title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The 1979–80 Texas Longhorns returned only one starter, forward Ron Baxter. LaSalle Thompson, 6'10" center and future Longhorn great, joined the program as a freshman. Texas ended the regular season with an 18–10 overall record and a 10–6 conference record, finishing third behind Texas A&M and Arkansas in SWC play. Passed over by the NCAA Tournament selection committee, Texas received a bid to the 1980 NIT, the last postseason tournament a Lemons-coached Texas team would reach. The Longhorns posted a 70–61 win over St. Joseph's before falling to Southwestern Louisiana, 77–76, in the second round to finish with a 19–11 overall record. Baxter, the 1980 Southwest Conference Player of the Year, finished his UT career as the then-all-time school leader in both scoring and rebounding.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The 1980–81 Longhorn team carried little in the way of preseason expectations of success. Even before the season began, the program was embroiled in controversy and turmoil. Lemons had summarily fired assistant Steve Moeller, leading to a caustic public feud between the two men, with each blaming the other for recent disappointing recruiting results. Moeller charged that Lemons' lack of inhibition with regard to public and private criticism of players was damaging the program. Only one of the four players signed in the 1981 class—6'9" forward Mike Wacker—was considered a coveted prospect. Texas opened with a home loss to Pacific. The regular season's zenith, a two-point win over Arkansas in Fayetteville on January 12, did nothing to reverse the team's downward trajectory, with losses to TCU, SMU, North Texas, Rice following shortly thereafter. The Longhorns stumbled to a 10–14 overall record with two conference games remaining. Lemons' habitual sarcasm and indiscriminately acid tongue, heretofore endearing to fans if not academic administrators, began to draw criticism, with some citing his routinely quippish comments as evidence that he failed to take his team's poor performance sufficiently seriously. Nonetheless, just as Lemons began to face notable fan frustration and criticism for the first time at Texas, his team began an unexpected run of late-season success. Lemons' team managed to win the two remaining regular season games as well as three of four games in the SWC Tournament—including a 76–73 victory over No. 15 Arkansas in the semifinal round—to avoid finishing with a losing record. The end-of-season success quelled discontent for the time being, with fans and commentators pointing to the return of LaSalle Thompson, Mike Wacker, and a healthier and more experienced supporting cast as reason for renewed confidence about the near future and optimism about the program's prospects.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: While his teams' records and performance had declined since the 1977–78 season, Lemons was not thought to be in danger of losing his job as he entered the 1981–82 season, the first year for new Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds and Lemons' last at Texas. Preseason expectations had Texas posting improvement over the prior season, but the 1981–82 Longhorns were nonetheless not expected to challenge for Southwest Conference supremacy. Texas began the season unranked, only entering the January 12 AP Poll at No. 19 after winning the first ten games of the season. Consecutive double-digit wins over No. 10 and eventual Final Four participant Houston at Hofheinz Pavilion and No. 9 Arkansas in Austin vaulted Texas to No. 7 in the following poll. An 88–71 nationally televised win over South Carolina the following week moved Texas to No. 5 in the AP Poll, the then-highest ranking in program history. Keyed by the performance of 1982 All-American, national rebounding champion, and eventual fifth overall 1982 NBA draft pick LaSalle Thompson and the much-improved sophomore forward Mike Wacker, the Longhorns had started the season with a record of 14–0, then the program's finest season start in the NCAA Tournament era. Two weeks and five losses later, the Longhorns would drop from the polls altogether. The loss of Wacker to a devastating knee injury in the first half of a 69–59 loss to Baylor, the Longhorns' first defeat of the year, disrupted the team's on-court chemistry and confidence and ultimately derailed the season. Texas would win only two of its final 13 games, finishing the season with a 16–11 overall record.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: On March 9, eight days after the Longhorns' final game, DeLoss Dodds announced Abe Lemons' firing. Dodds was not specific as to the reasons, vaguely citing a "series of incidents from this and past years, along with the need for new leadership and direction." The news met with surprise and outrage from players and fans. Lemons, who, despite some struggles, had presided over the resurrection of Texas basketball during the preceding six seasons, professed shock. Even with the collapse following Wacker's injury, there had been no indications that his job was in jeopardy. Privately, though, Dodds had faced pressure from important administrators and boosters to dismiss the popular Lemons ever since he had arrived at Texas the prior autumn. A powerful faction of UT officials and donors felt that Lemons was presiding over an undisciplined program and that he had become excessively and irresponsibly outspoken. His refusal to enforce a curfew or to punish players for missing practices, for instance, had already drawn criticism in the past. A lack of academic progress during his time at Texas was another reflection of a shortage of discipline and another cause for embarrassment for UT officials. Only one player that Lemons recruited to Austin graduated during his tenure. Moreover, his sharp-tongued and indiscriminate public insults and criticism of people ranging from UT administrators and faculty to officials and coaches at other schools to SWC administrators and referees had progressively earned Lemons the ill will and resentment of a growing number of people with influence over UT athletics. Lemons remained a popular figure among fans, but his support among administrators and powerful donors had dissipated. Following the end of the season, the UT Office of the President and the Board of Regents directed Dodds to fire Lemons, who had two years at $52,000 per year remaining on his contract. The ousted head coach did not leave quietly, commenting that he wanted a glass-bottomed car so that he could see Dodds' face as he ran him over, and adding, "I hope they notice the mistletoe tied to my coattails as I leave town." Despite the acrimonious parting, Lemons would be invited back to reunions in later years and would eventually be inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1994.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Lemons finished with an overall record of 110–63 (.636) and a conference record of 58–38 (.604) as Texas head coach.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Second-year Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds signaled his determination to change the culture of the basketball program, noting that the next Texas head coach would be expected to oversee significant improvements in players' academic progress and off-court discipline and the near-total elimination of contact between players and boosters. Texas players petitioned in support of Barry Dowd, a long-time Lemons assistant, for the vacant coaching position, but Dodds and UT administrators were intent on severing all connections to the Lemons era. Dodds ultimately chose 37-year-old Bob Weltlich, a former assistant coach under Bob Knight at Army and Indiana who came with Knight's recommendation, from the University of Mississippi to serve as the next Texas men's basketball head coach. Dodds and Weltlich agreed to a five-year contract worth $95,000 per year, and Weltlich was introduced as head coach on April 2, 1982. At his first press conference as Texas head coach, Weltlich remarked that "titles are won with good character—and not characters"—a statement many took to be a swipe at the way Lemons had run the program.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Nicknamed "Kaiser Bob" by Longhorn fans for his harshly disciplinarian approach, Weltlich was almost immediately faced with such a manpower shortage from the departures—both voluntary and involuntary—of so many Texas players that he famously had to press Texas male cheerleader Lance Watson into service during the Longhorns' abysmal 6–22 season of 1982–83. LaSalle Thompson, who was considering bypassing his senior season but was as yet undecided at the time Weltlich was hired, ultimately left for the 1982 NBA draft. More than a dozen Longhorn players would leave the program during Weltlich's first three years, and several would make negative comments about his grueling practices and his reliance on criticism and insults as a motivational tactic upon departing. Some players who remained publicly defended Weltlich and his methods. After the new coach's first season, junior forward Bill Wendlandt commented that he believed he had gained mental discipline that he had previously lacked. Nevertheless, even Wendlandt would leave the program after the fall semester of his senior year.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Of the 1982–83 Longhorn team's six wins, only three came against NCAA Division I opponents—two in non-conference play against Harvard and UNC Charlotte, and one in conference play against Rice in Austin, 47–45. The Longhorns' 15 losses in the conference regular season came by an average of 22.5 points. The season witnessed Texas's fourth, fifth, eleventh, and thirteenth most-lopsided defeats ever—a 106–63 loss to the No. 4 Cougars in Houston, a 96–59 defeat to Texas A&M in College Station, a 76–43 defeat at the hands of Baylor in Waco, and an 82–48 loss to TCU in Fort Worth. Following the 34-point loss to the Horned Frogs, Weltlich savaged his players in public comments, calling them "as phony as the day is long." Texas ended the season with losses in 17 of its last 18 games and with a 13-game losing streak. The Longhorns' 6–22 overall record and 1–15 mark in SWC play represent what remain the most total and conference losses incurred in one season in program history.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Weltlich's next three teams posted yearly improvements in overall records, although the 1983–84 Longhorns did so by the margin of a single game over the prior year, finishing the season 7–21. Texas managed four wins against Division I competition, with a 62–61 road win over Utah in non-conference play, to end a 21-game road losing streak, and three wins against conference competition—two against Baylor and one over Rice. The Longhorns were also generally more competitive in their many defeats, with their 13 SWC losses coming by an average of 15.0 points, for a one-third reduction in the average margin of defeat from the previous season. Texas played respectably in two losses to eventual second-consecutive national runner-up Houston, losing by 11 to the No. 7 Cougars in Houston and by the same margin to No. 5 Houston in Austin. After trailing 19th-ranked Arkansas 45–27 at halftime in Austin, Texas narrowed the Razorbacks' lead to 68–66 in the final minute before Arkansas added two final points to secure the win. Nonetheless, the 1983–84 season saw a number of particularly lopsided defeats, with a 103–72 loss to SMU and a 74–47 loss to Texas Tech representing what remain the third- and ninth-worst home losses in program history. As fan criticism of Weltlich began to mount, Dodds professed to be "losing no sleep over basketball at UT" and said, "I don't think there's any question that the direction Bob has taken is the right one. No one expected this to be easy."


