Sean Miller hopes to build Texas program in same model as Florida

Texas hung tough with No. 7 Florida for more than a half on Wednesday night. In fact, the Longhorns led 39-36 at the half and had to be feeling decent about their chances to spring a big upset and secure a marquee win for the NCAA Tournament resume.

But, like many Florida opponents this year, Texas wilted in the second half. The Gators simply imposed their size and their will on the Longhorns.

After the game, first-year Texas coach Sean Miller was blunt. He wants his team looking like Florida down the road. He just hasn’t had enough time yet to achieve that outcome.

“Yes, that’s what you want to build towards,” Miller said. “I think everybody likes to snap their fingers and make it happen. It takes a couple turns of it to get that right, but that’s my hope, that that’s who we become in terms of how our team is built.”

Florida has been an interesting case study for the rest of college basketball since Todd Golden took over. The team grew a bunch of transfers with multiple years of eligibility left three years ago, reaching the NCAA Tournament but suffering a first-round exit.

But the vast majority of the backcourt returned intact and a year later that same backcourt led the program to its third national title. The backcourt was elite, while the frontcourt fit the building mode — transfers with multiple years and a few homegrown recruits had begun to get their feet wet. They were good during the title run, but probably not great.

This year, that same frontcourt is one of the most dominant units in the country. Meanwhile, the backcourt is the unit developing. Again, good but not great.

But the overall picture? It comes out looking aces for the Gators.

Miller explained the dilemma in trying to slow down Florida in this year’s contest. He opened up.

“Their size at the guards and the length, and then their ability to rotate those three or four bigs,” he said. “One thing that was interesting is we got big Rueben (Chinyelu) in foul trouble. We were going at (Thomas) Haugh next and he’s smart. It’s not easy to get him his fourth foul. And it was interesting to see they trusted him and he really got to the end, you didn’t even know he was in foul trouble.

“But if we would have been able to get the fourth foul on Haugh, that would have certainly given us an advantage.”

Even then, Florida has some other answers. The team plays eight deep, and anyone in that eight is capable of going off on a given night. There are sharpshooters in Xaivian Lee and Urban Klavzar. There’s an elite defender in Boogie Fland. There are elite passing bigs in Haugh and Alex Condon. And there’s Chinyelu, a force at the rim.

A whole lot of answers. And the Florida blueprint that Miller will look to emulate at Texas.