Texas Basketball: 3 assistant coach candidates to replace Ulric Maligi

Head coach Chris Beard and the Texas basketball program received some bad news on March 23 that first-year assistant coach and recruiting ace Ulric Maligi would be leaving this coaching staff to link up with a Big 12 foe. Maligi will be leaving Texas to join new head coach Jerome Tang and the Big 12 foe Kansas State Wildcats.

This is a sizable blow to the Longhorns coaching staff, and namely has some big implications on the recruiting trail. Maligi was often the top recruiter for the Longhorns pursuing their premier blue-chip targets on the recruiting trail for the 2022 and 2023 classes.

He was largely responsible for Texas being able to sign a pair of five-star recruits in the 2022 class in Dallas-Kimball point guard Arterio Morris and Montverde Academy forward Dillon Mitchell. In fact, it’s hard to see Texas signing a top 10 ranked recruiting class in the nation without the efforts of Maligi on the trail.

Who Texas basketball could target to replace Ulric Maligi this offseason?

This will be one of the first major tests of the offseason for Beard in terms of forming his coaching staff leading up to the 2022-23 season. Losing assistant coaches can always be part of the gig, but that doesn’t mean the departure of Maligi won’t have potential consequences for the Longhorns for the current team and with notable prospects on the recruiting trail.

And this challenge comes for Beard in the midst of him trying to retain as many key players as he can following the end of the 2021-22 season. Texas’ season ended on March 20 in a tough Round of 32 loss to the three-seed Purdue Boilermakers in the NCAA Tournament.

Thus, it wasn’t too long after the Longhorns season ended that Beard was confronted with one of his bigger challenges of the offseason.

With that in mind, here’s a look into three possible candidates for Beard and the Longhorns to replace Maligic on the coaching staff this offseason.