Texas Basketball: 3 best shooters of the Shaka Smart-era

During his time with the Texas basketball program since 2015, head coach Shaka Smart hasn’t made himself known for having a bevy of shooters.

Finishing up in disappointing fashion without a postseason, or a single Big 12 Tournament game, the Texas basketball program was left with a lot of unanswered questions entering the 2020 offseason. Texas, like pretty much every other college hoops program around the country, had their postseason hopes dashed by the novel coronavirus pandemic back in March.

Before Texas could play in their first Big 12 Tournament game on March 12 against the five-seed Texas Tech Red Raiders, the COVID-19 pandemic had already effectively cancelled the rest of the festivities in Kansas City. Ahead of Selection Sunday, the NCAA Tournament was called off to due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

This left the fan base wondering what would happen with head coach Shaka Smart, who’s seat heated up for much of the last two seasons. You can’t really count the season that was as a mark against Smart’s record since no one got to have a shot in the “Big Dance”. Texas also ended the regular season mostly on a high-note, with a five-game winning streak coming into the home finale on March 7.

Since Smart appears to be returning by all accounts for next season on the Forty Acres, it’s worth looking back on the more successful of times from his five years with the program thus far. Smart will be entering his sixth year with the program, and it almost seems much longer than that since he was hired.

One area where Smart’s teams don’t tend to excel is with outside shooting. That’s something that he will need to improve upon next season, but he did have a few good shooters to work with in the past. Some of those will be returning for the 2020-21 campaign too.

Here’s a look back at the three best shooters for the Texas Longhorns basketball program under the direction of Shaka Smart since the 2015-16 season.