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Though defections would continue for the remainder of Weltlich's tenure, the pace of the exodus had slowed considerably, and the team's roster began to accumulate a semblance of stability, depth, and experience by the start of his third season as head coach. Weltlich stated before the season began that his third Texas would be "vastly improved" over the previous two. The 1984–85 Longhorn team would more than double the win total of the previous year's team, posting 15–13 overall and 7–9 conference records. The Longhorns were also significantly more competitive in almost every game they played. Texas lost a hard-fought contest to No. 9 LSU in Baton Rouge in the third game of the season, 87–79, and battled eventual SWC champion SMU closely during the conference season, falling 54–46 to the No. 3 Mustangs in Austin and 64–60 to No. 9 SMU in the second-to-last game of the conference slate. Of the Longhorns' 12 regular-season losses, only two came by margins greater than nine points (with 14 points being the largest margin of defeat). Texas also achieved its first victory over an NCAA Tournament-bound team under Weltlich, defeating Pac-10 Conference champion Southern California in the final game of the regular season, 71–70. The Longhorns were genuinely uncompetitive only in their final game of the year, a 66–46 loss to Arkansas in the SWC Tournament.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The 1985–86 team—which finished with a 19–12 overall record and a share of the SWC championship—marked the zenith of Weltlich's tenure at Texas. The Longhorns posted a 3–2 record in their first five games, losing on the road 67–66 to South Alabama and in an 84–62 blowout at Southern California. After a home win over Oral Roberts, the Longhorns traveled to Norman to face an eighth-ranked and 7–0 Oklahoma. Texas pushed the Sooners to overtime and led 90–89 with 28 seconds remaining, but an OU steal and two subsequent scores led the Sooners to a 93–92 win. Weltlich bemoaned his team's decision-making in the backcourt, commenting in the postgame press conference, "We've lost our last two road games in the last second, and we haven't learned from it." Texas returned from Norman at 3–3 to face faced ninth-ranked and 7–0 LSU in Austin. The Longhorns led 35–28 at halftime, but the Tigers recovered to win, 72–65. LSU head coach Dale Brown described the game as his team's most difficult to date and the Texas team as sound in fundamentals. After two more home wins, Texas traveled to Atlanta to play in the Cotton States Classic. After a 35-point loss to No. 7 Georgia Tech in the opening round—in what remains the second-largest margin of defeat in a neutral-site game in program history—Texas posted its third one-point loss of the season in the consolation game against 20th-ranked DePaul, falling 63–62. The Longhorns had again built and then surrendered an early lead, having opened a 10-point advantage over the Blue Demons in the first half. Texas opened conference play with four consecutive wins, including its first win over Arkansas under Weltlich, before falling 55–54 to the Texas A&M Aggies in College Station. After a 63–56 loss to SMU in Dallas, Texas won eight consecutive conference contests, including a 61–57 win over Arkansas in Fayetteville–Texas's first win at Barnhill Arena since 1981–completing Texas's first season sweep of the Razorbacks since 1974. On February 15, Texas recorded its first sold-out home game since Abe Lemons' final year as head coach in a 58–47 win over Texas A&M. The Longhorns suffered their fifth one-point defeat of the season against TCU in Dallas in their penultimate conference game, falling 55–54 as Horned Frog guard Jamie Dixon scored on an off-balance, 30-foot jump shot at the buzzer. Texas followed up the loss to TCU with its sixth one-point loss of the season—and third out of four total losses in SWC games—against Texas Tech in Austin in the conference finale to surrender sole possession of first place in conference play and ultimately share the SWC championship with TCU and Texas A&M. After a semifinal loss to A&M in the conference tournament, the Longhorns were invited to the 1986 NIT—the Longhorns first postseason appearance under Weltlich, and the first since the 1979–80 season. Texas defeated New Mexico in the first round, 69–66, before falling to eventual NIT champion Ohio State in the second round, 71–65.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Longhorns opened the 1986–87 season with a one-point loss to No. 17 North Carolina State, 69–68, and an 80–68 loss to Alaska Anchorage. In its third game of the season, Texas stunned No. 2-ranked and defending national champion Louisville, 74–70, the highest-ranked opponent the Longhorns had defeated in school history. The victory presaged little about the season to come, however, as Texas finished 14–17 overall and 7–9 in SWC contests, for its third losing season in five seasons under Weltlich. Six of the Longhorns' seven victories in conference play came by five points or fewer, while six of the nine conference losses came by 10 points or more.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: For the first time since the 1974–75 season, Leon Black's second to last as head coach, Texas faced no ranked opponents during the 1987–88 season. Nonetheless, the Longhorns finished 6–6 in non-conference play, losing to all three eventual NCAA tournament participants they faced—falling 100–83 at Iowa State, 80–75 at home to Utah State, and 71–70 at Chattanooga—and losing 86–74 at home to New Mexico, the one eventual NIT participant they faced. Texas suffered its most lopsided non-conference defeat, 85–56, on the road at the hands of a Miami (FL) team that would miss the postseason entirely. Texas posted a 10–6 record in SWC play, tying for fourth place, and lost the first game of the conference tournament to Houston, 72–57. For the fifth time in Weltlich's six seasons, Texas failed to advance to a postseason tournament. Four days after the loss to Houston, Weltlich was dismissed with two years remaining on his contract.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Weltlich compiled a 77–98 (.440) record during six seasons as the head coach at Texas. None of his six teams managed an appearance in the NCAA Tournament; only the 1985–86 team participated in postseason competition, losing in the second round of the NIT. With the combination of poor overall results and an ultra-slow-tempo style of play that fans found unappealing, attendance plummeted from the lofty marks achieved during the tenure of the popular Lemons to an average of barely more than 4,000 fans per game during Weltlich's final season (far below the turnout for Jody Conradt's Lady Longhorns teams at that time).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Hired from the University of Rhode Island on April 6, 1988, to replace Weltlich as the Texas head coach, Tom Penders rapidly revitalized the moribund Longhorn basketball program. Months before coaching in his first game at Texas, Penders set about reviving fan enthusiasm for Longhorn men's basketball. He canvassed the state, speaking to every University of Texas alumni chapter and booster club in Texas. Penders called his team the "Runnin' Horns," and he promised an exciting, fast-paced style of play that would stand in stark contrast to the basketball on display during the prior six seasons. Early on, Penders promised Texas fans, "We'll run after made shots, missed shots, turnovers, timeouts, TV timeouts, you name it. We'll run and pressure and play 94 feet of defense."


