North Texas didn’t just show up to the UIL state basketball championships this year — it showed up and took over.
In a stunning display of regional dominance, North Texas programs claimed 13 of the 24 statewide UIL basketball titles contested in 2026, including eight boys championships spanning every classification from Class 3A through Class 6A. Five girls titles rounded out a performance that, frankly, left the rest of the state with very little to celebrate. It wasn’t a wave. It was a flood.
A Region Built Different
The boys’ side was the engine driving the whole thing. Eight North Texas teams — North Crowley, Little Elm, Frisco Heritage, Mansfield Summit, Dallas Kimball, Dallas Carter, Dallas Madison, and Paradise — swept every boys classification without exception, a feat that will be difficult to contextualize for anyone who doesn’t follow Texas high school basketball obsessively. That’s every title. All eight. Gone north before anyone else could blink, as reported by CBS News Texas.
But how did they get there? In many cases, by the skin of their teeth — and a few miracle shots.
Thrillers in the Semifinals
The road to Austin wasn’t clean for everyone. In the Class 6A Division I bracket, North Crowley — seeded No. 13, which tells you something about how unpredictable this tournament was — edged Duncanville 52-49 on a last-second game-winning shot. Meanwhile, No. 15 Frisco Heritage survived Birdville in an equally breathless 65-63 finish, also on a buzzer-beater. Two games, two wire-to-wire classics, both won by North Texas teams. As noted by MaxPreps, both contests required game-winning shots in the final seconds just to reach the title games.
That kind of drama has a way of loosening a team up — or tightening it. For North Crowley and Heritage, it seemed to do the former.
Championship Saturday
When the dust settled on the final rounds, North Crowley handled San Antonio Brennan with authority, winning the Class 6A Division I crown 65-52. No overtime drama needed this time. The Panthers, who had clawed past Duncanville just days earlier, looked like a completely different team — composed, physical, and in control from the opening tip, according to the Austin Sports Journal.
Over in Class 6A Division II, Little Elm made it look almost easy, dispatching Austin Westlake 57-35 in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the score suggests once you watched the second half unfold.
Still, it was Frisco Heritage guard Cam Lomax who perhaps best captured the emotional weight of what these runs meant to the kids living them. “It’s so surreal right now, man,” Lomax said. “We put so much work for this. I’m so happy to be here, man….it means everything to me right now.” Hard to argue with that.
Eighteen Years in the Making
For North Crowley head coach Tommy Brakel, the championship carried a significance that went beyond the scoreboard — and beyond this season. His senior class, he pointed out, shares a birthday of sorts with the program’s last state title. “These seniors have the same birthday as the last year that we won a state championship,” Brakel explained. “They’re 18, and it’s been 18 years… so it’s extra gratifying.”
Eighteen years. An entire generation of North Crowley kids who grew up never seeing their school win a state title in basketball — until this group of seniors decided that was going to change. That’s not just a storyline. That’s the whole point of high school sports.
The rest of Texas will spend the offseason trying to figure out what hit them.
