Texas Basketball: Shaka Smart’s Longhorn tenure similar to Charlie Strong
The Texas basketball program has now slipped down to seventh place in the Big 12 standings so far. Head coach Shaka Smart isn’t in a good spot.
A loss to forget occurred for the Texas basketball program on Feb. 15, with the Iowa State Cyclones completely dominating them to the tune of a 29-point defeat. Saturday afternoon saw head coach Shaka Smart and his team come up short of answers for an Iowa State team that was also without their best player.
The questions surrounding a possible hot seat for the head coach of the Texas Longhorns basketball program Smart were looming for going on three years now. Texas expects a high level of success out of pretty much all of their athletic programs, and rightly so. The Longhorns carry one of the most well recognized brands of any college in the entire country. And this is one of the most well funded athletic departments across the board.
With that in mind, this Longhorn basketball program only making it to the NCAA Tournament once in the last three years is unacceptable by most considerations. If Texas misses the Big Dance again this year, it would be three of the last four seasons that Smart missed getting a bid.
It doesn’t matter that the Longhorns won the NIT last season. Most proficient college basketball programs would rather win one or no games as a single-digit seed in the NCAA Tournament than win the NIT. Texas is likely no exception in that realm.
After that aforementioned loss to Iowa State, the Longhorns now carry a record of 14-11 (4-8 Big 12). They currently sit on the outside looking in for an NCAA Tournament bid if the selections were decided today. The opportunities are starting to run thin for the Longhorns to make their case to make the NCAA Tournament too.
Would this be the last straw for Smart if the Longhorns are to miss the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year?
A rumored hot seat for Smart kept hanging over this program at different times over the course of the last three seasons. Nothing really ever came of that. Texas never even made significant coaching staff changes in the last couple years beyond Smart.
But Smart seems to be sharing a similar tenure with the Texas men’s basketball program as former football head coach Charlie Strong did from 2014-2016. Both Smart and Strong ran clean programs on the Forty Acres and recruited well.
Moreover, both Smart and Strong upset a lot of good teams that it seemed like they had no business beating. Hence Strong beating the Oklahoma Sooners in the 2015 Red River Rivalry Game and upsetting the Baylor Bears in back-to-back years when they were true Big 12 Title contenders.
Last season, Smart did well to upset teams like the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Kansas Jayhawks. But he also missed the NCAA Tournament and only won 21 games through the course of the entire season. Beating teams like UNC and Kansas is great, but it doesn’t matter if Texas isn’t making it to the NCAA Tournament.
And while Smart tends to recruit well during his time with the Longhorns, his 2020 recruiting class leaves a lot to be desired. Unless Texas snags the elite five-star Vandegrift power forward Greg Brown, then they are sure to have a very underwhelming 2020 class. Brown is the lone realistic five-star target for the 2020 Texas recruiting class at this point in time.
But let’s compare the class rankings of the last three cycles for Smart alongside Strong’s three with Texas. Smart snagged the nation’s No. 17, 8, and 7 recruiting classes between the 2017-2019 cycles (per 247Sports Team Composite Rankings). Meanwhile, Strong nabbed the nation’s No. 7, 10, and 17 classes between 2014-2016.
Those recruiting class rankings are almost identical in three cycles between Smart and Strong. But neither provided very fruitful results in the following years. Texas only made one bowl game during Strong’s tenure on the Forty Acres, and no winning seasons. Under Smart’s direction, Texas made the NCAA Tournament in two of the first four years. He could make it two in five if the Longhorns miss out on the Big Dance yet again.
Next. How good defense isn't translating to wins for Texas. dark
Up next for Longhorn basketball is a meeting with the TCU Horned Frogs on Feb. 19, as they look to rake in their 15th win of the aging 2019-20 regular season. Texas is sitting on a four-game losing streak, and they need to come up with a big win to help their coach’s image right now. Smart could be looking at a similar run on the Forty Acres compared to what Strong experienced with the Texas football program.