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Unlike his entrance, Weltlich's departure did not result in an exodus of players from the program. Penders' first team returned four starters from the previous season, and two talented transfers—Lance Blanks and Joey Wright—gained eligibility, giving Texas a starting five with three future NBA Draft picks and a fourth starter who would play in the NBA. Penders led his first team to a 25–9 overall record, marking the first 20-win season in ten years at Texas and the then-second-highest win total in school history. He quickly validated his promise to bring high-scoring offense to Texas: in the first nine games of the 1988–89 season, the Longhorns scored more than 100 points five times. In Bob Weltlich's 175 games as head coach, Texas had never scored 100 or more points in a game—and had only scored 90 or more points on four occasions (twice requiring an overtime period to reach that mark). The Longhorns opened the season with an 8–1 record before traveling to Oklahoma City to compete in the four-team All-College Tournament. Texas players openly marveled at the wholesale change in coaching philosophy from prior seasons to one that now encouraged them to shoot in large volumes, and some expressed eagerness to see how they would fare against elite competition with their new style of play. Texas defeated the OSU Cowboys 85–84 in the first contest behind 32 points from sophomore guard Joey Wright and two late free throws from junior guard Lance Blanks, who had transferred from Virginia. The win matched Texas in the tournament final against a high-scoring, sixth-ranked Oklahoma Sooners team only nine months removed from a four-point loss as a prohibitive favorite in the 1988 national championship game. Billy Tubbs' Sooners revealed the distance that remained between Texas and college basketball's elite teams, building a 63–37 halftime lead en route to an easy 124–95 win. Texas won six games in conference play by five or fewer points to finish in second place in the SWC with a 12–4 record, with two losses to Arkansas and one loss apiece to Houston and Texas A&M. Interspersed among the conference contests were games against NCAA Tournament-bound Vanderbilt, which Texas lost by a score of 94–79, and Miami (FL), which the Longhorns won easily, 123–104. Texas defeated both SMU and TCU in overtime in the SWC Tournament to advance to the final, in which Arkansas defeated the Longhorns for the third time in 10 weeks. Texas was subsequently selected as a No. 11 seed to play in the NCAA tournament for the first time in 10 seasons, where the Longhorns would defeat the sixth-seeded Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, 76–70, for the program's first NCAA Tournament victory since 1972. Texas fell in the second round to the sixth-ranked and third-seeded Missouri Tigers, 108–89, to end the season at 25–9, a nine-win improvement over Weltlich's final season. The Longhorns' on-court success—in combination with Penders' appealing, fast-tempo brand of basketball and his tireless promotion of the Texas program—produced a rise in average home attendance from the prior season of almost 149 percent (from 4,028 to 10,011), the largest such increase in NCAA Division I basketball for the 1988–89 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: For the 1989–90 season, Texas returned its high-scoring trio of guards, Lance Blanks, 1989 SWC player of the year Travis Mays, and Joey Wright—dubbed "BMW—the ultimate scoring machine" by the Texas sports information department and labeled the third-best set of guards in the country by Dick Vitale. Penders' second team finished 24–9 and qualified for the NCAA tournament for the second straight year—a first in Longhorn basketball history—and for only the second time since the Tournament field expanded to 64 teams. Texas defeated No. 24 Florida in Austin, 105–94, in the fifth game of the season for its first win against ranked competition under Penders. The Longhorns would go on to lose their remaining regular-season contests against ranked opponents—to Shaquille O'Neal, Stanley Roberts, and No. 11 LSU in a neutral-site contest, 124–113; to No. 4 Oklahoma in Norman, 103–84; to No. 6 Arkansas in Fayetteville, 109–100, in a game that saw Mays depart in the first minutes due to a finger injury; and, finally, to No. 3 Arkansas in overtime in Austin, 103–96, in a famously bitter defeat that became known in UT lore as the "Strollin' Nolan" game. The Longhorns led by one point with 14 seconds remaining when Arkansas head coach Nolan Richardson, after an intentional foul call against a Razorback player, slowly walked off the court to the Arkansas locker room. The SWC officiating crew did not assess a technical foul against Richardson for leaving the court—a decision that the NCAA's chief rules interpreter would label a mistake. Nonetheless, Texas appeared to have the game in hand—leading by three, after Blanks made two free throws—until Arkansas's Lee Mayberry, the national leader in three-point field goal percentage, made a contested 30-foot shot with four seconds remaining to tie the game at 86–86 and send the game into overtime. Richardson then returned to the court, eliciting a resounding chorus of boos from the crowd, and Arkansas outscored Texas 17–10 in the overtime period to claim the win. Two losses to Houston left Texas with a 12–4 record and third-place finish in conference play. The Longhorns added wins against Rhode Island—the team Penders had coached before being hired by Texas—and DePaul during the regular season. Against Rhode Island, Travis Mays surpassed Ron Baxter's career scoring total to become the then-leading scorer in UT history. After their third win that season over Texas A&M in the SWC Tournament, the Longhorns would fall to Houston for the third time, 89–86. At 21–8, Texas was awarded a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament. After an easy 100–88 win over the No. 7-seed Georgia Bulldogs, the Longhorns upset Gene Keady's No. 2-seeded Purdue Boilermakers, 73–72, to advance to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in 18 seasons. With a come-from-behind 102–89 win against the 28–4 Xavier Musketeers—in which Blanks, Mays, and Wright combined for 86 points—Texas advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time in 43 years to face its SWC archrival, the Arkansas Razorbacks, for the third time that season. Trailing by 16 points with 12 minutes remaining, the Longhorns mounted a comeback that fell just short, falling 88–85 as Travis Mays' last-second three-point attempt came off the rim. Mays finished the season as the Southwest Conference's all-time leading scorer, with 2,279 career points. Texas was ranked No. 12 in the post-Tournament Coaches Poll, matching the 1962–63 team for the highest end-of-season poll ranking in program history.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Mays and Blanks having been selected in the first round of the 1990 NBA draft, the Longhorns entered the 1990–91 season without two-thirds of the Elite Eight team's "BMW scoring machine." Even so, Texas received a preseason AP ranking of No. 22, and Penders' third team finished with a 23–9 overall record, advancing to the NCAA tournament and finishing with 23 or more wins for the third consecutive year. After opening with a win over Florida in Gainesville, Texas fell to No. 20 LSU in Baton Rouge, 101–87, and No. 16 OU in Austin, 96–88. Texas remained ranked until losing to No. 17 Georgia in Athens three weeks later. The Longhorns would defeat Steve Fisher's Michigan Wolverines, 76–74, and fall to a Tournament-bound Arizona State team, 89–82, before beginning conference play. After a 101–89 road loss to No. 2 Arkansas, Texas won ten straight games—nine over SWC opponents and one over DePaul—to Texas resurface in the AP Poll for one week in mid-February at No. 24. Penders finally ended both a personal and program seven-game losing streak to Arkansas in the final game of the conference regular season with the Longhorns' 99–86 win over the No. 3 Razorbacks in Austin, which gave Texas a 13–3 record and second-place finish in conference play. Texas would fall to Arkansas six days later in the SWC Tournament final—the last meeting between the Longhorns and the SEC-bound Razorbacks as conference archrivals. Texas nonetheless ended the season ranked No. 23 in the final AP Poll, for the Longhorns' first appearance in the final AP Poll since the 1978 NIT Championship team, and for only the second time in program history. Texas received a No. 5 seed in the 1991 NCAA Tournament, and the Longhorns would advance from the first round for the third consecutive year before falling 84–76 to fourth-seeded St. John's in the second round, which made 61 percent of its shots—and 71.4 percent of its first-half shots—while holding Texas to just 40 percent in field-goal percentage.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: While the departure of Arkansas would hasten the demise of the SWC altogether in the longer term, it immediately consigned the conference—one not regarded as a significant player in college basketball for several decades—to virtual irrelevance in the college basketball landscape. Texas would play just three games against ranked conference opponents—all against the same team, and all occurring in the same season—in the remaining five seasons of the league's existence. Houston was the only remaining program that had resided among the nation's elite in recent years, but the Guy Lewis era had ended six years prior, and UH had only advanced to the NCAA Tournament twice—winning no games on either occasion—since its famed "Phi Slama Jama" teams had reached three consecutive Final Fours and two national championship games from 1982 to 1984. Penders' revived Texas program, by default, became the weakened SWC's bell cow, winning or sharing three of the final five SWC championships.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas quickly took advantage of Arkansas's absence, as Penders' 1991–92 team finished with a 23–12 overall record, for his fourth consecutive season of 23 or more wins, and a share of the SWC championship. Although Texas had lost leading scorer and eventual second-round NBA draft pick Joey Wright and first-team all-SWC forward and second-leading scorer Locksley Collie to graduation, the Longhorns added transfer guard and eventual first-round draft pick B. J. Tyler and freshman guard Terrence Rencher, a prolific scorer who would receive first-team all-SWC honors as a freshman and hold several program and conference records by the end of his senior year. The Longhorns opened the season with wins over Washington and Princeton in the Preseason NIT in New York City, before falling to No. 18 Georgia Tech and No. 24 Pittsburgh in the semifinal and third-place games by scores of 120–107 and 91–87, respectively. Texas defeated non-conference opponents Clemson and Georgia over the course of the season, but fell to No. 17 Oklahoma in Norman, 109–106; No. 8 Connecticut in Austin, 94–77; unranked UTEP in El Paso, 92–88; unranked LSU in New Orleans by a score of 84–83; and unranked Rhode Island in Providence by a score of 92–79. The Longhorns nonetheless compiled an 11–3 conference record—losing road contests to TCU, Baylor, and Rice—to share the SWC championship with Houston. Texas defeated Texas A&M and Texas Tech in the SWC Tournament to advance to the final against Houston. Despite having won both regular season games against the Cougars, the Longhorns were uncompetitive in a 91–72 loss in their third contest. Texas was subsequently selected as a No. 8 seed in the NCAA tournament. The Longhorns lost to the Iowa Hawkeyes in the opening game by a score of 98–92, marking the only time in eight first-round NCAA Tournament contests under Penders that Texas would fail to advance to the second round.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Following 95 wins in Penders' first four seasons at Texas—with never fewer than 23 wins in a single season—an injury-plagued 1992–93 season saw Texas struggle to an 11–17 overall record and a 4–10 record and seventh-place finish in the eight-team SWC. Point guard B. J. Tyler—a key offensive player both as a scorer and as a facilitator, having averaged 18.3 points and 6.5 assists as a sophomore in 1991–92—would miss the majority of the season. Forward-center Albert Burditt—who led the 1991–92 team in rebounds and blocks—would average 14.9 points, 14.1 rebounds, and 4.2 blocks per contest in the 1992–93 season, but would be limited by injury to playing in only 12 games. Following a 63–53 win over Princeton in the first game in a four-team tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Longhorns suffered one of the most lopsided losses in school history to Dean Smith's No. 7 and eventual national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, 104–68. Texas fell to Utah in Salt Lake City, 87–76, defeated Illinois in Austin, 89–72, and suffered an 85–76 loss to No. 15 Oklahoma in the All-College Tournament before beginning conference play. Texas began 0–4 in SWC play and suffered four home losses among its 10 total conference defeats. In the course of the conference season, the Longhorns lost to unranked non-conference opponents LSU in a neutral-site game, Georgia in Athens, and Virginia Commonwealth (VCU) in Austin by scores of 84–81, 78–70, and 66–60, respectively. Texas defeated Rice in the SWC Tournament before losing to Houston in the semifinals to end the season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Despite the disastrous 1992–93 season, Texas returned a healthy roster deep with talent and experience for the 1993–94 season. Point guard B. J. Tyler, the future 20th overall pick in the forthcoming 1994 NBA draft, and Albert Burditt, future second-round selection in the 1994 Draft, returned in full health (Tyler after missing the first four games) after each having missed the majority of the previous season. Texas was not ranked in the preseason polls, but the potential for significant improvement was evident. Prior to the beginning of the season, sportswriter Gene Wojciechowski labeled the 1993–94 Longhorns a Final Four candidate, opining that Tyler, Burditt, and Terrence Rencher were the three best players in the SWC. With Tyler still absent, Texas struggled in its first four games, narrowly defeating Nebraska in Lincoln, 78–75, and losing a road contest to LSU and a home game against Florida by scores of 86–66 and 76–68, respectively. The Longhorns' struggles continued, as Texas fell 96–86 to No. 16 Connecticut in Storrs and 86–61 to Rick Pitino's Kentucky Wildcats in Maui to post a 2–4 record in its first six games. Texas won its final game in Maui against Notre Dame before facing Oklahoma in Austin. Against Oklahoma, the Longhorns were finally able to end a nine-game program losing streak (extending back to 1979) and a five-game losing streak under Penders, defeating the Sooners 87–75 in Austin. The Longhorns avenged the previous season's loss to Utah with a 93–91, double-overtime home win over Rick Majerus's Utes before losing a closely contested game at Illinois, 83–78. After losing its first SWC game, Texas won 18 of its next 19 games in the regular season and in winning the SWC Tournament, with its only loss coming in double-overtime to Texas Tech in Lubbock, 128–125, and with its wins coming by an average of 22.1 points (and only once by fewer than 12). The Longhorns finished the SWC Tournament with a 25–7 overall record, a 12–2 conference record and outright SWC championship, and a No. 20 ranking in the final AP Poll. Texas received a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament and defeated Western Kentucky by a score of 91–77 to advance to a second-round contest against third-seeded Michigan, national runner-up the preceding two years. The Longhorns lost a close game to the Wolverines, 84–79, who would advance to the Elite Eight before falling to eventual national champion Arkansas, which defeated Michigan by the second-narrowest margin of its six NCAA tournament wins in 1994. Texas finished the season with a 26–8 overall record, matching Jack Gray's 1946–47 Final Four team and Abe Lemons' 1978 NIT Championship team for most wins in program history. Albert Burditt earned first-team all-SWC honors for the 1993–94 season. B. J. Tyler was recognized as the Southwest Conference Player of the Year and became the first Texas men's basketball player to receive All-American honors since LaSalle Thompson in 1982.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Penders resigned on April 3, 1998, following a scandal involving the unlawful release of player Luke Axtell's grades to the media. Longhorn players Axtell, Chris Mihm, Gabe Muoneke, and Bernard Smith had met with Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds "to say that they had lost faith in Penders and his program."


