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Fire Shaka Smart

smokebomb

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Red Five
Red Five

That is tough to accomplish in four years, but I wouldn't put it past Shaka.

immamac
immamac
Camelback80
Camelback80

Shaka should definitely get at least one more year. Many of his recruits will finally be upperclassmen by then, and he'll have his best shot of any year he's been here. Fans need to realize 2 maj

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Napoleon

Napoleon 8,612

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2 hours ago, Goo Punch said:

They used to call it the Great 8 and then changed it to Elite 8 at some point. 

I may have just aged myself.

(Though I didn't follow it as much from 2007-2014+, because I was not in the country... so I have more years with the former... I still just aged myself.)

 

2 hours ago, satyanash said:

😥

FUCK!



NOW I'm depressed.

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AustinMT

AustinMT 952

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2 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

CDC is a charlatan and is part of the problem.  Sigh. 

Good thing our idiotic administration gave him an $18+ million guaranteed contract for another 7 years.  

I don’t know what to think about CDC.  He gets a pass because those before him were so bad. Perrin was in over his head, and Patterson was a complete fail.  CDC is definitely more outgoing and fan friendly than Dodds, though Dodds clearly built a financial empire.

I think passing on Oliver Luck was a huge miss.

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Rimbo

Rimbo 25,786

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2 hours ago, AustinMT said:

I don’t know what to think about CDC.  He gets a pass because those before him were so bad. Perrin was in over his head, and Patterson was a complete fail.  CDC is definitely more outgoing and fan friendly than Dodds, though Dodds clearly built a financial empire.

I think passing on Oliver Luck was a huge miss.

Yeah, but we hated Dodds up until the late 1990s, too.

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5,244

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“Shaka’s our coach,” Del Conte told the American-Statesman on Friday. “Nothing’s changed. We won five of the last six down the stretch, finished third in the conference. We have a good team coming back. Nothing’s changed on my end.”

Fuck you Del Conte.

 

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5,244

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On 3/12/2020 at 11:17 AM, Wally Pryor said:

Framework is coming from CDC: "I love how we finished so strongly at the end of the regular season and have no doubt that would have carried over into the Big 12 Tourney and then with an invitation to the NCAA Tournament."

Christmas card to COVID-19 from Smart.

Indeed.

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SwanderedTalent

SwanderedTalent 5,761

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14 hours ago, bschoolprof said:

I have a very strong feeling CDC would have kept Shaka even without Corona.  That's why he sucks IMO.

His job is to be a nice guy to the fans, not the coaches.   

 

8 hours ago, orangecat92 said:

.....CDC proves that 9 and 9 is our standard, and now Herman is up.  Herman is probably feeling pretty good right now.  He can go 8 and 5 and keep his job.  

 

We suck, we don't care about winning, we're Texas.  

Correct and correct. Del Conte was hired in December of 2017, which means he's sat through three seasons of Shaka Smrt Texas Basketball. He's already had ample opportunity to draw the correct and obvious conclusion that our basketball program under Smart will win a little over 50% of its games and finish in the middle of the pack in the conference yearly. The idea that you sit on a .500 coach indefinitely waiting for him to breakthrough (which he will, for one year, next year, if Greg Brown signs here)--- that can only happen at fat, happy rich programs like Texas. 

Del Conte's job is to maximize revenue and keep the overall reputation of Texas athletics positive. If you mistakenly think he needs to win big to do that, you should find another program to follow. It is enough for us to aspire to the Stanford model. We don't have to win like Stanford does, that's not the point. 

Shaka Smrt will be on the Texas bench for our first game in the new arena after we win 25 games and finish second in the Big 12 and win one game in the NCAA Tournament next season. He'll be on the Texas bench for the following season opener, too, even after we go 19-16 and lose in the first round of the NIT. He's going to be the coach here for three more years, because we settle for almost nothing as long as it's punctuated by occasional Sugar Bowl wins and 2nd round NCAA appearances. 

Our athletics department is a feel-good fraud. 

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 48,985

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1 hour ago, gecko said:

For all you guys bitching about CDC bringing Shaka back just remember 70% of you will be dead by the 20/21 season opener anyhow.  Math majors over on the COVID thread should have told you.

 

giphy.gif 

 

One of my favorite parts of of no NCAA Tourney in 2020 is that Bailor Basketball had good Men's and Women's teams that didn't get to play... Karma is a bitch sometimes!!  

