Texas Basketball officially announces hiring of assistant KT Turner
The latest addition to the coaching staff of the Texas basketball program was officially announced this weekend, with the hiring of KT Turner.
There was a good bit of coaching staff turnover for the Texas basketball program over the course of the last two offseasons beyond head coach Shaka Smart. But the Texas men’s hoops program is trying to get everything set ahead of the start of the 2020-21 season, which should be here in the next couple of months in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Heading into the weekend, the Longhorns made the hiring of another part of Smart’s coaching staff official. On the official Texas Basketball team Twitter page, the hiring of former SMU Mustangs assistant coach KT Turner was made official back on Sep. 4.
The hiring of Turner was met by a pretty raucous reaction, in a positive sense, on social media for people around the SMU and Texas hoops programs.
https://twitter.com/CoachKTTurner/status/1302027533916033024
https://twitter.com/CoachKTTurner/status/1302088282763923457
There were two empty slots to fill on the bench for the Longhorns coaching staff. The official hiring of Turner will fill one of those. Turner will replace the departed former Texas assistant Jai Lucas, who joined up with head coach John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats basketball program late last month.
Turner was an assistant on the coaching staff with the SMU program for seven seasons prior to taking this job with the Longhorns. Prior to the seven seasons he spent on staff with SMU, Turner was with head coach Gregg Marshall and the Wichita State Shockers hoops program. And he worked his way into the college basketball coaching ranks, taking a job with Texas A&M Corpus Christi back in 2011.
During his run for seven years at SMU, Turner was a part of a team that won two American Athletic Conference Tournament titles and two AAC regular season titles. He was also on staff with Wichita State when they made a run to the Final Four in 2013.
Next. 3 former Longhorn football transfers to watch in Week 1. dark
Texas finished up the 2019-20 season with a record of 19-12 (9-9 Big 12). Their season was called off prior to their first game in the Big 12 Tournament in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. Smart and the Longhorns will be hoping to parlay the momentum from a hot end to the 2019-20 regular season with the hiring of Turner to success at the outset of next season.