Star Telegram: Shaka Smarts a good coach but at wrong school. And he’s no Rick Barnes

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per the Star Telegram:

In the same week Shaka Smart’s predecessor, Rick Barnes, brought another orange UT to No. 1 in the basketball polls, the Longhorns lost their eighth game of the season.

This won’t last, of course, but right now Rick Barnes’ University of Tennessee Volunteers are ranked ahead of Duke’s NBA lottery team. Barnes is doing at Tennessee exactly what he did at Texas, which is to make basketball relevant at a football-mad school.

Rick Barnes is the standard in Austin, and Shaka Smart isn’t even Tom Penders. Shaka may not even be Coach Matthew McConaughey.

Watching UT lose 65-61 against TCU on Wednesday night in Fort Worth, there is nothing the team showed they are good enough break out of this four-year trend under Smart.

Barnes is the standard for all college basketball coaches in Texas, and only a few are thriving at it: Jamie Dixon at TCU, Scott Drew at Baylor, and Chris Beard at Texas Tech. If you want to throw in Houston’s Kelvin Sampson go ahead.

In Texas, basketball simply has to be relevant, competitive, and maybe reach the Sweet 16 every so often. This is not the University of Texas.

They are 61-58 under Shaka, and it’s not improving.

https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/mac-engel/article224955930.html

Go Gophers!!
 

We may have dodged a bullet when Shaka got food poisoning from the deja vu hot dog buffet /s
 

I have long wondered what the hype was with him. Aside from the fluke Final Four year where they had to play a play-in game just to make the tournament his teams are generally ok but not great. I see all these kids considering Texas and I wonder if it has anything to do with the basketball program at all.
 

Texas just might be kind of a tough place to win, for whatever reasons.
 

Bad Gopher said:
Texas just might be kind of a tough place to win, for whatever reasons.
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Rick Barnes would disagree with you. He was 402-180 there, he went to 16 NCAA Tournaments in 17 years, including 5 Sweet 16's, 2 Elite 8's and a Final Four.

Go Gophers!!
 


BleedGopher said:
Rick Barnes would disagree with you. He was 402-180 there, he went to 16 NCAA Tournaments in 17 years, including 5 Sweet 16's, 2 Elite 8's and a Final Four.

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...

I would say that he's the extraordinary coach who could win anywhere and who tends to make others who follow him look bad.
 

BleedGopher said:
Rick Barnes would disagree with you. He was 402-180 there, he went to 16 NCAA Tournaments in 17 years, including 5 Sweet 16's, 2 Elite 8's and a Final Four.

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...

Tom Penders also had a great deal of success there with some exciting teams and players.
 





And to think that if Shaka hadn't taken the Texas job Murph would've joined him at VCU. Thanks for the gift of an all-time great, Shaka! Take another trip through the Vu's buffet on us.
 

Plinnius said:
He didn't win much at Clemson or Providence.
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I saw him outcoach Bill Self in the round of 32 game in 1997, just before the Gophers beat Temple. Tulsa looked like the better team, and they controlled the game until Clemson calmly made enough plays down the stretch to win. For the moment I was glad that Self and Tulsa were out of the way, but as it turned out, Clemson was more than a handful the following weekend.
 

Hey, he beat up on mid majors and had one run in the NCAAs. This is where alot of these up and coming guys fail. They are all fine and dandy with better talent playing against bad teams or little sisters of the poor, but put them in a big boy league and they find out how hard it is to win major college basketball games night in, night out.
 

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