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The_Great_Hornsby

The_Great_Hornsby 3,329

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22 hours ago, satyanash said:

😥

 

This dude was 100% saved by the Coronavirus, lets be real, ponying up for a huge buyout and trying to get a new coach in an uncertain time like this would not have been easy. Especially when you consider all of the lost revenue and possible lost revenue if we cant get a real season off the ground next year for football, and then couple that with the cost of the new basketball stadium. Shaka was never getting fired in any sort of tumultuous economic times. 

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Js1

Js1 85,117

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14 hours ago, orangecat92 said:

.....CDC proves that 9 and 9 is our standard, and now Herman is up.  Herman is probably feeling pretty good right now.  He can go 8 and 5 and keep his job.  

 

We suck, we don't care about winning, we're Texas.  

No BMD will/would pony up $10 million to get rid of Shaka. There’d be a line out the door to pay Tom’s buyout if he goes 8-5. 

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 48,985

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11 minutes ago, Rockethorn1978 said:

I don’t have twatter but I would bet cdc is getting lit up from the basketball fans right? No way he can’t get destroyed for this shit move.

 

Sorry to report.... all CDC has happening right now is pussy(cat) action...

 

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4th&Five

4th&Five 41,461

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4 hours ago, The_Great_Hornsby said:

This dude was 100% saved by the Coronavirus, lets be real, ponying up for a huge buyout and trying to get a new coach in an uncertain time like this would not have been easy. Especially when you consider all of the lost revenue and possible lost revenue if we cant get a real season off the ground next year for football, and then couple that with the cost of the new basketball stadium. Shaka was never getting fired in any sort of tumultuous economic times. 

Has a single P5 school fired their coach? Pretty obvious we weren’t going to. 

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The_Great_Hornsby

The_Great_Hornsby 3,329

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1 hour ago, Poe It Up said:

This is why Texas constantly bragging about how rich they are is embarrassing. They spend their money about as wisely as my meth addled relatives in Bakersfield.

Lol, true, we have all this money but we didnt buy the guy out when we had the chance. Now we could be stuck with him next year and beyond. 

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orangecat92

orangecat92 306

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4 hours ago, Js1 said:

No BMD will/would pony up $10 million to get rid of Shaka. There’d be a line out the door to pay Tom’s buyout if he goes 8-5. 

I hope we don't find out, but I would wager on my side.  We go 8-5, Herman comes back.  Steak dinner to the winner.   

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 48,985

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For your Reading Displeasure...

"Shaka Smart will return for sixth season at Texas"

By  FUCK CHIP BROWN       Mar 27, 1:51 PM

 

Quote

AUSTIN, Texas — After Horns247 first reported Texas basketball coach Shaka Smart will return for a sixth season at Texas on Thursday, Longhorns' athletic director Chris Del Conte confirmed the report.

"He's our coach," Del Conte told Horns247.com on Friday.

Smart, who has a $10.5 million buyout for the final three years of his contract, is 90-78 and 40-50 in Big 12 play in five seasons at Texas.

The Longhorns won five of their last six games to get into NCAA Tournament contention and were set to play fellow bubble team Texas Tech in the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City before the postseason was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Smart, who took VCU to the Final Four in 2011, hasn't won an NCAA Tournament game since 2013 and is 0-2 in such games at Texas.

Paying $10.5 million for Smart's buyout of the final three years on Smart’s contract in light of the financial stress the university is under due to the coronavirus outbreak “would be totally, fiscally irresponsible,” a high-ranking UT source told Horns247.

“After you spend the $10.5 million for the buyout, you’re probably paying for the buyout of the next coach before you even sit down to negotiate a new, long-term deal,” the source said. “Spending that kind of money right now, with everything going on, the optics would be horrible.”

Smart is currently looking for a new assistant coach. Luke Yaklich, who served as Smart’s associate head coach for one season, just accepted the head-coaching job at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Smart was hired by then-athletic director Steve Patterson and given a six-year, guaranteed contract averaging more than $3 million per season. He inherited a veteran team from previous coach Rick Barnes,  going 20-13 in Year 1 at Texas and earning a two-year contract extension from interim athletic director Mike Perrin.

In his second year as coach, Smart turned in one of the worst seasons in Texas basketball history, going  11-22 (4-14 Big 12 play) despite having eventual NBA lottery pick Jarrett Allen on the team. Inner turmoil on the team led to the dismissal of leading scorer Tevin Mack, who transferred to Alabama for two years and then Clemson.

With eventual NBA lottery pick Mo Bamba on the team, Smart went 19-15 in Year 3 at Texas (8-10 in Big 12 play), losing to Nevada in a first-round NCAA Tournament game. In Year 4, Smart had eventual NBA lottery pick Jaxson Hayes on the team and finished the regular season 16-16, missing the NCAA Tournament before going on a five-game run to win the NIT championship.

