Bitterwhiteguy

That place is Phog East when Kansas is playing, Hilton South when Iowa State is playing, and Octagon East when KSU plays. Those three fanbases snap up 80% of the seats to the tourney. It'll be a road game for Texas against any of those three.

I was speaking about schools in general rather than their current head coach unless I specifically noted the coach.

Jerry Palm has been the outlier all season long because he uses outdated metrics.

I think Texas could compete with Indiana & UCLA for coaches these days, depending on context. Schools Texas is unlikely to win a bidding war against: Duke, UNC, UK, KU, Louisville, Villanova, Gonzaga (at least while Few is there), Michigan State (ditto Izzo), Syracuse, UConn, Virginia. Some of the smaller schools in the Philly area/Big East area will punch above their weight when it comes to retaining coaches they really want as well. Texas could pry somebody out of, say, Xavier but they'd have to seriously overpay to get that coach.

I remember the last time Texas hired a defensive-minded coach with questionable offensive acumen and one good NCAA tourney run to his name. Most of Barnes' old assistants are still his assistants. Ogden is in his first year at UT-A, otherwise most of the rest are with him at Tennessee.

It wasn't fighting.

Texas has now cursed Georgia in two sports.

He's still on the bench and they were at least considering a redshirt for this year last I had heard, so if he's retiring it would be news to me.

Lindsey should be back.

Scott Drew intensifies

He has one coming in next year, a #108 freshman this year, and had a top-15 transfer in 2017 who transferred to Toledo in the off-season.

Arizona's post-tourney KenPom ranking: 23 Michigan State's post-tourney KenPom ranking: 45 Texas' current KenPom ranking: 27 The acceptance of advanced metrics in the last few years has significantly changed how the committee picks teams; they all have access to Pomeroy now, as an example. Win/Loss record still matters, but there's a lot more data available to them than there was even a decade ago. That's why 8-10 conference records are more viable than they were previously, plus as others have stated the bubble is enormous this year. The PAC-12 normally sends 3-5 teams to the tourney and they might be a single-big league this year because they're garbage, that's 2-4 at-large spots available to teams who might otherwise end up the the NIT. There's a lot more room to get in as an at-large than in most years.

The irony of the situation is that cancer doomed last year but might end up sending the next two seasons into the stratosphere.

He's forgetting Jake Lindsey, who was likely going to be the best or second-best player on Baylor but has been out the whole year.

The tournament committee would devour the chance to put a 8/9-seed Texas in Tennessee's bracket, while my insides would turn into the deleted scenes from a Tool video.

How can I call out somebody whose posts I don't see?

Couple of minor things: We had to drop the convo for time reasons - Tim and I would blather on for 90 minutes at a time if Will didn't keep us on track - so we didn't get into every detail on the senior leadership thing, but it's fair to put some of it on the coaches (mostly with DO) because they're the ones who recruited him. They probably whiffed on vetting his mental makeup, or judged the risk/reward differently than we're doing in hindsight. Snoop is...well, he's Snoop. He will never not be Snoop, and I imagine if Barnes was still around Snoop would've transferred a couple years ago. As for Jones, he could play right now. The coaches are making the decision to keep him out until his treatment is complete (there's one round left, if memory serves) which preserves the medical redshirt option, but he's practicing with the team.

Barnes would've built a doghouse underneath the McClellan doghouse (which was underneath the doghouse everyone else rotated through) to shove Snoop into.

They made the NCAA tourney 5 straight times from '01-'06, decided it wasn't good enough, and pushed Sendek out. They then hired Sidney Lowe and missed the tourney entirely the next five years....so yea, that's kinda the point.

Downside, as in Indiana who has missed the tourney 7 times in the 17 years since they fired Knight, or Georgetown since JTIII's father "retired", or Arkansas since they fired Strollin' Nolan, or Illinois since they fired Bruce Weber, or NC State since they shoved Herb Sendek out the door, etc. etc. As someone who remembers the days before Barnes, I know it can be worse.

I'll tag onto this to clarify what I meant by invoking history because the intent wasn't to say Texas "can't" be competitive at the top levels, rather that before you decide what you want to be you need to have an honest view of who you are so you understand the barriers to overcome. This is true of any realistic goal-setting, in my experience, if you want to bench 225 you have to know what you bench now. History says that Texas is not at a level of Louisville, much less the Dukes and Kansases of the world. Before the current Jay Wright run, Villanova was closer to a peer, but they're clearly ahead of Texas now. I did a fairly deep dive on this about 5 years ago when the Barnes era was starting to come to an end, mainly so I could try to quantify what should be a reasonable goal for a program like Texas. You can read the article if you like, it gives an idea of what I think is the ceiling for a program like Texas. The short version is that I think the apex for Texas is among the Louisvilles and Michigan States of the world, but not the Dukes & Kansases...at least not any time soon. The gap between the Duke/KU/UK/UNC group and the rest of college basketball over the past 34 years (since the NCAA tourney went to 64 teams) is pretty staggering, and it takes more than a decade of matching/exceeding their success to even start to breathe near them. Some people think Texas is more easily able to make the leap into the next tier of programs than I do, and if those people have the right coach pegged then they're probably onto something. Others who have stated getting the right coach helps a ton are absolutely correct, but striking gold like that in any sport is fairly difficult - ask Indiana, Arkansas, or Georgetown fans how they feel about the past 10-15 years - and if we're doing our due diligence on the pros & cons of a coaching change we have to look at the potential downside as clearly as the potential upside. Everyone lands on a different spot in the spectrum of risk tolerance, many on this board and others are more willing to make a change and risk the downside than I am and that's perfectly fine.

