Texas basketball should pursue OU star transfer F Brady Manek

Since the Oklahoma Sooners saw their longtime head coach Lon Kruger retire last month, there looked to be a plethora of roster attrition just over the horizon. Losing a head coach like Kruger was going to cause some losses to the NCAA Transfer Portal. And given the Texas basketball program recently went through their own coaching regime change, they know what it’s like to deal with a high level of roster attrition.

Texas hired the former Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Chris Beard to replace Shaka Smart as their next head coach back on April 1. It was Smart that bolted from Austin back on March 26 to take the head coaching job with the Marquette Golden Eagles in his home state of Wisconsin. Texas athletic director Chris del Conte only took five days to find his next head coaching hire, and it was a good one in Beard.

Moreover, Oklahoma wound up replacing their longtime now former head coach Kruger with the former Loyola-Chicago head coach Porter Moser this week. Oklahoma got a solid head coaching hire by all indications, but they are now above three entrants to the transfer portal this offseason.

And potentially the most notable entrant to the transfer portal for the Sooners after the departure of Kruger, and subsequent hire of Moser, is the senior standout forward Brady Manek. On the afternoon of April 2, Manek posted on his Twitter timeline that he would be opening up his options as to where he could play possibly his last season in college.

Why Texas basketball should target transfer F Brady Manek?

Texas lost a lot of pieces of their own roster still in the early stages of their offseason process. Very recently, Texas lost two key commits/signees in their 2021 recruiting class and had two losses to the transfer portal. Four-star Brookfield Central power forward David Joplin and four-star IMG Academy shooting guard Tamar Bates requested releases from their signed LOI’s within the last 10 days.

And the two losses to the portal for the Longhorns included senior big man Royce Hamm and sophomore shooting guard Donovan Williams. That doesn’t even mention potential losses to the NBA, with senior big man Jericho Sims, senior guard Matt Coleman, freshman power forward Greg Brown, and sophomore power forward Kai Jones.

It goes without saying that the Longhorns would do well to add some frontcourt help out of the transfer portal this offseason. A helping hand could be provided if Beard and the Longhorns want to go after Manek that all parties are very familiar with each other.

Beard spent each of the last five years coaching up Texas Tech in the Big 12. Manek has spent each of the last four years playing for Kruger and the Sooners. The fit with Beard’s scheme wouldn’t be a usual one, since the new Texas head coach usually prefers more mobile and athletic two-way forwards in his frontcourt.

Yet, Manek can play a more mobile brand of basketball when required. He can also be a solid two-way power forward. The 6-foot-9 and 230 pound Manek is efficient with the ball in his hands, averaged less than one turnover per game in three of his four years playing for the Sooners. And he has a career 101 defensive rating, 5.4 offensive box plus/minus rating, and a block percentage above 3.0.

All of those numbers prove the versatility that Manek has in his game. The only thing that matters in regard to the Longhorns pursuit of his services out of the portal is how Beard and the new look coaching staff (that is still being constructed at the moment) feels about bringing him into the mix.

Manek is a former four-star recruit that hailed out of Harrah High School in Harrah, OK, during the 2017 recruiting cycle. He only had four scholarship offers coming out of high school, which came from the Sooners, Oklahoma State Cowboys, Mercer Bears, and Tulsa Golden Hurricane.

And Manek ranked as the nation’s No. 117 2017 high school prospect, No. 27 power forward, and No. 2 prospect out of Oklahoma (247Sports Composite).

In his four years playing for Oklahoma to date, Manek averaged 12.0 points per game, 5.6 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.5 steals, and 0.8 blocks. And he’s shot a solid 45.4 percent from the field, 37.4 percent from beyond the arc, and 74.6 percent from the free-throw line.

Under the direction of the former sixth-year Texas head coach Smart, the team finished up with a record of 19-8 (11-6 Big 12), following an early exit in the postseason in the Round of 64 in a March 20 loss to 14-seed Abilene Christian.