Horns vs Nevada: Who wins and why

Good thing we got rid of that terrible Barnes guy. I am so sick of us firing coaches based on our ego of who we think we are. Barnes, Mack, Gustafson

 

Whatever happened to James Banks? It seems he was completely discarded. Was there no way to develop him?

 

Shaka makes more money than Rick Barnes ever did ($3 million a year versus $2.4 million). Shaka was given an absurd 6 year contract and got an extension to 7 years guaranteed for going 20-13 and losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament to a lower seed. Rick Barnes was fired for going 20-14 and losing in the first round to a higher seeded Butler, but Shaka got a 1 year extension for 20-13 and losing in the first round to a lower seed. It was absurd and prove results did not matter.

The results of Shaka before the hire were questionable. His last NCAA tournament win was 2012-13 as a 5 seed beating a 12 seed (he is 0-4 in the tournament since). Barnes last tournament win at Texas was 2013-14. We hired someone that had not won a tournament game as recently as the guy we were firing.

When results do not matter, this is what you get: a program in worse shape.

 

The missed free throws were a big reason they lost, but I think the biggest reason was when they were up 13 early in the second half and they missed three point blank inside shots including one from Bamba. That was there chance to put them away. Reminded me a little of the Duke game. So freaking painful!!!

 

Gus was given multiple opportunities to "fix the problem" but repeatedly refused. It was get rid of Gus or get rid of baseball. It had NOTHING to do with summer camps!

 

I know they aren't going to make every shot, but some of what I saw today was ridiculous. Losing the ball going in for a layup, blocked shots under the basket, missed FTs. Lots of squandered opportunities to blow Nevada off the court.

So far Shaka has shown that he's not a better coach than Barnes. In fact the team is just flatlined, not getting worse, but not improving or maintaining consistency. If they are thinking about giving him a contract extension anytime soon, any increase needs to be tied to not merely making the tournament but getting at a minimum to the elite 8. Otherwise....bye bye.

 

I would like to note that we shot 46% from three point land today. We got the three point game we needed.

The problem is we should have going inside with Bamba on this short team and should be playing way way better defense than we do.

 

Missed free throws and missed lay ups, this team has shown distinct lack of finishing all year and today was just par for the course. Cant overstate how the loss of Jones affected this team and for that alone I give a mulligan on this season to Smart. That said, Shaka gets everyone but Bamba back next year and if they cant take a huge step forward then it will be time to cut bait on him.

 

Smart gets no excuses. He continually put these players in a position to fail and more often than not they did. Roach is a prime example. He is a below average ball handler and decision maker with the ball in his hands, yet he dominated the ball asmuch if not more than Coleman with predictable results. Roach is an explosive slasher who should have been coming off of off the ball screens with hard cuts. But that never happened. Whatever motion they did have on offense was run half *** by the players which is understandable since the motion patterns I watched throughout the year had no point and put zero pressure on the defense. Just compare Tech’s half court offense you Smart’s. That is a stark illustration that Smart doesn’t have a clue about offense. Bamba is another example, he was not strong enough to hold his position down low against good competition, yet I don’trecall seeing any back screens for him to free him coming across the lane, ever. He also apparently didn’t get any coaching on how to roll to the basket when he did set a pick as most of the time he had his back to the ball for the first few seconds allowing the defense to easily recover.

However we made the tournament(questionable though it was) so Bellmont will give a collective shrug and we will be fighting for 8th place in the conference next year as well.

 

Yeah, I like the team that is coming back. I am sure they will not get Davis back. Hopefully Banks will have a breakout year. I think he played fairly well in the absence of Bamba. I like the guards they got coming back, plus the transfer and a couple of the recruits should add some quality minutes.

 

Please share why you are so optimistic

 

Well, Shaka was right in that his scheme is all about Havoc....

 

The firing of a coach has nothing to do with the failure or success of his successor. Nothing whatsoever. And the reasoning for firing the previous coach shouldn't be rationalized or condemned based on the next coach. I'm sorry but that is flawed thinking. Whether Shaka turned out to be a beast of a coach or a bum, that has nothing to do with the fact the Barnes needed to be let go. Not because he (Barnes) wasn't a good coach, but because his message at Texas had gotten stale, he was no longer effective in his position, and he was no longer getting the results that the job required. He started getting lazy. I went to many games towards the end of Barne's tenure at Texas where he didn't even get off the bench to coach. His apathy was evident. He grew too complacent. He needed a change of scenery and Texas Basketball needed a new captain. Period. The exact same thing could be said for Mack Brown. Unfortunately the Texas admins initially hired the wrong guys to replace Barnes and Mack. But in my opinion, both Barnes and Mack needed to go. Just because Texas botched the hiring of their successors doesn't mean they should have kept Barnes or Mack. The firing of Barnes and Mack, and the hiring of Shaka and Strong are all separate singular events.

