Agreed. Maybe it’s just me but there seems to so much unearned entitlement running through Texas athletics. I understand they’re stupid rich and that they’re a massive school but the basketball program has three final fours in its entire history and their football program, while historically relevant, isn’t quite a blue blood (is it?).
Those teams also make runs. Not winning a single game, at Texas with the resources available there? That’s not good.
Two or three years could be called hasty. Six is not.
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Well the program has won 3 tourney games in 12 seasons. I don’t believe it’s an easy job by any stretch. Remember there was a portion of Michigan fans that thought Amaker was a good coach and never made a tournament. Maybe Shaka would have been better off not making the tournament at all…
Yeah maybe the job is worse than Shaka, I can see it. I do think he would be a better fit at Maryland, if he has to be a P5 HC somewhere. But I also think his tenure at Texas has been a pretty unequivocal failure regardless of where you rank the program
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Texas is historically a strong football program that should be elite every year. There’s a very easy comparison available: Oklahoma, which Texas should at least equal or better. Bad coaching hires have done them in.
They’re not a FF-every-year basketball program, but they care enough about basketball that it’s not unreasonable for them to expect more success than they’ve had. The resources are there. There’s nothing about the school that shouldn’t produce a winner. At the very least, the occasional Sweet Sixteen and at least one push deeper, one would think.
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Have a hard time thinking the Texas job is bad, Shaka’s just not that great of a coach (and maybe not a fit), and the guy before him was and is a notorious choker. The amount of talent that the two have squandered is downright impressive.
He made a Final Four with a style of play that he cannot even use anymore. The entire rotation is 4-5* players. Even if you think win or go home tournaments are flukey, he’s not even losing to particularly impressive teams.
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I was just so put off by what I saw in the tournament. I recall the arguments before we hired Juwan about injuries and all, but for me that was enough. Plus now he looks like a stand-up comic failing to capitalize on that one sitcom bit part he landed 10 years ago.
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This is the thing that sticks out to me. Reading stuff like this makes it sound like he likes the idea of Havoc but it doesn’t fit the personnel. But he’s been there for six years and recruited well–but not for a Havoc style–and failed to win anything.
So a logical conclusion would be that the reason he won at VCU was more the specific style than Smart having transferrable coaching acumen. That would be a strike against him.
But then, why not just decide that your team is going to run that style and recruit to it? There are successful coaches in college basketball who do that. Jim Boeheim runs a style and recruits to it. John Beilein has a specific plan that he recruits to, a plan that results in losing out on guys like Mo Bamba, but look which one has made Final Fours and won conference banners. Rick Pitino is slimy, but he’s also a good coach and stocks teams for press defense.
The Boeheim example seems important, because there’s nothing new about it but his philosophy is unique enough that when he gets into the tournament he wins a lot of games. A team built for a Havoc-style press seems like it could have a similar effect on opponents unused to that level of pressure.
It’s as if Smart thought of Havoc as just something he ran that he liked, but thought he was a good coach without it, and… has been proven wrong.
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To be fair, Havoc is a style to run when you may not be able to recruit the talent but can get guys to buy into working their tails off. Texas, to a coach with some success at that, might seem like a dream come true. . . but entail a change of philosophy and a learning curve. I mean, John Beilein toiled in the vineyards for decades. Not saying Smart is as talented or an eventual success–so much goes into that. But I wouldn’t write him off without a deeper look into what gives there.
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Agreed. Beilein had a style designed for scrappy underdogs as well, that he ditched parts of and evolved other aspects of as he grew and was able to get better players.
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The article in The Athletic was pretty rough.
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Yeah, schools are getting their own not-so-quiet verdict on some coaches from their own players. All kinds of reasons to enter the portal, but you hope that ADs and college presidents are listening.
No wonder some coaches don’t like the open portal. They can’t be toxic and still keep their players
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About Brannen?
Was just reading it after I saw Dylan’s comment. Presumably he means this story: The rift with Cincinnati Bearcats coach John Brannen that led to a mass exodus of basketball players – The Athletic
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DDJ and Beilein reunited!
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Wow, that is some impressive reporting.
I probably missed discussion of it upthread, certainly seems to shed a lot of light on DDJ’s issues.
It has probably happened before and I never knew or forgot, but I can’t recall another time in my awareness where a coach was defenestrated so quickly into his tenure essentially due to players deciding he was intolerable. Obviously, the AD wound up agreeing with the players.
Going to be a long road back for that program.
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That account is fake I believe that posted that news but wouldn’t be a shock if the news is true nonetheless
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Winning all your games is really really fun.
Of course so is competing every night.
You can get great coaching and make the league in both scenarios. And Spokane seems nice, I guess, I’ve never been.
wow good catch, that is a Xavier troll account.
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