Jump to content
3 Months for $3 - Sign Up Here! ×

  • Texas Longhorns News

    A place for any Longhorn Fan to get the latest news from the On Texas Football team.
    Show all categories
    Jeff Howe
    AUSTIN, Texas — No moment has been too big for Anthony Pack Jr. throughout his exceptional freshman season on the Forty Acres. The opening game of the NCAA Tournament’s Austin Regional on Friday was no different for Pack, who hit three home runs in a 19-1 rout of Holy Cross at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
    “I just went out there like every other game,” said Pack, who roughed up the Crusaders’ pitching staff to the tune of a 3-for-3 day, with four runs scored and five RBI. “I don't think anything changed. A lot of preparation, a lot of hitting with Tulo (assistant coach Troy Tulowitzki), but I think it just came from the preparation.”
    No Longhorn had ever recorded a three-home run game in the NCAA Tournament until Pack hit his eighth, ninth and 10th dingers of the season. Pack, who now has 70 hits and 50 RBI in 53 games, helped Texas (41-13) score in every inning of its dismantling of Holy Cross (25-29).
    Aiden Robbins, who slugged his 20th and 21st home runs of the season en route to the Longhorns matching their largest margin of victory ever in a postseason game, knows that what Pack is doing far exceeds what’s expected from a freshman. 
    “He's confident and he knows his ability to just go out there and play free,” Robbins said of Pack, the SEC Freshman of the Year, who led the league in hitting (.400) and on-base percentage (.511) during conference play. “He displays that every time he steps on the field.”
    Pack’s three bombs tied a single-game school record (the last time it happened was in 2024, when Max Belyeu went deep three times against Baylor) and accounted for half of the Longhorns’ six home runs. Jayden Duplantier’s sixth-inning grand slam capped the slugfest, tying the program record for most home runs in a game.
    The 19 runs the Longhorns scored were the most a Texas team has tallied in an NCAA Tournament game since 2005. Pack got the scoring started in the first inning, with a 417-foot, two-out solo blast.
    After Robbins (2-for-5, three runs scored and three RBI) and Carson Tinney (3-for-4, four runs scored) were retired by Jaden Wywoda, Pack pulled a 1-0 pitch over the right-field wall, executing a critical at-bat that set the tone for the team’s historic day at the plate.
    “We have a lot of respect for their starting pitcher,” Jim Schlossnagle said of Wywoda, who threw 105 pitches in 4.2 innings after throwing 196 pitches over three days in last week’s Patriot League Tournament. “If he gets out of that inning clean, a senior pitcher like that can really get some confidence and get going. Anthony, obviously, had a good swing in that inning and a really good day.
    “After that, a lot of good things went our way.”
    Texas now gets to reap the benefits of hosting a regional as a top-8 national seed. While Tarleton State and UC Santa Barbara are duking it out in the nightcap at Disch-Falk Field, the Longhorns will be off their feet, trying to maximize the full 24 hours they've been allotted between Friday’s romp and Saturday’s winner’s bracket game at 6 p.m.
    “It's not an advantage unless the players take advantage of it,” Schlossnagle said. “That's what we just had a quick conversation about, so these guys need to get out of here and get off their feet and hydrate — like, really hydrate.”
    Schlossnagle’s postgame comment to “really hydrate” was said directly to Pack, who was lifted for Duplantier in the sixth inning.
    Pack said his muscles get tight when he gets excited, which can lead to cramps. Although Pack said he must do a better job of “controlling my energy a little bit,” the first SEC freshman to hit .400 since Jake Mangum hit .408 for Mississippi State in 2016 wants to do what he can to make sure nothing interrupts his historic campaign.
    “I can't cramp,” Pack said. “I've got to do better with my hydration and do better.”
    Adequately hydrated or not, Pack set the tone for what Texas hopes is a deep, prosperous postseason.
    Bobby Burton
    It's sad that it has come to this. But it has.
    Texas Tech is doing anything to be relevant. They're desperate, so desperate in fact that it's embarrassing to watch grown men grovel.
    Cody Campbell and Joey McGuire are the faces of desperation.
    So butthurt are the Red Raiders about getting left in the Big 12 that their administration at every level, from the board of regents, to the president's office, even to the football coach's office, they're all willing to do anything to get anyone to listen to them and regard them as more relevant than they are.