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In ten years at Texas, Penders' teams appeared in eight NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship NCAA Tournaments, advancing past the first round in all but one appearance. Penders finished as the then-winningest coach (by win total) in program history, with an overall record of 208–110 (.654).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Hired as the twenty-third men's basketball coach in Texas history on April 12, 1998, Rick Barnes left Clemson University to take over a Texas program coming off of a losing season and "in disarray" following Tom Penders' resignation.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Despite playing with just seven scholarship players for the majority of the 1998–99 season—and opening the season with a 3–8 record—Barnes engineered one of the greatest midseason turnarounds in school history. The Longhorns won 16 of their final 21 games, posting a 13–3 record in conference play and winning the school's first regular season Big 12 Conference championship by a two-game margin. Texas finished the year with a record of 19–13, earning with a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In 2002, Texas advanced to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen for the first time since the 1996–97 season, and for only the third time since the expansion of the tournament to 64 participants in 1985. The 2003 Longhorn basketball team matched the school record for most basketball victories in a season with their 26–7 mark and advanced to the NCAA tournament Final Four round for the first time in 56 years, and for the third time in school history. Along the way, Texas earned its highest ranking in school history in both the Associated Press and the ESPN/USA Today polls (No. 2 in both polls on Dec. 2, 2002) and received its first No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Sophomore point guard T. J. Ford became the first UT male player to earn the Naismith and Wooden Awards as college basketball's National Player of the Year in 2003.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Despite the early departure of Ford to the NBA as the eighth overall pick (Milwaukee Bucks), Texas compiled a 25–8 overall record in 2004 and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen round for a school-record third consecutive year. The four senior starters on the 2004 team graduated as the winningest class in school history (98 wins) to that point. In 2006, the Longhorns recorded the program's first 30-win season (30–7), claimed a share of the Big 12 Conference regular season championship, received a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, and advanced to the Elite Eight (Texas fell to LSU in overtime), marking the fourth time in five years that Texas had advanced to at least the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. The 2006 class, which finished with 101 wins in four years, bested the 2004 class's mark of 98 wins to become the then-winningest class in the history of Longhorn basketball.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The 2005–06 season also marked the hundredth anniversary of basketball at UT. Special logos were placed on the uniforms to commemorate this anniversary.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In 2006, the Longhorns introduced blue-chip recruit and future NBA superstar Kevin Durant to Austin. A recruiting class which included in-state talents such as Damion James and D. J. Augustin helped garner unforeseen levels of hype and scrutiny for the Texas basketball program. Durant's spectacular lone season at Texas resulted in his receiving unanimous National Player of the Year honors. The Longhorns, however, saw their season end at the hands of the USC Trojans in the second round of the 2007 NCAA tournament. Durant became the No. 2 overall pick in the 2007 NBA draft by the former Seattle SuperSonics, and was the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player with the Oklahoma City Thunder.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In the 2009 NCAA tournament, Texas earned a No. 7 seed in the East Region. The Longhorns defeated the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the first round by a score of 76–62 behind the sharp shooting A.J. Abrams. The Longhorns' season came to a close with a 74–69 second-round loss at the hands of the Duke Blue Devils. The 2009 graduating class finished with 109 wins, besting the 2006 class's mark of 101 wins to become what remains the winningest class in school history.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: During the 2009 recruiting cycle, Texas acquired top-tier prospects Avery Bradley and Jordan Hamilton. Partnered with veteran Damion James, center Dexter Pittman and a solid stable of guards, the Longhorns achieved their first-ever No. 1 ranking in 2010, roaring to a 17–0 start. Texas' fortunes turned upside-down with a 71–62 loss on the road to Kansas State and the ensuing 88–74 loss to Connecticut, beginning a 7–10 finish and raising the pressure for Barnes' Texas teams to reach over the hump, a recurring theme in the head coach's final six seasons in Austin. More of the same occurred in 2011, when Texas garnered two elite prospects in Canadians Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph and had a similar scorching (23–3) start—only to lose the league to Kansas again and fall in the second round of the NCAA tournament to the Arizona Wildcats. Bradley left the program for the NBA in 2010, and Hamilton, Thompson, and Joseph followed suit in 2011.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In the 2012–13 season, Barnes' Longhorns finished 16–18 and missed their first NCAA tournament since 1997–98—the season prior to Barnes' arrival. This began a slow, yet cascading trend by fans and media to replace what had become Texas' winningest basketball coach. Not much change was expected, but turbulence within the Texas athletic department ensued following Dodds' retirement in 2013. New UT Athletic Director Steve Patterson set out to dramatically change the entire Longhorn program, with the resignation of popular football coach Mack Brown following the 2013 football season. Fans and media began to speculate that Barnes' job was at similar risk; even in recruiting—seen as Barnes' specialty—the program could not capture much of the elite Texas talent that had begun to emerge in recent seasons.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: After a 2013–14 season in which the Horns defied very low expectations by finishing with a 24–11 record, tying for third place in the Big 12, and reaching the NCAA tournament, Barnes was named Big 12 Coach of the Year, and calls for his job tempered again. The 2014–15 season began with raised expectations from Longhorns fans and media, especially with the signing of top-ranked Dallas-area center Myles Turner. The Horns were ranked as high as No. 6 in the AP and coaches polls, yet only managed to finish sixth in the Big 12 in a very competitive season of conference play. The 20–14 Longhorns' loss to Butler in the opening round of the NCAA tournament marked the final game coached by Barnes at the university. After declining to meet Patterson's demand that he fire his assistants in order to save his job, Barnes was removed from his post as head basketball coach in late March.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: After many days of deliberation and speculation over who would fill Barnes' post, which included names such as Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall (who was heavily courted by Alabama), Villanova coach Jay Wright, and Virginia's Tony Bennett, Texas reached an agreement with Virginia Commonwealth head coach Shaka Smart on April 2, 2015. Smart was introduced as the 24th Texas men's basketball head coach the following day at a press conference in Austin.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Longhorns finished 20–13 in Smart's first season, including a fourth-place finish in the Big 12 Conference. The scheduled included the school's first-ever basketball game in China - a 77–71 loss to Washington. Point guard Isaiah Taylor returned to lead the team in scoring for the second straight season, averaging 15 points per game. The Longhorns struggled at times in the season after center Cameron Ridley went down with an injured foot that caused him to miss all of conference play, returning for a brief stint in the conference tournament and in Texas' NCAA tournament game. Texas won four of its last six regular season games, including a 76–63 win over a top-five Oklahoma team in Austin, but lost in the first round of the Big 12 Conference tournament to Baylor, 75–61. In the first round of the NCAA tournament, the Longhorns lost, as a half-court shot off the backboard lifted Northern Iowa to a 75–72 win.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In 2017, the Longhorns went 11–22, finishing with their most losses since the 1983 season. Texas struggled with consistency early in the season, but after leading scorer Tevin Mack was suspended in January, the Longhorns went 4-12 the rest of the way, including seven straight losses to end the regular season. Mack, a sophomore guard, left the team and transferred to Alabama. Freshman center Jarrett Allen led Texas the rest of the way, averaging 16 points and almost 10 rebounds in Big 12 Conference play. Allen declared for the NBA draft after the season, and the Brooklyn Nets selected him with the 22nd pick of the first round.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Under Smart, the Longhorns' recruiting situation improved dramatically, with players such as Matt Coleman, Andrew Jones, Mo Bamba, Jaxson Hayes, and Greg Brown standing out for the team during that time. Texas made the NCAA tournament in 2018, losing to Nevada in the first round, followed by an NIT win in 2019. The 2019–20 season was seen as a failure until a late-season rally by the Longhorns, which arguably saved Smart's job, along with the COVID-19 pandemic which canceled the NCAA tournament that year.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In 2020–21, the Longhorns won their first Big 12 tournament title, following a strong showing in a regular season marred by COVID-19 cancellations (including the Longhorns' own semifinal against Kansas). After defeating Oklahoma State for the Big 12 title, Texas suffered arguably its most infamous loss in school history, as the third-seeded Longhorns fell, 53–52, to 14th-seeded Abilene Christian in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Smart, under duress, decamped for Marquette on March 26.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: On April 1, 2021, Texas Tech head basketball coach Chris Beard accepted the head coaching position at Texas. Widely considered the top candidate from the moment Smart departed, Beard is a 1995 alumnus of the University of Texas and served as student manager under Tom Penders during his time on campus.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Clark Field, originally known as Varsity Athletic Field, was an on-campus, outdoor stadium that was the original home of the Texas Longhorns men's basketball team, as well as the Longhorn football, baseball, and track teams. The stadium opened in 1887. In its final years, the facility held 20,000 spectators.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Head coach Carl C. Taylor, seeking an indoor home venue for the basketball team, reached an agreement with the Ben Hur Temple in downtown Austin to rent the building's theater for basketball games and five hours of practice weekly for the 1913 season for $75. The building was originally constructed in 1872 as an opera house for the "Turnverein", a German gymnastics, social, and cultural society, and it had been purchased in 1912 by the Shriners and Scottish Rite Masons. Basketball goals were mounted on the balcony and in front of the stage, boundary lines were drawn on the double-layer pine floor, and bleachers were erected on each side of the diminutive court, bringing seating capacity to roughly 350 people, including spectators in the balcony and on the stage.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Due to the insufficient size of the court and capacity of the theater, the off-campus location, and the added expense of renting the facility, the basketball team returned to its outdoor home at Clark Field for the 1914 to 1916 seasons.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The university constructed the Men's Gym adjacent to Clark Field to serve as the temporary home of the Texas men's basketball team pending the construction of a permanent gymnasium. Built for a total cost of $8,500, the all-wood Men's Gym measured 115' by 105' and 23' high and featured a pinewood floor, an electric scoreboard, and seating for 2,500 spectators.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Texas men's basketball team played home games in the Men's Gym beginning with the 1917 season through the end of the 1927–28 season. On March 25, 1928, the Men's Gym caught fire and burned to the ground. While the loss of the Men's Gym advanced the timeline for the construction of a new gymnasium for men's basketball, the team would be left without an on-campus home for the following two seasons, playing instead in the gymnasiums of the Texas School for the Deaf and Austin High School before moving into the new Gregory Gymnasium for the 1930–31 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: For the 1928–29 season, the university reached an agreement with the Texas School for the Deaf for the Texas men's basketball team to play its home games in TSD's recently constructed fieldhouse. The TSD fieldhouse had a seating capacity of just one-sixth of the Men's Gym, precluding the sale of tickets to the general public and requiring the use of a lottery for the allocation of tickets to students and existing season ticket holders.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Prolonged inclement weather delayed the completion of Gregory Gymnasium, originally intended to debut in the 1929–30 season with the Southwest Conference opening home game against Baylor, and, consequently, the Longhorns had to play home games away from campus for the entirety of the season. Texas played its nonconference games in the TSD Gym before moving into the recently completed 1,500-seat Austin High School Gymnasium for its five SWC home games.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Originally built in 1930, Gregory Gymnasium was named after its main advocate and planner, Thomas Watt Gregory. An alumnus of the university, Gregory served on the university's Board of Regents and as United States Attorney General (1914–19) before the gym was built. Gregory Gymnasium is located on the UT central campus, a short distance southeast of the UT Main Building, Tower, and Main Mall and facing west onto Speedway Avenue, the campus's central north–south street.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Texas men's basketball team played home games in Gregory Gymnasium beginning with the 1930–31 season until moving into the Special Events Center (later renamed the Frank Erwin Center) for the 1977–78 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Texas men's basketball team opened the Frank Erwin Center on November 29, 1977, with an 83–76 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners. The Longhorns won their first 25 games in the Erwin Center before falling to Arkansas in February 1979.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Built for a total cost of $34 million, the building is named for former UT alumnus and Board of Regents member Frank Erwin. Originally known as the Special Events Center, the facility was renamed in 1981 to honor Erwin, who had died earlier that year. The Erwin Center is located at the southeastern corner of the UT central campus and is bounded on the east by Interstate 35.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: A two-level layout (the lower arena and upper mezzanine) currently accommodates up to 16,540 spectators for basketball games. UT undertook extensive renovations of the facility from 2001 to 2003 at a cost of $55 million, adding, among other things, new and renovated seating, new video and sound systems, new lighting, and 28 suites. As part of the project, UT constructed the Denton A. Cooley Pavilion, a state-of-the-art practice and training facility that sits adjacent to the Erwin Center.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The master plan released in 2013 for the university's new Dell Medical School indicated that the Erwin Center would be demolished in a later phase of construction within 6–15 years. In 2022, the Erwin Center will be replaced by the Moody Center


