Texas Basketball: Offensive woes consistent in Shaka Smart’s tenure

The one consistent storyline that head Texas basketball coach Shaka Smart can’t shake during his time coaching this program is the offensive inefficiency.

Big 12 play did not get off to the desired start for the Texas basketball program on Jan. 4, as they took on the No. 6 ranked Baylor Bears on the road at the Ferrell Center. Baylor did come in as an 8.5-point favorite over Texas before tip-off. But Texas had reason to believe that they could keep pace with Baylor in this game.

This weekend brought about the openers in conference play for just about every Big 12 team. The Texas Longhorns basketball program also wasn’t the only one that was thoroughly defeated to tip off play in the Big 12 this weekend.

Head Texas basketball coach Shaka Smart led his team to post a record of 10-2 through the non-conference slate. The only losses the Longhorns had during the non-conference schedule, at least so far, came at the hands of the Georgetown Hoyas in the 2K Empire Classic and against the Providence Friars.

There’s two factors that remained consistent for Smart in his fifth season coaching the Longhorns. Those two factors include an offense that for some reason can’t hit open shots consistently, and strong defense that will lapse from time-to-time.

The strong defense is showing up this season for the Longhorns with the No. 56 defensive rating among all Division 1 programs (90.3). Texas is also allowing just over 60 points per game (which is good for top 25 best in Division 1).

But the offense is showing up to play in most games again this season. Texas is nearly ranking outside the top 225 in Division 1 in offensive rating (99.8) and they are scoring just 67.8 points per game.

Texas has just two players with at least one offensive win share through 10 games, which includes junior center Jericho Sims and junior guard Matt Coleman. The reason for this is that the Longhorns don’t have a main source of offense they can rely on night in and night out.

That source looked to possibly be Coleman at the start of college basketball’s regular season, but his play regressed within the last six games.

This all builds up to a more common narrative for Smart that for some reason he just can’t get this Longhorns offense going. Texas struggling on offense is nothing new in its fifth year under Smart. They haven’t ranked inside the top 100 in offensive rating or in the top 200 in Division 1 in points per game in any of the five seasons under Smart’s direction.

In the loss to Baylor on Jan. 4, the Longhorns offense did what they do best, miss open shots and score well under 50 points against a key Big 12 opponent. Texas shot well under 40 percent from the field, and just about 18 percent from three-point range. Even though Baylor shot around 31 percent from the field, the Longhorns couldn’t take advantage.

Texas was outrebounded by a margin of 13, despite a game-high 16 boards from Sims. Texas was also a measly 5-of-15 from the free-throw line, which is about as bad as it gets in terms of the lack of ability to make open shots.

Somehow, Texas can’t shoot better than 63.7 percent from the charity stripe and 32.6 percent from beyond the arc so far this season. Both of those marks rank well below the top 200 Division 1 programs in the country.

Smart needs to figure out this offense and fast, or else the the pressure on his shoulders will continue to ramp up in his fifth year on the Forty Acres.