    In a flash of showmanship and false bravado, their football coach today asked for Texas to move its game with Texas State from Austin on Sept. 5, and schedule Texas Tech in Dallas instead.
    Yet just minutes later, that very same coach tried to convince reporters that his quarterback who gambled on his own team should not incur significant penalties. "Maybe he should get a few games but not a whole year [I am paraphrasing here]," McGuire told reporters.
    A sane man's response to such words? Joey McGuire will say anything to anybody if it helps him win a football game. He's a man who knows no bounds.
    McGuire is only following the lead of his president at Texas Tech, who days earlier penned a letter to all students and alumni asking for the same thing.
    The whole thing is preposterous.
    They know it. You know it. We all know it.
    If you gamble on your team, you're toast.
    As for Campbell, his thumbprints are all over the latest senate legislation. And that legislation attempts to box in Texas and the SEC. Why is Campbell so worried about what's going on in Austin? Does he feel threatened?
    Again, it's the move of desperate people. And McGuire and Campbell are the faces of desperation.
    Texas Tech is embarrassing itself over and over again.
    Jeff Howe
    Chris Del Conte and Steve Sarkisian have been in lockstep regarding Texas’ non-conference football schedule.
    The Longhorns will honor their home-and-home agreements with Ohio State and Michigan, with the Buckeyes coming to Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Sept. 12 and the Wolverines heading to town on Sept. 11, 2027. Beyond those two return bouts from marquee non-conference games played during the 2024 (a resounding 31-12 victory over the reigning national champions at the Big House) and 2025 (a 14-7 loss in the Horseshoe) seasons, nothing is set in stone.
    That includes a scheduled home-and-home with Notre Dame.
    Texas is scheduled to travel to South Bend in 2028, while the Fighting Irish are scheduled to travel to Austin in 2029. At the SEC spring meetings in Destin on Wednesday, Del Conte indicated the Longhorns aren’t locked into what would be the 13th and 14th all-time meetings between two of college football’s most iconic brands.
    “They’re tentatively on the schedule right now,” Del Conte said.
    Given the uncertainty surrounding the future format and access into the College Football Playoff, Texas is in a tough spot regarding the two scheduled games with the Irish.
    The school’s television partners (ESPN and NBC) wouldn’t hesitate to put the Longhorns and Notre Dame in primetime. The 2015 meeting — a 38-3 loss for Texas during a Saturday night season opener in South Bend — was seen by 4.1 million viewers on NBC. The 2016 game in Austin — a memorable 50-47 double-overtime triumph played on Sunday night during Labor Day weekend — drew more than 10.9 million viewers on ABC, making it the fourth most-watched college football game of the season.
    Still, if CFP expansion doesn’t appropriately reward teams willing to schedule tough non-conference games, there’s no incentive for Texas to schedule Notre Dame or another high-level power conference opponent.
    CFP executive director Rich Clark went through the CFP selection process on Tuesday. The exercise didn’t significantly clear things up for Del Conte, who saw the Longhorns rewarded for scheduling Alabama and Michigan in 2023 and 2024, only to be excluded from the 12-team field last season due, in large part, to suffering a season-opening road loss at the hands of Ohio State.
    “It's hard to determine what the metrics are as a 9-3 and 10-2 schedule to say, these guys [won] 10 games, but they lost to these two teams. [Are they] better than a team that lost three games and didn't just schedule who they played?” Del Conte said. “I need more clarity on that.
    “It's part of the criteria,” he added. “It's hard to determine how it's being considered because you also have human nature in the room.”
    Del Conte didn’t make any not-so-thinly-veiled references to Texas Tech, like the one Sarkisian made last Thursday in Houston. What was missed amid Red Raider nation taking umbrage with Sarkisian’s comments to an audience of staunch Longhorn supporters, however, is what Del Conte echoed on Tuesday: the reality that the lack of equitable scheduling in college football eliminates the incentive to play non-conference games against the Big Ten and SEC opponents Texas has had on the schedule in each of Sarkisian’s five seasons as head coach.
    “One of the things that makes college football great is your non-conference schedule and what your regular season is,” Del Conte said. “When you play in games of that nature, you should get rewarded for that. When you have a really watered-down schedule — and the thing that gets college football so different is not every schedule is the same. In the NFL, you know exactly what it is — there's 32 teams, they play it all out correctly. In our sport, it's hard to judge one league from the next in terms of their strength of schedule and who you play. It was great for us to have our coaches hear what they look for, but you also left there murky as hell, too.”