Smart's job appeared to be in jeopardy this season at 14-11 with blowout losses by 16 points to Georgetown, 22 points at Providence, 38 points at West Virginia and 29 points at Iowa State. Fan attendance at home games kept shrinking.

But Texas got on a five-game winning streak, including road victories at Texas Tech and Oklahoma, and drew 12,733 for a home game against Oklahoma State in the Longhorns' regular-season finale. A win would've likely locked up an NCAA Tournament bid. But Texas was blown out by 22 points by a Cowboys' team that was in eighth-place in the Big 12 at the time, dropping the Longhorns' record to 19-12 (9-9 Big 12) before the season was canceled.

Longhorns' fans are hoping Smart can reel in five-star power forward Greg Brown of Austin's Vandergrift High School, who also lists Kentucky, Memphis, Michigan and Auburn among his leaders. Brown is the son of former Texas football defensive back Greg Brown, who played for the Longhorns in the early 1990s.

Smart was paid $3.3 million this season and is contracted to be paid $3.4 million next season, $3.5 million in 2021-22 and $3.6 million in 2022-23. The new, $388 million Moody Center basketball arena is currently being constructed and is set to open in January 2022.

 

 

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orangecat92

orangecat92 306

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pretty interesting to me that in that article just above, the source mistakenly calls it a buyout, like some of us were prone to do.  I understood the difference after I read an article that described coaches salaries and contracts.  Smart's is NOT a buyout.  It is the amount he is due over the entire remainder of his contract.  Texas pays him, theoretically once a month, an amount of money, whether he coaches here or not.   It takes three more years to get that money to Shaka.  

That makes this quote incorrect:   “After you spend the $10.5 million for the buyout, you’re probably paying for the buyout of the next coach before you even sit down to negotiate a new, long-term deal,” the source said.     

There is no spending $10.5 million for the buyout, because there is no buyout.  That makes the equation different.  Let's say Greg Brown doesn't come here next year and the team goes 15 and 15, and actual attendance is 3500 per game.  very possible.   The amount of money lost because of keeping Shaka is real.  By the time Texas pays Shaka the last payment of his contract the Dow Jones could easily be 35000.  

Meanwhile if Texas were to hire a good coach that could actually coach, the Erwin center could be nearly filled, call it an average of 14000.  

By the time the season is over and the team is in position to actually win an NCAA tournament game, the new gym is guaranteed to be full all season long for 21-22.   

Also, another part of the quote that is incorrect, the part about having to pay a buyout.  If we were to land Coach B., we would pay 0 buyout.  He's with nobody at the moment.  

 

The bottom line is that this Athletic Department is just lazy and doesn't care about winning.  

 

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SwanderedTalent

SwanderedTalent 5,761

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57 minutes ago, orangecat92 said:

The bottom line is that this Athletic Department is just lazy and doesn't care about winning.  

Even if it was $10.5m payable immediately, it would be a justifiable expense and coaching change. The stated objective of the program is to contend for championships. We haven't been a factor in any Big 12 race since Smart was hired. The closest we've finished to first in the conference in five fucking seasons is four games out, his first year. 

What CDC is saying is that because he thinks Shaka is a nice guy, it doesn't really matter if Texas wins basketball games or not. As long as he's not losing 20, as long as our guys aren't on the front page of the Statesman for murder by rape, then a .550 record and several embarrassing blowouts and national irrelevance are OK. 

We could have John Beilein making jokes about holding his introductory press conference virtually tomorrow. Instead we have another year of bad basketball to look forward to, because an athletic department that generates almost a quarter billion dollars a year in revenue doesn't think it can afford to pay an incompetent coach to sit on his ass for a few years. 

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OU Sucks

OU Sucks 8,746

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The really shitty part about this is any coach will be able to do well with the talent we have coming back next year, plus GB3.  So when Shaka gets us in the tourney and we possibly win one or two games, he'll get another year, where we'll be back to about 8 conference wins.

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Blotto

Blotto 23,434

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Finances within athletic departments are going to be fucking ugly at every school in the country next year. And if football revenue is significantly reduced it will be a bloodbath, because that funds damn near everything and department budgets are created based on revenue projections that may not be there.

I'm not thrilled about Shaka sticking around next year, but if I was the AD there is no fucking way I'm paying Shaka's salary and bringing in another HC when there is even a slight possibility we could be hemorraging cash next year. It sucks but I'm sure CDC has a whole hell of a lot more to worry about right now than replacing Shaka. These aren't normal times, and until we get more clarity on the bigger issues going on in this country, keeping Shaka is the right financial move, even at Texas. 

