Texas Basketball: Jay Bilas says Shaka Smart has ‘no excuse’ for ACU loss

Head coach Shaka Smart and this Texas basketball program were left reeling following an early exit in March Madness over the weekend. Texas was upset in the Round of 64 late in the night of March 20 by the 14-seed Abilene Christian Wildcats and head coach Joe Goulding. ACU got the upset of the three-seed Texas by the final score of 53-52. This came as a huge surprise to Texas fans, as their team entered this game as a sizable nine-point favorite.

And it wasn’t just fans on the Forty Acres that were shocked by this result in falling short on last-second made free throws by ACU junior big man Joe Pleasant. The Longhorns underwent one of the more jolting upset losses in the entire Round of 63 of the NCAA Tournament this year.

Texas went into the NCAA Tournament with high hopes that this would be the year that Smart and this squad would finally turn the corner in terms of postseason success. A valid reason for optimism arrived after the Longhorns downed the Oklahoma State Cowboys in the final round of the Big 12 Tournament to win this conference title for the first time in program history.

New direction for Shaka Smart and Texas basketball?

At a time when the Longhorns had the perfect opportunity to make a good run in the NCAA Tournament, they had one of the bigger letdowns in recent memory for this program. Smart is now 0-3 in the NCAA Tournament, with a plethora of bad Round of 64 losses.

His resume in the postseason now shows losses in the Round of 64 to the 11-seed Northern Iowa Panthers, seven-seed Nevada Wolfpack, and 14-seed Abilene Christian.

Following this one-point loss to the Wildcats over the weekend, there is a media and fan firestorm adding to the increasingly hot seat of Smart. Numerous calls for Smart’s job have echoed throughout the Forty Acres and the college hoops media landscape as a whole.

And another prominent voice in the college hoops media landscape added his opinion to the mix following Texas’ loss to ACU. ESPN’s Jay Bilas threw his opinion into the mix on College GameDay over the weekend, stating that there was “no excuse” for this sort of loss for Smart and the Longhorns in the Round of 64.

More specifically, Bilas added that the Longhorns had plenty of time to prepare and had no excuse to come out with this lack of preparation and effort against a 14-seed like Abilene Christian.

Texas finished up this season after the tough loss to ACU on March 20 with a record of 19-8 (11-6 Big 12). They held a five-game winning streak prior to this Round of 64 defeat. And next up for the Wildcats is a meeting with the 11-seed UCLA Bruins on March 22.