Smart’s seat starting to heat up
Despite winning first Big 12 title, latest early exit could put coach’s job status in question
AUSTIN — Six years ago, Texas athletic director Steve Patterson introduced 37-year-old Shaka Smart as the successor to Rick Barnes.
Smart had spent the previous six years at Virginia Commonwealth, winning 163 games and annually attracting March bandwagoners. Those lovable mid-major Rams even reached the Final Four in 2011, something Texas had achieved just once since 1950. Logic dictated Smart, with his marketable Havoc defense and precocious success, would become the nation’s next great coach with the mighty backing of Texas.
Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, Smart’s sixth season ended much as his first one did: in heartbreak and confusion at the NCAA tournament. The thirdseeded Longhorns (19-8) lost 53-52 to No. 14 seed Abilene Christian (24-4), a Division II program up until 2013, in the East Region’s first round, a stunning outcome that has destabilized Smart’s program yet again.
“It just doesn’t feel real,” Texas senior guard Matt Coleman said Saturday night from Indianapolis. “I feel like I’m going to wake up from a bad dream.”
Even with uncertainty swirling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was supposed to be the year for Smart.
Texas returned every single scholarship player from a group that won 19 games and tied for third in the Big 12 in 2019-20. It added Vandegrift five-star recruit Greg Brown, a mind-blowing 6-foot-9 athlete who seriously considered bypassing college to sign with the NBA G-League. Smart had his guy in Coleman, a revitalized scoring maestro in Andrew Jones, a burgeoning lottery pick in Kai Jones and an abundance of talented vets poised for a long March run.
And somehow, eight days after the Longhorns claimed their first Big 12 tournament title, their season is extinguished. The question now is whether Smart’s tenure at Texas is, too.
It’s unclear how much stock Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte will put into that conference championship. Winning the Maui Invitational back on Dec. 2, recording the program’s first regular-season sweep of Kansas and reaching No. 4 in the Associated Press Top 25 are all nice bullet points, but they’re also somewhat superficial accomplishments outweighed by one singular postseason disappointment.
Smart, who has two years remaining on his contract, is 109-86 overall at Texas and 51-56 in Big 12 play with one postseason NIT title. His three NCAA tournament first-round exits have come by a combined eight points, all in agonizing fashion. Saturday’s loss to Abilene Christian arrived almost exactly five years after No. 11 seed Northern Iowa sank Smart’s Longhorns on a banked half-court buzzerbeater.
“Extremely, extremely disappointing,” Smart said Saturday. “Because we come into this, we earn a 3seed in the NCAA Tournament. I told the guys the other day, like you guys don’t understand how hard that is to do. And we have earned that. Now we want to make the most of it, and we weren’t able to do that.”
It’s not just the Longhorns lost to a No. 14 seed. It’s how they lost.
The shortest team in the tournament outrebounded Texas 36-31 overall and 18-5 on the offensive glass. The Wildcats scored 23 points off 23 turnovers. They attempted 27 more shots than Texas, a staggering number which made all the difference.
Those are all heart stats. Or as Smart likes to say, “juice.” And the Wildcats played with more of it.
It’s inconceivable that a group featuring only three underclassmen would look so rattled against Abilene Christian, a Southland Conference team that had never won on this stage before. But Texas hasn’t won at this level since 2014, and Smart has gone one-and-done in five straight NCAA tournaments dating back to his time at VCU.
Even if A. Jones’ goahead 3 with 15 seconds remaining had held up as the final score, questions would linger about Smart and this team.
The starting backcourt, the engine, shot just 9for-26 and recorded 15 turnovers. Senior big Jericho Sims cruised to a pair of easy dunks in the opening three minutes then recorded only one shot and four free throw attempts over the final 37 minutes. Brown played just six minutes. K. Jones fell silent after opening the second half with two swift scores at the rim.
Afterwards, Coleman tried deflecting blame from Smart.
“They’re not in the locker room every day,” Coleman said. “He built a culture here. He can’t win a game, he’s not on the court. His guys just didn’t play up to their skill set, their what we know we can play at. It’s not on him. I failed him.”
Texas could pay $7.1 million to buy out the remaining two years on Smart’s contract. That price tag probably wouldn’t deter Del Conte after the school paid $15.4 million for football coach Tom Herman to go away.
It’s clear that Smart, Del Conte and most everyone expected more of this program. What’s murkier, at least for now, is whether Texas will decide it’s time for a change.