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Built during the final phase of the renovation of the Erwin Center, the Denton A. Cooley Pavilion opened in the fall of 2003. The two-level, 44,000-square-foot building sits adjacent to the Erwin Center and serves as a state-of-the-art practice and training facility for the Texas men's and women's basketball teams. The Pavilion is named for Dr. Denton A. Cooley, a UT alumnus, basketball letterman (1939–41), and pioneering heart surgeon.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Texas men's and women's basketball teams have separate 9,000-square-foot practice court areas, each consisting of one full-court and one half-court practice area with seven basket stations. The practice facility also includes a locker room with a players' lounge, an instructional film theater, a 4,100-square-foot strength and conditioning area, an athletic training and hydrotherapy area, an academic resource and activity center, and a coaches' lounge and locker room.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Cooley Pavilion will be demolished and replaced during the same phase of construction of the Dell Medical School as the Erwin Center. As with the Erwin Center, no decisions have been made as to the location or features of the replacement basketball practice and training facility.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas has appeared in the NCAA tournament on 36 occasions (tied for 11th-most appearances all time, and second only to Kansas among Big 12 Conference members). The Longhorns' overall record in the Tournament is 36–39.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The NCAA began seeding the Tournament in 1979. Texas has appeared in 28 of the 42 seeded Tournaments (and in 27 of the last 32).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Longhorns have appeared in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) five times. Their combined record is 11–3. Texas won the NIT Championship in 1978 and 2019.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Longhorns have appeared in the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) one time. Their record is 0–1.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas has been ranked in at least one of the final AP or coaches polls in 19 seasons since their introduction prior to the 1948–49 and 1950–51 seasons, respectively. The Longhorns have recorded five top-ten finishes and two top-five finishes in one or more of the final polls. Ten of Rick Barnes' teams, five of Tom Penders' teams, two of Abe Lemons' teams, and two of Harold Bradley's teams finished the season ranked. As of November 27, 2018, Texas teams have been ranked in 252 of 1168 total weekly AP Polls (21.6%) since the inception of the poll in the 1948–49 season (37th all-time in AP Poll appearances), and in 295 of 1153 total weekly coaches polls (25.6%) since the inception of the poll in the 1950–51 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas has been ranked in the retroactively assigned Premo-Porretta Power Poll rankings in 11 seasons from the 1906 season through the 1947–48 season, the final season before the introduction of the AP Poll. Five Longhorn teams were ranked among the top-ten teams in their respective years, and three Texas teams received top-three rankings. Texas was selected as the poll's national champion for the 1932–33 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas men's basketball leads the all-time series against all Big 12 Conference opponents but Kansas (which leads 31–8), Kansas State (21–15), and Oklahoma (54–39).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In series against conference opponents since the advent of the Big 12, Texas trails only KU (which leads 27–7) and KSU (16–15).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas men's basketball leads the all-time series against all former Big 12 Conference opponents but Missouri (which leads 13–12).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas holds a winning record against all former Big 12 members in games played in Big 12 competition.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In series against former Southwest Conference members who are not current members of the Big 12, Texas trails only Arkansas (which leads 87–68).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In contests against these opponents since the dissolution of the Southwest Conference, Texas holds the lead against all opponents but Southern Methodist, whom the Longhorns have not played since joining the Big 12. The Longhorns hold the advantage against every opponent in the last five games played and all opponents but Arkansas in the last ten games played against each respective opponent.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: With the formation of the Big 12 Conference in 1996, the Oklahoma Sooners became the Longhorns' main rival in basketball. Texas and Oklahoma are not traditional rivals in any sport other than football, due to their prior residence in different conferences (UT in the Southwest Conference and OU in the Big Eight Conference); nonetheless, the two basketball programs had already compiled a significant series history prior to formation of the Big 12, having met 14 times from 1947 to 1957, 11 times from 1986 until the beginning of Big 12 competition in 1997, and at various other times in the programs' histories. The Sooners entered the Big with a 29–13 lead in the all-time series, having won 10 of the 11 games played from 1986 to 1996. In the Big 12, the competitiveness of the Texas and OU basketball programs—which are second and third in all-time Big 12 regular season conference wins, respectively—only accelerated the development of the basketball rivalry.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners play one game in Austin and one game in Norman each year during the regular season. Oklahoma leads the overall series 54–39; Texas leads 26–25 in games played since the inception of the Big 12. Texas has held the upper hand in recent years, winning 23 of 35 meetings from 2003 to 2018.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Rick Barnes' tenure also coincided with the emergence of a rivalry between Texas and the Big 12 Conference's traditional national basketball powerhouse, the Kansas Jayhawks. Under Rick Barnes, the Longhorns emerged as Kansas's most consistent competition for Big 12 Conference supremacy. From the inception of the Big 12 through February 18, 2018, Texas has produced a 223–139 () mark against conference competition during the regular season, trailing only Kansas's record of 299–63 ().


