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Fire Shaka Smart


smokebomb

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52 minutes ago, Billy Pilgrim said:

Looks like the current available crop of coaches is pretty weak. I agree with a poster earlier in that I could stomach another of Shaka if it meant Donovan were in play next year (I’d take Donovan over Beard if I had the choice).

I do agree the current market of available coaches is weak since we didn't make a play at The Mayor.  Beard is off the table because he costs too much.  Seems like you just wait a year. 

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38 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I do agree the current market of available coaches is weak since we didn't make a play at The Mayor.  Beard is off the table because he costs too much.  Seems like you just wait a year. 

Who is available next year? I don't see any hot young coaches that would all of sudden look worth $3.2M in another season. I suppose it would have been nice to see Nate Oats play above seed in one more tournament, but we missed that boat. Do you feel great about Muss or Wojo, even if they look a bit better next year? What if they don't? The high quality coaches are going to cost us at least as much as Beard would. Are we really waiting for Donovan or someone else to get fired in hopes of pulling a reverse Barnes?

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On 4/1/2019 at 12:51 PM, Dr. Beeper said:

A lot of them don’t care about basketball. But that is beside the point. They all have very large egos. And I don’t think you realize how wealthy boosters of Texas, SMU, A&M, Baylor, Tech, and TCU are - probably in that order. A few million is like us stroking a check for a few hundred/thousand.  Being a billionaire is quite, quite different than being a millionaire. And all the schools above have multiple billionaire boosters. 

Not always. Boone Pickens doesn't give a fuck about basketball. To prove it, he let us wallow through the Travis Ford era for years. He could've wiped his ass with the buyout money but he chose to stay out of it. Totally his choice but it really sucked.

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How much of Shaka's problems are attributable to what appears to be a failing recruiting strategy of focusing mostly on OADs? The practice is coming under increasing scrutiny because the yield mostly benefits the kids who showcase their talents for a year before making bank. Schools which benefit, seem to be torn between improving the bottom line and foregoing championships that come teams not made up one hit wonders. 

I found it telling to hear Beard say in an interview over the weekend, that players who only wanted to know if their minutes would be ensured should they come to Tech, would not be offered a scholarship by him. He then went in to say that recruiting talent is not a binary choice, that given his druthers, he'd take grinders first.

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Just now, Satchel said:

How much of Shaka's problems are attributable to what appears to be a failing recruiting strategy of focusing mostly on OADs? The practice is coming under increasing scrutiny because the yield mostly benefits the kids who showcase their talents for a year before making bank. Schools which benefit, seem to be torn between improving the bottom line and foregoing championships that come teams not made up one hit wonders. 

 

How much is he focusing on OADs? Jarrett Allen was in his backyard, while Mo Bamba asked to be recruited by him, and you don't tell a top 5 recruit no.

Nobody expected Hayes to be a OAD. Nobody from the 2019 class should be considered a OAD, either.

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3 minutes ago, Satchel said:

How much of Shaka's problems are attributable to what appears to be a failing recruiting strategy of focusing mostly on OADs? The practice is coming under increasing scrutiny because the yield mostly benefits the kids who showcase their talents for a year before making bank. Schools which benefit, seem to be torn between improving the bottom line and foregoing championships that come teams not made up one hit wonders. 

I found it telling to hear Beard say in an interview over the weekend, that players who only wanted to know if their minutes would be ensured should they come to Tech, would not be offered a scholarship by him. He then went in to say that recruiting talent is not a binary choice, that given his druthers, he'd take grinders first.

If I coached at tech I'd say the same thing. How many OADs has he even had the opportunity to turn away?

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I was asking a question that I honestly don't know the answer to. It appears the few coaches who are in a position to adopt an OAD recruiting strategy have found it to be a blessing and a curse. Schools like to brag about the star power of recruiting classes, but the impact on the brand seems to be negligible when these classes which are overpopulated by OADs fizzle out in The Tournament. I'll admit that I don't follow Calipari all that closely, but I was surprised to learn that he's only won one national title with the immense amount of talent he's amassed at Kentucky. 

