In recent years under head coach Rick Barnes the team has achieved national prominence, and Barnes has guided Texas to a school-record ten consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and a school-best nine consecutive 20-win seasons as of March 16, 2008. The team has played its home games in the 16,755 capacity Frank Erwin Special Events Center, since 1977 where it has compiled a record of 362-89 (.803) as of March 9, 2008. Rick Barnes left Clemson University to take over a Longhorn program coming off of a losing season and he is hired on April 12, 1998 as the twenty-third men's basketball coach in University of Texas history. Barnes engineered one of the greatest midseason turnarounds in school history, despite playing with just seven scholarship players for the majority of the 1998-1999 season and opening the season with a 3-8 record.

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, and finishing the year at 19-13, with a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament. In 2007, the men's basketball team was ranked sixth by the Harris Poll for favorite men's college basketball teams, moving up one spot from the previous year.