With the 2025-26 basketball season coming to a close on Thursday after an unexpected run to the Sweet 16, head coach Sean Miller and the Texas Longhorns enter the first full offseason under the new coaching staff with the NCAA transfer portal opening on April 7 and closing 15 days later.
Four players have now exhausted their eligibility — guards Jordan Pope, Tramon Mark, and Chendall Weaver, and forward Lassina Traore — eight players have remaining eligibility, and the Longhorns have four signees
in the 2026 recruiting class, which ranks No. 12 nationally in the 247Sports Composite rankings.
Among the players with remaining eligibility, the two most important decisions of the offseason will come from junior wing Dailyn Swain and sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis.
A 6’, 220-pounder, Swain was a breakout star for Texas this season after transferring from Xavier, averaging 17.3 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 3.6 assists, three of the five major statistical categories in which Swain led the Longhorns. Excellent off the bounce, Swain showed the ability to get into the paint and finish around the rim, make plays for his teammates, and improved his three-point shooting from 25 percent to 34.4 percent while shooting over 80 percent from the free-throw line.
Swain’s improved shooting stroke from distance is a major catalyst in his rise up NBA Draft boards, although he’s still considered a polarizing prospect — some mock drafts have him as a lottery pick, but others don’t believe that he’s a first-round selection.
NIL and revenue sharing have changed the calculus for productive college players with questionable NBA Draft upside, but there remains plenty of upside for Swain if he chooses to enter the NBA Draft with the No. 14 pick, the last in the lottery, guaranteed $10 million over two years in the 2025 NBA Draft.
Even the last pick in the first round is guaranteed $4.5 million, including $2.74 in the first season, a number that is almost certainly higher than the commitment that the Longhorns could make to Swain to keep him in school.
But it’s still early in the pre-draft process, which will be influenced by how many players declare and how well players in the same range as Swain test and perform at the NBA Combine.
The odds probably lean towards Swain entering the draft, but the biggest guarantee at this point is that he will declare for the draft while maintaining his eligibility to receive feedback from NBA teams before making a decision about his future, which would complicate the roster building process for Miller and his staff with the NCAA withdrawal deadline on May 27.
Vokietaitis also took a significant leap forward after transferring to Texas from Florida Atlantic following a promising freshman season that earned AAC Freshman of the Year recognition. A physical force in the paint, Vokietaitis averaged 15.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game and drew fouls at a high rate to get to the free-throw line an average of 7.9 times per game.
Because Vokietaitis lacks leaping ability that limits him as a shot blocker and rim protector and struggles with foul trouble due to immaturity and discipline issues, he’s not really a candidate to declare for the draft and remain in it, but his ability to impact games in the post and put opponents in foul trouble makes him one of the most valuable college big men in the country.
And in the current era of college basketball, that means that Vokietaitis could decide to enter the NCAA transfer portal again to secure a higher level of compensation. If that happens, Vokietaitis would be difficult or impossible to replace through the portal, so Miller and his staff will have to rely on the relationships that they’ve built with the 7’0, 255-pounder and hope that they can adequately compensate him to keep him on the Forty Acres.
Keeping Swain and Vokietaitis at Texas, combined with instant-impact signees like guards Austin Goosby and Bo Odgen, would provide Miller a strong core to built around as the team’s 2026-27 upside depends heavily on whether the Longhorns can retain one or both of Swain and Vokieaitis.