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The first decade of the 2000s saw the peak of this new rivalry, with the Longhorns at one point trailing Kansas only 5–7 in games played over an almost-nine-season period, and with many of the contests being closely contested classics. Since the beginning of the 2008–09 season, Texas has been less competitive both nationally and in the rivalry, trailing Kansas 2–15 in games played since that time.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas and Kansas played one game during the regular season until the 2011–12 season, when the two schools began meeting twice per year. Kansas leads the overall series 30–8 and has won 26 of the 33 contests since the Big 12 was formed. Current KU head coach Bill Self is 20–6 in games against Texas since becoming the Jayhawks' head coach prior to the 2003–04 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Longhorns' series with the Baylor Bears has featured more games played than any other UT basketball series; it is also the conference series most lopsided in UT's favor, with the exception of the Longhorns' series against former Southwest Conference opponent Rice and the much more abbreviated series against former Big 12 member Nebraska. Texas leads 162–90 in the overall series with Baylor.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The intensity of the in-state rivalry has grown sharply in recent years with Baylor's emergence as a nationally competitive program under current head coach Scott Drew. Through the end of the 2008–09 regular season, Texas held a 25–3 record against Baylor in Big 12 competition and a 24–0 record against the Bears under Rick Barnes. In games played since the 2009 Big 12 conference tournament semifinals, Baylor holds a 15–7 edge over Texas.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas and Texas Tech have played at least twice yearly since the 1957–58 season. The Longhorns and the Red Raiders play one game in Austin and one game in Lubbock each year during the regular season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: At the time that UT and Texas Tech entered the Big 12, Texas Tech held a 49–45 lead in the all-time series against Texas. Longtime Red Raider coach Gerald Myers' teams dominated the Longhorns for much of the 1970s and 1980s, with the only interlude of Longhorn success occurring during the six-year tenure of Abe Lemons (1976–82), who finished 8–4 against the Red Raiders. By the time Tom Penders became the Texas head coach prior to the 1988–89 season, Texas Tech held a 43–32 lead in the series. Penders narrowed Texas Tech's lead to 50–49 during his tenure (1988–98). During Rick Barnes' 17 seasons as head coach (1998–2015), the Longhorns posted a 33–4 record against the Red Raiders, for a period of dominance unequaled at any other point in the series.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas currently leads the overall series 86–57 and has won 41 of the 49 contests since the formation of the Big 12.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The formation of the Big 12 led to the development of a competitive rivalry between Texas and the Oklahoma State Cowboys, two programs that had already compiled a significant series history despite their residence in different conferences since OSU's departure from the Southwest Conference following the 1924–25 season. Between 1941 and 1979, Texas and OSU met 32 times, with the Cowboys winning 21 of the meetings. At the time of the formation of the Big 12, OSU held a 24–19 lead in the all-time series.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The rivalry reached its peak in the early years of the Big 12, above all when the tenures of Rick Barnes and Eddie Sutton coincided at the two schools, a time when both programs were nationally prominent. From the 1999–2000 season through the 2004–05 season, at least one of the two teams was ranked in 13 of 14 total contests, and both teams were ranked at the time of eight of the 14 meetings. In recent years, the rivalry has declined in intensity as both programs have receded from the national spotlight.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas and Oklahoma State have played at least twice yearly since 1997, the first Big 12 basketball season. The Longhorns and the Cowboys play one game in Austin and one game in Stillwater each year during the regular season. Texas currently leads the overall series 49–43 and holds a 30–19 lead in games played in Big 12 competition.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas and Arkansas shared a bitter rivalry in basketball—stoked by the mutual enmity that characterized their primary rivalry in football—throughout most of the existence of the Southwest Conference. Until Arkansas' departure for the Southeastern Conference after the 1990–91 season, the Longhorns and the Razorbacks had played at least twice—and often three times—each year since the 1924 season. Texas and Arkansas each won or shared 22 SWC championships (nine more than the nearest competitor, SMU)—although Texas claimed seven of these in the years before Arkansas established its basketball program in 1924 and in the years after Arkansas left the conference.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Texas–Arkansas basketball rivalry was particularly competitive in its first quarter-century, and both programs enjoyed substantial overall success during this time, with each appearing in two Final Fours and one Elite Eight with the beginning of the NCAA Tournament in 1939 through the end of the 1940s. Arkansas led the series 29–25 over this span.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Both Texas and Arkansas faded from national significance with the end of the 1940s. From the 1949–50 season through the 1975–76 season, Arkansas won only two SWC championships, made only a single NCAA Tournament appearance, and posted an overall record of 312–338 (.480). Texas fared modestly better during this time, winning seven SWC championships, making four NCAA Tournament appearances, and posting an overall record of 342–323 (.514). The Longhorns and Razorbacks split their conference series during this period, with each winning 29 games.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The rivalry grew especially heated from the mid-1970s onward as both schools' athletic departments poured additional resources into their basketball programs, both for coaching hires and for facilities, each seeking to revive programs that had receded from the national stage over the preceding quarter-century. While both Texas and Arkansas appeared to be on the verge of establishing nationally competitive programs with the hires of Abe Lemons and Eddie Sutton, respectively, only Arkansas managed to achieve sustained success in the following years, winning at least 20 games in 13 seasons from 1977 to 1991, with Sutton (1974–85) and Nolan Richardson (1985–2002) each reaching a Final Four and an Elite Eight. (Richardson would lead the Razorbacks to two more Final Fours and a national championship after Arkansas' departure from the SWC.) Arkansas dominated the series over this final phase of the SWC rivalry, winning 27 out of 37 games played during this period.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Arkansas led the series 85–64 upon leaving the SWC; the Razorbacks currently lead the all-time series 87–68, with Texas having won four of the six games played since Arkansas joined the SEC.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Before the Texas A&M Aggies' departure for the Southeastern Conference at the end of the 2012 academic year, Texas and Texas A&M had played at least twice (and up to four times) yearly since 1917. During their concurrent membership in the Big 12, the Longhorns and the Aggies played two games during the regular season, with the venue alternating between the home courts of each school. Texas leads the overall series 137–86.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: By the time the Big 12 was formed, the in-state rivalry was at a low ebb. The Longhorns had won 18 of the previous 21 contests against the Aggies, dating back to the 1987–88 season. Texas continued to dominate the series in Big 12 play, winning 15 of the first 16 contests between the schools in their new conference. By the time the Aggies hired Billy Gillispie prior to the 2004–05 season, the lopsided nature of the series—and the lack of Aggie fan interest in a program that had gone ten consecutive years without a winning season or postseason appearance under prior coaches—had long since diminished the stature of the once-heated rivalry.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: With the rejuvenation of the Texas A&M basketball program under Billy Gillispie (2004–07) and Mark Turgeon (2007–11), the basketball rivalry between Texas and Texas A&M quickly intensified. The Aggies successfully defended their home court from Gillispie's first year through the 2009–10 season, Mark Turgeon's second-to-last season with A&M. The Longhorns defeated the Aggies in all three games in Turgeon's final season and in both games in Billy Kennedy's first season with the Aggies. Texas is 12–7 against Texas A&M since Gillispie was hired in 2004.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The individual honors, awards, and accomplishments listed in the succeeding subsections are aggregated by player in the following table. Players with only all-conference honors (other than conference player of the year), lower than first-team All-America honors, or later than second-round draft positions are not included.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Slater Martin is the only Longhorn men's basketball player to have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Martin was inducted on May 3, 1982.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Three Longhorn men's basketball players have had their Texas jersey numbers retired: Slater Martin, T. J. Ford, and Kevin Durant.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The primary requirement for the retirement of a UT student-athlete's number is that the individual have won a widely recognized National Player of the Year award. Former UT Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds stated that an exception was made in the case of Slater Martin because, as a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, he was a legend in the sport of basketball but had competed before any of the widely recognized awards were established (the "Sporting News" Men's College Basketball Player of the Year was established in 1943, but it was not awarded from 1947 to 1949).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: T. J. Ford and Kevin Durant are the only Texas players to win one or more of the widely recognized National Player of the Year awards. Ford won the Naismith Trophy and the Wooden Award—as well as four of the other eight widely recognized awards—in 2003 as a sophomore. Durant was the unanimous national player of the year in 2007 as a true freshman, winning all 10 awards. Durant was the first freshman ever to win any of the National Player of the Year awards.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Bob Cousy Award is awarded annually by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to the top point guard in NCAA Division I men's basketball. The award was presented for the first time following the 2003–04 college basketball season (the season following T. J. Ford's departure to the NBA). D. J. Augustin is the only Longhorn to win the Bob Cousy Award.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Perry Wallace Most Courageous Award is the men's version of the USBWA Most Courageous Award, presented annually by the United States Basketball Writers Association to one or more individuals (not necessarily players) who, in the organization's words, have "demonstrated extraordinary courage reflecting honor on the sport of amateur basketball." First presented in 1978 as a single award, separate men's and women's awards were first presented in 2010. The award's bifurcation by sex or gender does not reflect that of the recipient, but is instead based on whether the recipient was involved with the men's or women's game. This award was originally not restricted to college basketball, but every recipient since 1980 has been associated with the college game. The men's award was renamed in 2021 in memory of Wallace, the first African American to play basketball in the Southeastern Conference. Andrew Jones is the first Longhorn to receive this award; he shared 2022 honors with Justin Hardy, a player at NCAA Division III Washington (MO). Both averaged double figures in scoring for their respective teams in 2021–22 while battling cancer (leukemia for Jones, stomach cancer for Hardy).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Twenty Texas basketball players have received All-America honors on 26 occasions; six have been recognized as All-Americans in two different seasons. Seven Longhorns have received consensus first-team All-America honors, and three others have received consensus second-team All-America honors. Thirteen Texas players have received first-team All-America honors in 14 seasons, with one Longhorn player having been selected as a first-team All-American twice.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Texas players have won conference player of the year honors on ten occasions—eight times in the Southwest Conference and twice in the Big 12 Conference. Two Longhorn basketball players won SWC player of the year honors twice. Three Texas players have won Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year honors.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Seventy-two Texas men's basketball players have received first-team all-conference honors on 96 occasions. Of these 72 players, 18 have received first-team all-conference honors in two seasons, and three players have received them in three seasons.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Eight Longhorn freshmen men's basketball players have won conference freshman of the year honors—three players in the Southwest Conference and five players in the Big 12 Conference.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Five Longhorn men's basketball players have won conference tournament most valuable player honors—four players in the Southwest Conference tournament and one player in the Big 12 Conference tournament.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: As of July 30, 2021, 48 Longhorn men's basketball players have been selected in the NBA draft in the history of the program. Of these, 19 were selected in the first round, and 13 were selected in the second round. Among Big 12 programs, Texas trails only Kansas (33) in the number of players drafted in the first round all-time.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Since 1997, Texas has had 23 players drafted overall; of these, 15 were drafted in the first round. Among Big 12 programs, Texas trails only Kansas (34 picks overall, 22 first-round picks) in the numbers of players drafted overall and in the first round during this period. The 15 Longhorn players drafted in the first round from 1997 to 2021 exceed the all-time numbers of first-round picks at each Big 12 school but Kansas.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: As of October 19, 2022, 38 Texas players have played in the NBA in league history. Of these, 20 played at Texas under Rick Barnes. Ten Longhorn players currently play in the NBA.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Four Longhorn men's basketball players have competed in the Olympic Games in men's basketball on six occasions, with three players winning gold medals.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Kevin Durant was the leading scorer on the United States men's basketball team that won the gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. Durant's 156 total points during the Olympic tournament set a record for most points scored by an American basketball player in Olympic competition, surpassing the record previously set by Spencer Haywood in the 1968 Olympics by 11 points. Durant also set the U.S. record for most made three-point shots in an Olympic competition with 34 (on 65 attempts). In addition to leading the U.S. team in scoring, he finished second on the team in rebounding, first in blocked shots, and second in steals.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: In the 2016 Olympics, Durant again led the U.S. men's team in scoring with 155 total points—one point fewer than his U.S. Olympic record from 2012—and in minutes played. He finished second on the team in steals, third in assists, and fourth in rebounding. Durant converted 25 three-point shots on only 43 attempts (.581).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Abe Lemons (1976–82) is the only Texas men's basketball coach to have received a National Coach of the Year honors. Lemons won the NABC National Coach of the Year award following his second season at Texas—a season that saw the Longhorns finish 26–5, win a share of the Southwest Conference title, and win the 1978 NIT Championship. Texas had finished just 9–17 two years earlier in Leon Black's last season as head coach.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: The Wooden Legends of Coaching Award is a lifetime achievement award established prior to the 1998–99 season. Selection for the award depends upon a number of on- and off-court factors, from coaching success and philosophy to evidence of good character to graduation rates. Rick Barnes won the Wooden Legends of Coaching Award following the 2008–09 season.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Abe Lemons was recognized as the Southwest Conference Coach of the Year for the 1977–78 season, the season that saw him win the NABC National Coach of the Year award. Tom Penders received Southwest Conference Coach of the Year honors in 1994 and 1995, and Rick Barnes was named Big 12 Coach of the Year in 1999, 2003, 2008, and 2014.


