Texas Basketball: 3 head coaching candidates the Longhorns should avoid

Jamie Dixon, TCU head coach

A name that popped up on one of the more interesting potential candidate lists for the Longhorns to consider to replace Beard is the seventh-year TCU Horned Frogs head coach Jamie Dixon. The longtime TCU head coach and former Pitt Panthers bench boss Dixon was tabbed in a piece by the Dallas Morning News as a possible candidate for Texas to replace Beard.

That Dallas Morning News article cited the past connection at TCU between del Conte and Dixon as something that could connect them in this hiring process for the Texas athletic director. Dixon was one of del Conte’s last major head coaching hires when he was TCU’s athletic director.

However, I don’t believe that Dixon is a good fit at Texas for a multitude of reasons.

First and foremost, Dixon just doesn’t have the established track record of success in the Big 12 that the Longhorns would be looking for. Dixon made the NCAA Tournament just twice in five tries as TCU’s head coach.

And even if you want to count the 2019-20 COVID-19 season that ended before the NCAA Tournament could even start, TCU was not on track to get a bid for March Madness that year either.

Another reason why I don’t think Dixon would be the right fit at Texas has to do with his track record of success on the recruiting trail. Texas can recruit at a high level, which is something that Dixon hasn’t done all that well during his time in Fort Worth.

TCU has never landed a recruiting class ranked in the top 25 under Dixon in more than a half-dozen cycles. And the Horned Frogs have only hauled in three blue-chip commits from the high school ranks under Dixon.

All in all, I think the combination of a lack of postseason and recruiting success is more than enough to convince the Longhorns to look elsewhere.