficulties of being a first-year coach with a new roster.
“On the lines of how our team is constructed, I will tell you, it takes a little bit of time to really figure that out as a coach, especially when a lot of these guys didn’t play for us last year. So some of what you see today, you might not have seen from us early in the year,” Miller said.
The improving trend line of the team’s adjusted offensive efficiency backs that up.
“We’ve settled into a good offensive team,” Miller said. “My hope is that we can continue to get better.”
Georgia is the first SEC opponent that Texas will face twice this season before return matchups against Texas A&M and Oklahoma among the final four regular-season games.
When the Bulldogs played the Longhorns in Austin, Miller’s team picked up its fourth ranked win of the season and perhaps its most impressive — Texas outscored Georgia 57-30 in a second-half demolition by shooting 68.8 percent and securing eight of its 11 misses and forcing the Dawgs to shoot 37.5 percent with eight turnovers in the best-played half of the nascent Miller era.
Four players reached double figures for the Horns after halftime, led by 16 points from Mark, who went 7-of-10 shooting, and Vokietaitis scoring 11 points thanks to hitting all four shots from the floor and all three free throws.
Another aspect stood out — Georgia still leads the nations in fast-break points per game at 22.2, but Texas held a 13-7 edge in Austin on January 24 by controlling the tempo and getting back in transition, a key for the Longhorns to convert a 40-percent win probability on the road on Saturday.
Tip in Athens is at 2:30 p.m. Central on SEC Network.