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Rick Barnes won recognition as NABC District 9 Coach of the Year in five seasons (1999, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2014). Barnes was also a four-time recipient of USBWA District VII Coach of the Year honors (1999, 2001, 2003, 2011).


title: Texas Longhorns men's basketball

text: Team records include single-season, single-game, and NCAA Tournament records for the Texas program. Program records for individual players include career totals and averages as well as single-season totals and averages.


title: Robin Meade

text: Robin Michelle Meade (born April 21, 1969) is a former American television news correspondent. She was the lead news anchor for HLN's morning show "Morning Express with Robin Meade". Meade was a former Miss Ohio and began her broadcasting career with local stations in Ohio. She joined HLN in 2001. She won a regional Emmy Award. Meade released country music albums in 2011 and 2013.


title: Robin Meade

text: Meade grew up in New London, Ohio and graduated from New London High School. She attended Malone University and Ashland University, where she majored in radio/television production, programming and performance and minored in political science. She graduated in 1991.


title: Robin Meade

text: Meade began her career in broadcasting as a reporter at WMFD-TV in Mansfield, Ohio. She then worked as an anchor and reporter at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and at WJW-TV in Cleveland. Later, she got a job in Miami, Florida as the morning news anchor of WSVN-TV's "Today in Florida" and also served as the station's noon anchor and health reporter.


title: Robin Meade

text: She went on to work at NBC Chicago affiliate WMAQ-TV where she started anchoring the morning newscasts and then co-anchored the weekend newscasts and also served as a general assignment correspondent for the station. During her tenure with the NBC affiliate, she covered the 1996 Olympics, which included special reporting on the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.


title: Robin Meade

text: She then joined HLN, then known as CNN Headline News. Meade anchored the network's coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom as well as that from Operation Iraqi Freedom in the spring of 2003. She was based in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta. Her first day on-air at HLN was September 11, 2001. Meade hosted "Morning Express with Robin Meade" on HLN on weekday mornings, along with Bob Van Dillen, Jennifer Westhoven, Melissa Knowles and Mike Galanos.


title: Robin Meade

text: She wrote a book titled "Morning Sunshine!: How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It Too." It was released on September 10, 2009. She has referred to it as a "non-fiction / motivational / inspirational / how-to / autobiographical book." It debuted at No. 12 on the "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous" section of the New York Times Best Seller list.


title: Robin Meade

text: In 2011, Meade was the moderator on the Oprah Winfrey Network show "Ask Oprah's All Stars" with Dr. Phil McGraw, Suze Orman and Dr. Mehmet Oz.


title: Robin Meade

text: On June 21, 2011, Meade released a country music album titled "Brand New Day". A single, "Dirty Laundry," was released to country radio. Meade was featured on the cover of the January/February 2011 issue of "Making Music" magazine and in an article about her experiences with recreational music. Meade sang the "Star Spangled Banner" as part of the NASCAR Sprint Cup pre-race activities for the 2010 Toyota/Save Mart 350, the 2012 Coke Zero 400 and the 2013 Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day Weekend.


title: Robin Meade

text: On December 1, 2022, Meade and the entire HLN Atlanta team were laid off as part of CNN President Chris Licht's restructuring of the network. Meade's timeslot was replaced with a simulcast of CNN This Morning.


title: Lexical analysis

text: In computer science, lexical analysis, lexing or tokenization is the process of converting a sequence of characters (such as in a computer program or web page) into a sequence of "lexical tokens" (strings with an assigned and thus identified meaning). A program that performs lexical analysis may be termed a "lexer", "tokenizer", or "scanner", although "scanner" is also a term for the first stage of a lexer. A lexer is generally combined with a parser, which together analyze the syntax of programming languages, web pages, and so forth.


title: Lexical analysis

text: A lexer forms the first phase of a compiler frontend in modern processing. Analysis generally occurs in one pass.


title: Lexical analysis

text: In older languages such as ALGOL, the initial stage was instead line reconstruction, which performed unstropping and removed whitespace and comments (and had scannerless parsers, with no separate lexer). These steps are now done as part of the lexer.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Lexers and parsers are most often used for compilers, but can be used for other computer language tools, such as prettyprinters or linters. Lexing can be divided into two stages: the "scanning", which segments the input string into syntactic units called "lexemes" and categorizes these into token classes; and the "evaluating", which converts lexemes into processed values.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Lexers are generally quite simple, with most of the complexity deferred to the parser or semantic analysis phases, and can often be generated by a lexer generator, notably lex or derivatives. However, lexers can sometimes include some complexity, such as phrase structure processing to make input easier and simplify the parser, and may be written partly or fully by hand, either to support more features or for performance.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Lexical analysis is also an important early stage in natural language processing, where text or sound waves are segmented into words and other units. This requires a variety of decisions which are not fully standardized, and the number of tokens systems produce varies for strings like "1/2", "chair's", "can't", "and/or", "1/1/2010", "2x4", "...,", and many others. This is in contrast to lexical analysis for programming and similar languages where exact rules are commonly defined and known.


title: Lexical analysis

text: A "lexeme" is a sequence of characters in the source program that matches the pattern for a token and is identified by the lexical analyzer as an instance of that token.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Some authors term this a "token", using "token" interchangeably to represent the string being tokenized, and the token data structure resulting from putting this string through the tokenization process.


title: Lexical analysis

text: The word lexeme in computer science is defined differently than lexeme in linguistics. A lexeme in computer science roughly corresponds to a word in linguistics (not to be confused with a word in computer architecture), although in some cases it may be more similar to a morpheme. In some natural languages (for example, in English), the linguistic lexeme is similar to the lexeme in computer science, but this is generally not true (for example, in Chinese, it is highly non-trivial to find word boundaries due to the lack of word separators).


title: Lexical analysis

text: A "lexical token" or simply "token" is a string with an assigned and thus identified meaning. It is structured as a pair consisting of a "token name" and an optional "token value". The token name is a category of lexical unit. Common token names are


title: Lexical analysis

text: The specification of a programming language often includes a set of rules, the lexical grammar, which defines the lexical syntax. The lexical syntax is usually a regular language, with the grammar rules consisting of regular expressions; they define the set of possible character sequences (lexemes) of a token. A lexer recognizes strings, and for each kind of string found the lexical program takes an action, most simply producing a token.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Two important common lexical categories are white space and comments. These are also defined in the grammar and processed by the lexer, but may be discarded (not producing any tokens) and considered "non-significant", at most separating two tokens (as in codice_2 instead of codice_3). There are two important exceptions to this. First, in off-side rule languages that delimit blocks with indenting, initial whitespace is significant, as it determines block structure, and is generally handled at the lexer level; see phrase structure, below. Secondly, in some uses of lexers, comments and whitespace must be preserved – for examples, a prettyprinter also needs to output the comments and some debugging tools may provide messages to the programmer showing the original source code. In the 1960s, notably for ALGOL, whitespace and comments were eliminated as part of the line reconstruction phase (the initial phase of the compiler frontend), but this separate phase has been eliminated and these are now handled by the lexer.