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10 minutes ago, Satchel said:

How much of Shaka's problems are attributable to what appears to be a failing recruiting strategy of focusing mostly on OADs? The practice is coming under increasing scrutiny because the yield mostly benefits the kids who showcase their talents for a year before making bank. Schools which benefit, seem to be torn between improving the bottom line and foregoing championships that come teams not made up one hit wonders. 

I found it telling to hear Beard say in an interview over the weekend, that players who only wanted to know if their minutes would be ensured should they come to Tech, would not be offered a scholarship by him. He then went in to say that recruiting talent is not a binary choice, that given his druthers, he'd take grinders first.

He has no track record of developing talent here at Texas, and frankly most of his best players were either Barnes' leftovers (Taylor and Ridley), or his stud OAD guys like Bamba, Hayes, and Allen (at least during conference play).

I've said this before but the difference in Shaka and his predecessors here at Texas is identity and culture. With Penders his identity and dimitiré had to do with his preferred play style. As he said, "We feel like if we shoot more shots than our opponents we should score more points." With his fast paced, high flying offense he was able to go after the guys who were right for his system, and was even able to get real live ballers from places like NYC to come down to Texas knowing they would get to run up and down and just hoop a lot.

With Barnes, shot didn't have one offensive belief/system but rather changed his style to fit his personnel, the identity and culture was one of toughness- scrappy oauers who like to be coached hard, defense, rebounding, and an S&C system designed to build a bunch of muscular, hulking, Grant Williams, Admiral Schofield, Brian Boddicker looking dudes who play hard all of the time and who want to be/thrive on being tough and hard nosed.

Shaka is still a pup, and for all of his catch phrases and his bond with his players, he doesn't have any sort of true identity or culture that can trickle down from him, through his staff, and into the very DNA and fabric of his players. His culture is one of positivity and "teamship", which while it seems to help foster a close knit team, it doesn't give the program a base for recruiting/coaching/approaching the game. Our HC doesn't know who he is, and his teams don't know who they are either. Add to that his aforementioned lack of player development and we get teams that play hard and like each other, but who don't have any sort of real identity to fall back on in close games, tight situations, when things go wrong, etc. Everyone is just winging it, from the HC on down.

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Roster management is a bigger issue than player development IMO. He's only had 2 players (3 if you count Eric Davis) in the program for 3 or more years. I'm not sure that's a large enough sample size to definitively determine whether or not he can develop players in mass. One thing is clearly apparent, he doesn't manage the roster and playing time well. That's probably a function of the identity issues Derka pointed out.

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28 minutes ago, Goo Punch said:

yeah his roster management and playing time patterns have been total head scratchers. i cannot come up with any sort of logical guess as to what it is that he's trying to accomplish with so many of these odd decisions.

Shaka's game management especially at crunch time sucks.... which destroys the confidence of his players.

Listening to Zion talk about how much confidence Coach K gives his players late in games is a big part of Duke's success.....

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3 minutes ago, Machinator said:

He isn't? I think the players like him plenty, he just doesn't know how to teach them.

Yeah I only see that said here on this message board, but there's never any explanation as to where or who it's coming from. I know Derka said there were former Barnes' players who didn't like him,  but I don't get the sense that's true of the guys he's recruited

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35 minutes ago, Catdaddyhorn said:

Yeah I only see that said here on this message board, but there's never any explanation as to where or who it's coming from. I know Derka said there were former Barnes' players who didn't like him,  but I don't get the sense that's true of the guys he's recruited

yeah all of his guys have always seemed to like him as well as each other.

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6 minutes ago, Revolution512 said:

I talked to somebody who would know granted that was during the awful stretch to close the season.

