Texas Longhorns Hosting Four-Star Point Guard for Official Visit

With renewed excitement revolving around the Texas Longhorns' basketball program heading into the 2025 season with Sean Miller, the new head coach has already gone to work bringing in transfers and retaining key players for the upcoming season.

All the while, Miller is already looking at his first-ever recruiting class at Texas, by bringing in one of the top recruits in the country in the 2026 class on an official visit to Austin.

Per Joe Tipton of On3, four-star point guard Taylen Kinney has locked in an official visit with the Longhorns, visiting on September 12-14. Kinney will also be taking an official visit with the Indiana Hoosiers on August 29-31.

The Newport (K.Y.) native is one of the highly touted prospects in the entire 2026 class, ranked as the No. 15 player nationally per On3's Industry Rankings. As well as the No. 3-ranked point guard in the country and the best recruit out of the state of Georgia.

How Could Texas Become a Possible Landing Spot for Tay Kinney?

Kinney is projected to be an impact player as soon as he arrives in any program, with many upsides to his game, as 247Sports' Director of Scouting, Adam Finkelstein, wrote about Kinney's abilities.

"Kinney is a scoring and playmaking lead guard who is smooth and versatile with his attack." Finkelstein wrote. "He’s a three-range scoring threat who is creative and crisp with his handle, especially adept at getting to his pull-up, but can also get to the paint. He’s great in drive-and-kick type actions, but also understands how to feed the post. While he’s naturally aggressive, he does so without unnecessarily dominating the ball as he plays within the flow pretty instinctively."

Miller has a track record of sending talent to the NBA over his 20 seasons as a head coach. Miller trails just Arkansas head coach John Calipari in NBA players produced in the past 20 years. Miller has coached 27 players who have seen action at the NBA level, 12 of whom have been first-round picks in the NBA Draft, with three of the 12 have been lottery picks.

Miller has currently coached 10 active players in the NBA, five of whom are guards, with the standout being T.J. McConnell, who was a big piece of the Indiana Pacers reaching the 2025 NBA Finals.

With many of the current guards on the Texas roster, like Jordan Pope, Chendall Weaver, and Tramon Mark, being seniors, key minutes and opportunities will open up in Miller's rotation down the line, giving Kinney the opportunity to find early action. But that's only if the Longhorns manage to be players in Kinney's recruitment, with their first opportunity to make an impression coming in September.