When you fire an employee for poor performance, and his/her replacement ends up being a disappointment as well, do you actually have the desire to hire back the previous poorly performing employee?

 

Neither Barnes nor Brown were performing poorly. Smart and Strong actually are performing poorly. The problem is Barnes and Brown had a few bad breaks and some years of "good not great" and our fans declared that "good not great" was "mediocre and poor". Now we have actual mediocre and poor.

College sports hiring is not the same as other fields. There are a limited number of "employees". You can figure out what is out there to hired if you fire your current coach, so no, they are not separate singular events. If you do not have a plan to hire a great employee (we did not in either case), you should not fire your good employee.

 

I agree Mack and Barnes needed to go. I agree they were no longer effective and believed they had run out of gas. The "legacy" hires as have been described here made by Powers is a separate issue. Texas failed to spend like the Jones'. They went for something beyond money.

 

Completely disagree. Barnes and Mack were both performing poorly on many levels, and the results were not matching the expectations. In this regard, hiring and firing is exactly the same regardless of the field. If you think that Mack and Barnes were performing well, that's where you and I fundamentally disagree and why you think they shouldn't have been let go. But that's also the reason why I think they should have been sent packing..... because they were not performing well and the programs were headed in the wrong direction. You obviously disagree with that, and that's your prerogative.

There are limited candidates in every field that requires a highly sought-after skill. That doesn't stop you from making a necessary change when one is needed. And that being said, the notion of "limited" candidates is subjective.

 

Texas spent more than "the Jones" for (fill in the name of your choice).

We paid Bentley prices for Kia quality and luxury.

 

FW.....in above post, did you intend to refer to the loss of Jones or Davis instead of Young?

SAMMC.....in above post, did you mean to refer to Sims

 

I wish someone would enlighten me as to what "problem" Gus had to fix.

Those that disagree with me cannot say that Barnes or Mack would not have turned the ship around. Heck Mack was headed back in the right direction playing for the Big 12 Championship in the final game of the year. Charlie went the other direction. Mack gave a lot to this University and he deserved better. Augie did too. Coaches that gave their heart and soul to this school and brought us Championships. Often people talk about how our players feel entitled. I would argue its the d@mn fans too. Everyone has a tough year or two in their career and if they have performed at the highest level in their given profession they might deserve a little more lattitude.

 

@LonghornMD We will never agree on Barnes and Brown. I will say the major difference between Brown and Barnes is, we know Texas football can compete at the highest levels. With Texas Basketball, I am uncertain we can do better than Rick Barnes. Hopefully we can and will hire someone better than him in the future.

Disagreement about the past aside, I think we can agree and have proven (thanks to Abe Lemons, Tom Penders and Rick Barnes) that we can do better than Shaka Smart. Whether firing Barnes was right or wrong, Smart has so far left the program in worse shape than he found it.

 

Totally agree. What great stuff Barnes did for Texas Basketball and its brand (and he did fantastic stuff..... I think everybody would agree), Shaka is destroying. We've given the keys to the Ferrari to a guy who convinced us that he can handle it, but we find out the guy can't even drive stick.

 

Sometimes it is better to not air the family's dirty laundry in pubic and particularly on the internet. Suffice it to say it was critical rather than serious. I wish Gus had stepped up and done the right thing, but he refused multiple times until Deloss had to cut bait. No one person is bigger than the program or The University.

 

Agree Brown was burned out. However, Barnes was a victim of the basketball process that uses colleges as a waypoint to the pros. As H77 said, basketball and Texas isn't on the same plane as football and Texas. In trying to grab lightning in a bottle that would elevate basketball at Texas, Barnes welcomed any and all one-and-done's ignoring role players to a fault. Unfortunately, he failed to grab enough one-and-done's in any one season to get the job done.

 

I'm not going to say he was a victim, but I said for years he never adapted to the changing college basketball environment.

Now he has a team of guys who have never seriously competed at the college level playing over their heads. Let's see in the coming years if he starts getting blue chippers again and repeats Texas' last 4 years or does he adapt and learn how to make it all work.

 

22Horn you are right, I did mean Jones, that affected this team on so many levels. The decision to move on from Barnes was right one even if the decision to hire Smart ends up being wrong, the two are not related.

 

I disagree that a decision to move on from A cannot or shouldn't be related to the availability of B.

Vikings letting Keenum go to pay Kirk Cousins 900 trillion dollars? Maybe the right decision, maybe not. If Drew Brees had wanted to leave New Orleans for a similar price and come to Minnesota, it would have been the obvious right decision. I don't see that coaching works on a dramatically different principle.

 

At least we did not have to play UMBC

 

You can always google it. It was not that much of a secret as I vaguely remember it. Since I am sure that I remember it wrongly, I will not give my version of events.