title: Lexical analysis

text: "Tokenization" is the process of demarcating and possibly classifying sections of a string of input characters. The resulting tokens are then passed on to some other form of processing. The process can be considered a sub-task of parsing input.


title: Lexical analysis

text: the string isn't implicitly segmented on spaces, as a natural language speaker would do. The raw input, the 43 characters, must be explicitly split into the 9 tokens with a given space delimiter (i.e., matching the string codice_5 or regular expression codice_6).


title: Lexical analysis

text: When a token class represents more than one possible lexeme, the lexer often saves enough information to reproduce the original lexeme, so that it can be used in semantic analysis. The parser typically retrieves this information from the lexer and stores it in the abstract syntax tree. This is necessary in order to avoid information loss in the case where numbers may also be valid identifiers.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Tokens are identified based on the specific rules of the lexer. Some methods used to identify tokens include: regular expressions, specific sequences of characters termed a flag, specific separating characters called delimiters, and explicit definition by a dictionary. Special characters, including punctuation characters, are commonly used by lexers to identify tokens because of their natural use in written and programming languages.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Tokens are often categorized by character content or by context within the data stream. Categories are defined by the rules of the lexer. Categories often involve grammar elements of the language used in the data stream. Programming languages often categorize tokens as identifiers, operators, grouping symbols, or by data type. Written languages commonly categorize tokens as nouns, verbs, adjectives, or punctuation. Categories are used for post-processing of the tokens either by the parser or by other functions in the program.


title: Lexical analysis

text: A lexical analyzer generally does nothing with combinations of tokens, a task left for a parser. For example, a typical lexical analyzer recognizes parentheses as tokens, but does nothing to ensure that each "(" is matched with a ")".


title: Lexical analysis

text: When a lexer feeds tokens to the parser, the representation used is typically an enumerated list of number representations. For example, "Identifier" is represented with 0, "Assignment operator" with 1, "Addition operator" with 2, etc.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Tokens are defined often by regular expressions, which are understood by a lexical analyzer generator such as lex. The lexical analyzer (generated automatically by a tool like lex, or hand-crafted) reads in a stream of characters, identifies the lexemes in the stream, and categorizes them into tokens. This is termed "tokenizing". If the lexer finds an invalid token, it will report an error.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Following tokenizing is parsing. From there, the interpreted data may be loaded into data structures for general use, interpretation, or compiling.


title: Lexical analysis

text: The first stage, the "scanner", is usually based on a finite-state machine (FSM). It has encoded within it information on the possible sequences of characters that can be contained within any of the tokens it handles (individual instances of these character sequences are termed lexemes). For example, an "integer" lexeme may contain any sequence of numerical digit characters. In many cases, the first non-whitespace character can be used to deduce the kind of token that follows and subsequent input characters are then processed one at a time until reaching a character that is not in the set of characters acceptable for that token (this is termed the "maximal munch", or "longest match", rule). In some languages, the lexeme creation rules are more complex and may involve backtracking over previously read characters. For example, in C, one 'L' character is not enough to distinguish between an identifier that begins with 'L' and a wide-character string literal.


title: Lexical analysis

text: A lexeme, however, is only a string of characters known to be of a certain kind (e.g., a string literal, a sequence of letters). In order to construct a token, the lexical analyzer needs a second stage, the "evaluator", which goes over the characters of the lexeme to produce a "value". The lexeme's type combined with its value is what properly constitutes a token, which can be given to a parser. Some tokens such as parentheses do not really have values, and so the evaluator function for these can return nothing: only the type is needed. Similarly, sometimes evaluators can suppress a lexeme entirely, concealing it from the parser, which is useful for whitespace and comments. The evaluators for identifiers are usually simple (literally representing the identifier), but may include some unstropping. The evaluators for integer literals may pass the string on (deferring evaluation to the semantic analysis phase), or may perform evaluation themselves, which can be involved for different bases or floating point numbers. For a simple quoted string literal, the evaluator needs to remove only the quotes, but the evaluator for an escaped string literal incorporates a lexer, which unescapes the escape sequences.


title: Lexical analysis

text: might be converted into the following lexical token stream; whitespace is suppressed and special characters have no value:


title: Lexical analysis

text: Due to licensing restrictions of existing parsers, it may be necessary to write a lexer by hand. This is practical if the list of tokens is small, but in general, lexers are generated by automated tools. These tools generally accept regular expressions that describe the tokens allowed in the input stream. Each regular expression is associated with a production rule in the lexical grammar of the programming language that evaluates the lexemes matching the regular expression. These tools may generate source code that can be compiled and executed or construct a state transition table for a finite-state machine (which is plugged into template code for compiling and executing).


title: Lexical analysis

text: Regular expressions compactly represent patterns that the characters in lexemes might follow. For example, for an English-based language, an IDENTIFIER token might be any English alphabetic character or an underscore, followed by any number of instances of ASCII alphanumeric characters and/or underscores. This could be represented compactly by the string . This means "any character a-z, A-Z or _, followed by 0 or more of a-z, A-Z, _ or 0-9".


title: Lexical analysis

text: Regular expressions and the finite-state machines they generate are not powerful enough to handle recursive patterns, such as ""n" opening parentheses, followed by a statement, followed by "n" closing parentheses." They are unable to keep count, and verify that "n" is the same on both sides, unless a finite set of permissible values exists for "n". It takes a full parser to recognize such patterns in their full generality. A parser can push parentheses on a stack and then try to pop them off and see if the stack is empty at the end (see example in the "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" book).


title: Lexical analysis

text: Typically, tokenization occurs at the word level. However, it is sometimes difficult to define what is meant by a "word". Often a tokenizer relies on simple heuristics, for example:


title: Lexical analysis

text: In languages that use inter-word spaces (such as most that use the Latin alphabet, and most programming languages), this approach is fairly straightforward. However, even here there are many edge cases such as contractions, hyphenated words, emoticons, and larger constructs such as URIs (which for some purposes may count as single tokens). A classic example is "New York-based", which a naive tokenizer may break at the space even though the better break is (arguably) at the hyphen.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Tokenization is particularly difficult for languages written in scriptio continua which exhibit no word boundaries such as Ancient Greek, Chinese, or Thai. Agglutinative languages, such as Korean, also make tokenization tasks complicated.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Some ways to address the more difficult problems include developing more complex heuristics, querying a table of common special-cases, or fitting the tokens to a language model that identifies collocations in a later processing step.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Lexers are often generated by a "lexer generator", analogous to parser generators, and such tools often come together. The most established is lex, paired with the yacc parser generator, or rather some of their many reimplementations, like flex (often paired with GNU Bison). These generators are a form of domain-specific language, taking in a lexical specification – generally regular expressions with some markup – and emitting a lexer.


title: Lexical analysis

text: These tools yield very fast development, which is very important in early development, both to get a working lexer and because a language specification may change often. Further, they often provide advanced features, such as pre- and post-conditions which are hard to program by hand. However, an automatically generated lexer may lack flexibility, and thus may require some manual modification, or an all-manually written lexer.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Lexer performance is a concern, and optimizing is worthwhile, more so in stable languages where the lexer is run very often (such as C or HTML). lex/flex-generated lexers are reasonably fast, but improvements of two to three times are possible using more tuned generators. Hand-written lexers are sometimes used, but modern lexer generators produce faster lexers than most hand-coded ones. The lex/flex family of generators uses a table-driven approach which is much less efficient than the directly coded approach. With the latter approach the generator produces an engine that directly jumps to follow-up states via goto statements. Tools like re2c have proven to produce engines that are between two and three times faster than flex produced engines. It is in general difficult to hand-write analyzers that perform better than engines generated by these latter tools.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Lexical analysis mainly segments the input stream of characters into tokens, simply grouping the characters into pieces and categorizing them. However, the lexing may be significantly more complex; most simply, lexers may omit tokens or insert added tokens. Omitting tokens, notably whitespace and comments, is very common, when these are not needed by the compiler. Less commonly, added tokens may be inserted. This is done mainly to group tokens into statements, or statements into blocks, to simplify the parser.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Line continuation is a feature of some languages where a newline is normally a statement terminator. Most often, ending a line with a backslash (immediately followed by a newline) results in the line being "continued" – the following line is "joined" to the prior line. This is generally done in the lexer: the backslash and newline are discarded, rather than the newline being tokenized. Examples include bash, other shell scripts and Python.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Many languages use the semicolon as a statement terminator. Most often this is mandatory, but in some languages the semicolon is optional in many contexts. This is mainly done at the lexer level, where the lexer outputs a semicolon into the token stream, despite one not being present in the input character stream, and is termed "semicolon insertion" or "automatic semicolon insertion". In these cases, semicolons are part of the formal phrase grammar of the language, but may not be found in input text, as they can be inserted by the lexer. Optional semicolons or other terminators or separators are also sometimes handled at the parser level, notably in the case of trailing commas or semicolons.


title: Lexical analysis

text: Semicolon insertion is a feature of BCPL and its distant descendant Go, though it is absent in B or C. Semicolon insertion is present in JavaScript, though the rules are somewhat complex and much-criticized; to avoid bugs, some recommend always using semicolons, while others use initial semicolons, termed defensive semicolons, at the start of potentially ambiguous statements.