Texas Basketball: 3 head coaching candidates to avoid at all costs

Candidates to avoid No. 3: Luke Yaklich

A former assistant coach under Smart’s staff with Texas, current Illinois-Chicago head coach Luke Yaklich, has been mentioned as a potential candidate for CDC to consider this offseason. While Yaklich doesn’t look to realistically be at the top of the Longhorns list at this point in time, he really shouldn’t be a candidate in this search.

There are much better options for the Longhorns out there to consider than Yaklich. He didn’t look to be a bad assistant coach for Texas in recent years by any means, but landing a head coach like Chris Beard from the Texas Tech Red Raiders or Brooklyn Nets assistant Royal Ivey should be much better fits.

Yaklich was a Texas assistant coach during the 2019-20 campaign, before taking the head coaching job with Illinois-Chicago last offseason. In his first year as the UIC head coach, Yaklich registered a subpar record of 9-13. UIC wasn’t even among the top half of Horizon Conference teams last season.

Before taking on a head coaching job as big as that of the Longhorns, Yaklich needs to prove himself more at the lower-tier Division I program level than what he showed in the 2020-21 campaign. Some other mid-major or major conference programs could potentially look into him as a head coaching candidate if he has a few more successful years with UIC.