    Although Greg Sankey said on Wednesday that a 16-team CFP is the format the SEC prefers, schools will continue to cancel future games against Power Four opponents until a new format is agreed upon. To that end, Del Conte didn’t commit to preferring the 12-team format, but he indicated he doesn’t want the powers that be to expand for the sake of expanding.
    “It’s changed so quickly,” Del Conte said, noting college football went from using the BCS to crown a national champion to a four-team playoff to the current 12-team format in the span of 12 seasons (2013-24). “We’re in our second year of that opportunity. I do think there needs to be some time to see how this plays out, but in the NFL, there’s 32 teams — 14 make it. In Major League Baseball, there’s 30 teams and 17 make it. The percentages — you look at the NBA (16 of 30 teams make the playoffs, with the last four spots in each conference determined by a series of play-in games).
    “I think it’s right for people to ask what the right number is, but at the end of the day, I’m also looking at it that we have young kids that, if you’re not playing in the playoff, they’re not playing in the bowl game,” he added. “They’re looking for different opportunities with how the transfer portal works now. We’ve had so much change in such a short amount of time that I do think we need a little bit of time to evaluate that. It’s not just, ‘Hey! Let’s jump to this!’”
    Jeff Howe
    Other than the selection committee resisting the urge to pair Texas and Texas A&M together for a potential Austin Super Regional, there were no surprises when the field for the NCAA Tournament was unveiled on Monday.
    For the second year in a row, Jim Schlossnagle’s club earned a top-8 national seed. The committee awarded the Longhorns the No. 6 overall seed, pairing Texas (40-13, 19-10 SEC) with the Eugene Regional (hosted by No. 11 overall seed Oregon) for the Super Regional.
    One of the eight roads to Omaha and the College World Series will go through Austin, the first time that’s been the case in consecutive years since Augie Garrido led the program to top-8 seeds in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The Longhorns will face No. 4 seed Holy Cross in the opening game of the regional on Friday (12 p.m., SEC Network) and, if Texas wins, it’ll face the winner of the nightcap between No. 2 seed UC Santa Barbara and No. 3 seed Tarleton State (6 p.m., ESPN+) on Saturday.
    With the field of 64 set, here are five things to take stock of before Texas begins its journey toward an NCAA-record 39th trip to the College World Series and the program’s seventh national championship:
    1. The regional will test whether Schlossnagle’s approach of valuing recovery and rest over prioritizing the SEC Tournament was truly the right approach.
    While Ethan Mendoza and Ruger Riojas were among the key Longhorns who should benefit from the extra time off ahead of the NCAA Tournament, the team’s offensive performance in Hoover (four hits and 14 strikeouts in an 8-1 loss to Arkansas in the SEC quarterfinals) didn’t inspire a lot of confidence heading into the regional.
    As of now, Schlossnagle’s approach was the right one because the SEC Tournament didn’t impact how the Longhorns are positioned in the postseason.
    Texas appeared to have a top-8 seed locked up before taking the field in Hoover. That proved to be the case, and the Razorbacks getting subbed as a regional host after reaching the championship game further showed how the SEC Tournament had little to no impact on the committee.
    2. The main difference between the Longhorns entering this year’s regional as opposed to last year's regional loss to UTSA is Dylan Volantis.
    Once Jared Spencer went down with a season-ending arm injury, it felt like the Longhorns spent the rest of the season hanging on for dear life. Texas enters this year’s NCAA Tournament with a bona fide ace, which the Longhorns will need for a matchup with either the Gauchos or the Texans in a winner’s bracket game on Saturday.
    The early indication is that the Longhorns will go with another pitcher (likely Luke Harrison, since he pitched in last Friday's loss to Arkansas, although Riojas hasn't pitched since facing one batter in the regular-season finale against Missouri on May 16) against Holy Cross (25-28) on Friday and save Volantis for Saturday. If UCSB (38-18) gets by WAC regular-season and tournament champion Tarleton State (37-19) without using ace Jackson Flora, a candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, a Volantis vs. Flora pitching matchup would be one of the most noteworthy head-to-head battles in the tournament.
