With reports surfacing that Rick Barnes will be fired by the University of Texas, the Longhorns hoops program will begin the hazy task of finding their next basketball coach. Before that happens, a review of how things got to the point of firing the winningest basketball coach of all time at Texas is in order.
Recent failure to live up to expectations
Rick Barnes is a great recruiter – Texas basketball landed several elite hoop recruits at a football school. However, especially in recent years, the resulting seasons while having those recruits did not live up to expectation. 2015 was the epitome of that failure.
Under Barnes, Texas teams tended to peak midseason, then they would get beaten by teams with less talent. Ultimately, Texas tended to do just enough to get themselves in the tournament.
Such a pattern typically happens to coaches who are rebuilding a program, but have a down year. It shouldn’t happen to a coach who is in their 17th season at a school.
Recruiting momentum in Texas
By all accounts, Texas signee Kerwin Roach is a great Texas guard. However, Roach is not the highest rated Texas recruit out of this last recruiting class. In fact, Roach wasn’t ranked in the Top 5. Conversely, Texas A&M, with a struggling program, landed 3 of the Top 5 Texas recruits.
Several years ago, Texas was a contender for Julius Randle but ultimately lost to Kentucky. Worse was the recruitment of the Harrison twins, who did not consider the Horns.
The persistent failure to sign players ranked among the top five recruits in the state of Texas lead many to question Rick Barnes. Basketball recruiting is done on a more national scale than football, but UT’s coach should be at least getting one of the top five Texas recruit every year.
It’s all about the money…and a new stadium
The intriguing question is whether Steve Patterson makes the move to fire Barnes if the Frank Erwin Center wasn’t planned to be demolished in a few years. New stadiums cost a lot of money, and Patterson wants the city of Austin to kick in some help.
The city of Austin isn’t going to be motivated to invest money if it won’t get a return on the investment. At this point Patterson is going to have to sweeten the deal for the city of Austin to get involved and that means raising money through many of the donors throughout the basketball program.
Simply stated, no one likes to be a part of a stale program – donors want to be in on the ground floor of something special.
Texas needs to go big for this hire to excite donors and the city. There are already multiple names being mentioned but Patterson may need to consider going for a splash hire to generate momentum.
Epilogue
I don’t believe Rick Barnes deserves to be fired for all he has done for the program. My hope was that Barnes would remain part of the Texas basketball program in a different capacity.
Since the Statesman is reporting that Barnes is fired, my guess is he didn’t believe he deserved to be fired and wouldn’t accept any other role in the program. In all likelihood, Barnes probably wants to keep coaching; however, obviously won’t be doing so in Austin. I expect Barnes to take a job closer to North Carolina at a smaller school.
Whoever takes over the Texas basketball program is going to have to be someone who can hit the ground running. Someone who can get big-time recruits to play for a football school and then win big at that football school.
Billy Donovan did it. Thad Matta is doing it. Now the question is whether Texas finds a coach that can do the same.