 

Yeah, that usually happens when you're losing. Remember the football locker room under Herman was almost in mutiny after losing to Tech in the 2017 season.

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I'm bored, so I took a sampling of NIT Champions to see what they did the following year. I limited myself to just 10 years, because if you're going to pursue a meaningless statistical blip, you may as well use a small sample size when doing so:

Year Champion Next Year's Record
2018  Penn State 14-18
2017  TCU 21-12
2016  George Washington 20-15
2015  Stanford 15-15
2014  Minnesota 18-15
2013  Baylor 26-12
2012  Stanford 19-15
2011  Wichita State 27-6
2010  Dayton 22-14
2009  Penn State 11-20

So, in the last 10 years, only one team went on to have a losing record the next year... but they did it twice. Penn State sucks, which says something about the value of winning the NIT, I guess, but it also demonstrates that it takes a special kind of loser not to build in some way on doing well in the NIT.

The moral of the story? Winning is better than losing. But don't read anything into it.
.

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8 hours ago, Walden Ponderer said:

I'm bored, so I took a sampling of NIT Champions to see what they did the following year. I limited myself to just 10 years, because if you're going to pursue a meaningless statistical blip, you may as well use a small sample size when doing so:

Year Champion Next Year's Record
2018  Penn State 14-18
2017  TCU 21-12
2016  George Washington 20-15
2015  Stanford 15-15
2014  Minnesota 18-15
2013  Baylor 26-12
2012  Stanford 19-15
2011  Wichita State 27-6
2010  Dayton 22-14
2009  Penn State 11-20

So, in the last 10 years, only one team went on to have a losing record the next year... but they did it twice. Penn State sucks, which says something about the value of winning the NIT, I guess, but it also demonstrates that it takes a special kind of loser not to build in some way on doing well in the NIT.

The moral of the story? Winning is better than losing. But don't read anything into it.
.

If you take out the mid-majors, things look really shitty. Only the two Big 12 teams (both of whom are known for padding their out of conference scheds with cupcakes) managed 20 wins in the following season. Is anyone going to feel Shaka is on the cusp of great things if we go 21-12 or even 26-12 next year? Baylor did make the Sweet 16, but was also a Smoove 9-9 in conference.

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This blows. Has any school fired a coach after winning the NIT? I'd say this keeps shaka around next year and even though no one knows if he would have been back anyways i find it hard to believe CDC would can him after winning the NIT. If he did though then CDC has massive balls and I would love him so hard.

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3 minutes ago, Rockethorn1978 said:

This blows. Has any school fired a coach after winning the NIT? I'd say this keeps shaka around next year and even though no one knows if he would have been back anyways i find it hard to believe CDC would can him after winning the NIT. If he did though then CDC has massive balls and I would love him so hard.

We weren't canning him anyway. I don't know why people continue to parrot this.

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1 minute ago, Machinator said:

Our only hope is that every other major program in Texas  getting their shit together in basketball (pending whatever happens with TCU) galvanizes the people who have the power to do something at Texas.

Maybe one of the crypt keepers will pony up?

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Maybe if we offer Matthew McConaughey the job of coaching (at the times/places/events of his choosing) the head coaching job for one of our non-revenue sports (say taking over for our fallen Tennis Coach), in exchange for him giving us $20 million?

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Or here's a better idea:  Let's dig up dead ass Joe Jamail, re-bury him in the Pet Sematary, wait for him to reanimate, and then ask him to buy us Chris Beard?

Joe-Jamail-on-UT-campus-600x0-c-default.

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4 hours ago, ClubWhatever said:

Until you wrote down that list I did not remember a single one of those teams had won the NIT

Remembering would imply that you actually knew in the past.  I had no idea who won past NITs, because I don't (and no one else) gives a shit about the NIT.  But here we are, bout to cut down the nets at Madison Square Garden in front of literally dozens of fans if only we can beat Lipscomb in the Finals.

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