    3. Even though a Saturday night winner’s bracket game in a regional will be a much different environment than the one the Texans played in during a 6-1 upset victory over the Longhorns on March 17, the experience Fuller Smith’s team has of winning a game at Disch-Falk Field makes Tarleton State no ordinary No. 3 seed.
    Facing Volantis in prime time will be a much tougher test than when the Texans roughed up Kade Bing, Cal Higgins and Max Grubbs more than two months ago. Furthermore, Texas has no excuse to be caught off guard if the two teams meet again with a lot more on the line than there was the first time they battled.
    4. To that end, given Riojas’ late-season struggles with shoulder tendonitis and Grubbs going down with a season-ending injury, the Longhorns’ pitching depth, or lack thereof, would make getting into the loser’s bracket feel like a death sentence.
    To avoid such a fate, Texas can’t have its bats go cold against the top-notch arms it will see the rest of the way.
    To minimize the lingering concerns at the bottom of the lineup, which will exist as long as the Longhorns remain in the tournament, Casey Borba must roll his late-season hot streak (12-for-35 with six home runs over his last 10 games) into more consistent production in the postseason. Adrian Rodriguez, who is managing his surgically-repaired hand more effectively now that he's only hitting left-handed, must keep stringing together quality at-bats (14 hits in his last 11 games).
    Aiden Robbins, Carson Tinney and Anthony Pack Jr. won’t feel the pressure to carry the offense if some combination of Borba, Rodriguez and Mendoza can compete in the box and bring a consistent spark to the middle of the order.
    5. Personally, I feel better about Texas getting through a Super Regional and onto Omaha than I feel about it winning a regional because of the format.
    The Longhorns lost two regular-season series, both on the road, to Texas A&M and Tennessee, respectively. Texas recorded series wins over No. 4 overall seed Auburn, No. 7 overall seed Alabama and regional host Mississippi State in SEC play, all of which had Schlossnagle’s team needing to win on Sunday to clinch the series.
    With Volantis capable of shutting down anybody in the field and the comfort of feeling like a win is inevitable if the game winds up in the hands of Sam Cozart, the Longhorns are as tough an out as there is in college baseball in a three-game series. Like last year, however, the winner’s bracket game of the regional could determine whether Texas makes a serious run at ending a 21-year national championship drought or if Schlossnagle and staff will get an unexpected head start on building the 2027 roster.
    Jeff Howe
    The fifth-ranked Texas baseball team was named one of 16 regional hosts for the NCAA Tournament on Sunday. The Austin Regional at UFCU Disch-Falk will begin on Friday, May 29.
    That wasn’t a surprise, considering the Longhorns won 40 regular-season games, finished second in the SEC standings and have been one of the nation’s top RBI teams (No. 5 in RPI according to D1Baseball.com). What remains to be seen is if Texas (40-13, 19-10 SEC) will be one of the eight national seeds when the field of 64 is unveiled on Monday.
    D1Baseball's Field of 64 projections published Sunday have the Longhorns as the No. 6 overall national seed, hosting an Austin Regional featuring No. 2 seed Miami (Fla.), No. 3 seed Louisiana and No. 4 seed UC San Diego. D1Baseball has Texas matched up with the Tallahassee Regional, hosted by projected No. 11 seed Florida State, which would pit the Longhorns against the Seminoles in the Austin Super Regional with a trip to the College World Series on the line.
    The On Texas Football staff will be live on YouTube at 11 a.m. Monday, when ESPN announces the field assembled by the Division I Baseball Selection Committee.
    The burnt orange faithful hope Jim Schlossnagle’s second NCAA Tournament on the Forty Acres goes better than his postseason debut leading the program. Entering last year's tournament as the No. 2 overall national seed, Texas was eliminated from the Austin Regional by UTSA, losing twice to the Roadrunners.
    This marks the third time in the last five seasons that the Longhorns have hosted a regional. Texas won its regional at Disch-Falk Field in 2021 and 2022, with the 2021 squad eliminating USF in the Austin Super Regional to reach the College World Series.
    No team in Division I history has more College World Series appearances (38) or wins (88) than the Longhorns. For Texas, the road to Omaha in 2026 marks the program's 65th postseason appearance, with the 2026 Austin Regional marking the 39th time the Longhorns have hosted the NCAA Tournament.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.