It's not, and that's sort of the rub with Shaka's teams thus far; aside from the 11-22 season (I need an acronym for that season, like RIGBY from Silicon Valley) his teams have been close to top-25 but not quite there. His teams have been 39, 70, 36, & 29 (so far) in Pomeroy, so analytics says this team is closer to being a top-25 program than not. This is what infuriates me, for two reasons: 1) it's more frustrating to be running behind someone who is just out of reach than someone who blows past you with no chance of catching and 2) a significant number of fans think these teams are somewhere between mediocre and terrible when most metrics say they're more like "good, but not as good as you want them to be". Shaka's program has yet to find 4th gear, and 3rd gear is good enough to get them into the tourney most years but not good enough to make the kind of run we all want to see in March. Will they ever consistently find 4th gear? Maybe, maybe not. Which leads me to the point I don't think enough people are talking about: Shaka has basically been an extension of Barnes' last 4 seasons at Texas. I posted this earlier this week on Reddit: Barnes' Big 12 record his last 4 years: 2 losing records, 1 .500 record, never more than 11 wins Shaka's Big 12 record his first 3.5 years: 2 losing records, 1 .500 record (so far), never more than 11 wins Barnes' NCAA tourney results his last 4 years: 1-2, missed one year Shaka's NCAA tourney results his last 3.5 years: 0-2, missed one year, this year TBD Barnes' Pomeroy rankings the last 4 years: 32, 94, 41, 24 Shaka's Pomeroy rankings the last 3.5 years: 39, 70, 36, 29 (so far) I think the most compelling argument someone can make about Shaka's tenure thus far is that he's performed at pretty close to the same level Barnes did in his final few years on campus. I went through and looked at a number of offensive & defensive metrics (I don't have the spreadsheet with me) and basically it boiled down to Barnes & Shaka both being really good at a couple of things, pretty good at a few others, and poor at a couple of things by design. For example, Barnes' teams were terrible at stealing the ball because that's not what his defenses were designed to do, and Shaka's teams don't get offensive rebounds because they run back to get set on defense. But at the end of the day, they were basically a wash. So if you accept the idea that Shaka is basically Bald Barnes, the logical next question is: is that good enough? When you consider the history of Texas basketball, it becomes pretty clear that since the Korean War, Texas basketball hasn't been the kind of program that consistently makes noise in March. Even if you limit it to the past ~30 years, they're basically a program that makes the dance most years but doesn't get very far. Barnes had a 6-7 year run where he vastly exceeded the norm, but is that sustainable at Texas? So far, the answer has been no. Penders didn't do it much, Barnes had more years where he didn't than did, and Shaka's been about like the last 6-7 years of Barnes. Rick warped our expectations through his success and became a victim of that success. Does that mean Texas fans need to recalibrate their expectations, or do they think they should be permanently on that higher plane? And if they think they should be on that higher plane, will they show the level of support necessary to help lift the program there? If Texas is going to maximize its chance at landing the next Tom Izzo or Mark Few, they need to show that coach that the program and fanbase is willing to consistently push to that level. More and more college coaches are finding a smaller pond and thriving financially, so just being 'TEXAS' isn't enough on its own. I guess what I'm getting at is that Texas fans need to have an honest discussion with themselves about if they really think the program should be up at that next tier behind the 4 blue bloods, and if so what they're willing to do to support the program. It's a symbiotic relationship to some extent; the blue bloods stay the blue bloods because the fanbase is vociferously behind them, and any program who wants to get into that group has to have the motivated fanbase behind them to do it. I realize this is a bit of a chicken & egg thing and that the program needs to hold up its end of the bargain as well; the intent here is not to absolve the basketball program of responsibility, rather to point out that if you want your white knight to come over, you're going to have to start doing some crunches and shaving your legs. Even if he passes you by, you'll still look more desirable to the next suitor. Beard is getting paid and treated like a golden god in a town he has deep roots in, just saying you're Texas isn't going to get him here. That's likely going to be the case with most of the coaches you're looking to replace Shaka with, as well. If you're not willing to go that extra mile, that's also fine, so long as you understand you're making the window for success that much smaller. This was a fucking ramble.

All over the place. There is a significant (or at least significantly loud) portion of the Texas fanbase who thinks the best 6-year run from Barnes should be the norm rather than the apex of the program.

It's because I start writing after I'm done using my screaming pillow.

If I understand correctly, the remaining guaranteed money for Shaka is around $14.5m now (we're halfway through the season) and $13m after the season ends. Perrin extended Shaka by a year, so 3-ish mil of that is on him, not Patterson. As for why he got so much guaranteed money, that's becoming par for the course in luring coaches out of spots they enjoy. Chris Mack got something conceptually similar to leave Xavier for Louisville, and whoever you want to replace Shaka will demand the same. If you want Beard, assuming he says yes (which isn't a given) his buyout will be in the neighborhood of $6 mil, so the price of replacing Shaka is more like $20 mil before you pay Beard a dime of salary. All of this says to me that you're in for one more year of Shaka at the very least.