So hopefully we sign Greg Brown and get after it next season. 

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TheBryMan81

TheBryMan81 2,503

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On 3/29/2020 at 5:38 AM, Rockethorn1978 said:

All this guy has done was come in and raise money and improve the football game day atmosphere. Him expecting championships is a load of shit though.

I mean looking at the 3 coaches he has hired, softball was at #1 in the country, Track and Field was BigXII coach of the year, and he retained the interim tennis coach that won the national championship.

I don't think it's fair to say that he doesn't expect championships. But he also has to deal with the finances; $10 million dollars to send Shaka packing at this snapshot in time with everything that's going on would hurt the AD more than it would have otherwise. And as mentioned above, donors probably aren't lining up to pay to fire Shaka when they don't even go to the games regardless.

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Horn80

Horn80 6,075

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It’s ironic that the best team fielded on the court all season was only a direct result of player injuries and CDC points to how the team won 5 games in a row and finished third as justification for his keeping Shaka.  If not for those injuries, Shaka would have probably lost all 5 of those games with his “starters”.   Shakablah!  

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Teryor

Teryor 4,425

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Spoiler

Shaka Smart saved his job. This much Texas confirmed last Friday, ending the speculation and debate on its men’s basketball coach that lingered all the way from summer workouts through the cancellation of a season at the very moment the stakes were highest. The decision was straightforward. The path to get there most certainly was not.

The 2019-20 campaign, Smart’s fifth at the helm, was expected to provide a declarative statement on his stewardship. Fully aware it could be the decisive season in a career that seemed destined for unmitigated success, Smart granted The Athletic five months of behind-the-scenes access along the winding way. The eyes of Texas, and a world beyond, were fixed upon him in search of answers. And he’d stand by whatever they saw. 

But after a regular season of vigorous ebbs and flows, after so much was revealed about Smart and his players in every way, the team simply walked off the court during warmups for a Big 12 tournament quarterfinal in Kansas City, Mo. A grueling course abruptly had no final exam. After learning so much, everyone is left to guess just how much they really know.

Shaka Smart will coach Texas for a sixth season. This is how he made it through to start all over again.

I. ‘Get your tuxedo off’ 

Inside Texas’ practice gym on a late October afternoon, the good word is not hard to find. It is, in fact, all around. There are all-caps catchphrases splashed on burnt orange rectangles hanging on every wall: Pace. Spacing. Eye contact/receptivity. Through the whistle! Punish! Twenty-one of them altogether, code words of conduct for players to follow. Everything we do is a domino. Feedback is our food. Ubuntu. We love to work. Every program has them. Texas just has a lot of them. What they all add up to is what everyone is waiting to see.

Smart arrived at Texas in the spring of 2015 following a six-year run at VCU that made him one of college basketball’s most coveted coaching commodities. He most memorably took the Rams to the Final Four as an 11-seed in his second season, and the program made four more NCAA Tournament appearances after that and never won fewer than 26 games after that glorious run to the first weekend in April. At the time, Smart was a sure thing. Inexorable. A comet. Here, now, he is a 42-year-old with 71 wins and 66 losses over the past four seasons, including a dead-even split in the Big 12, 31-31. His team had won the NIT six months earlier, which is great and a source of forward momentum … except it also means the Longhorns weren’t part of the field of 68 for the second time in Smart’s tenure.

The 2019-20 season, then, is as consequential as a season gets.

With just about every key component back, with a roster consisting of 10 players who were consensus top-80 recruits, this version of the Longhorns should be good enough to reach the NCAA Tournament. If it doesn’t, then even a $10 million buyout might not be enough to ward off the outcry for a regime change. In short, Smart has to show he still knows what he’s doing. “There’s some people that have told me relationships aren’t as important here — I don’t agree with that,” he says. “Number one, it’s a big part of why I got into coaching. I love the opportunity to help a guy move forward from where he was when we recruited him to where he is when he leaves here, whether he’s here for one year, whether he’s here for four years. And I do think that deep down they do matter to our guys. So I think it’s just maybe a little bit different approach — understanding that even with the relationship being important, there does have to be a time when it is pretty cut-and-dried: Hey, this is what we’re doing, this is what you gotta do. And if you don’t do it, you can’t get what you want.”

An autopsy of how Texas got here is inconclusive. Pointing to an abandonment of the Havoc system that led to so much success at VCU is a bit of a non-starter to Smart; what he describes as a way of life at VCU “was never going to be that (at Texas) just because of the makeup of the guys that we have,” as he puts it. Those guys, in theory, have been good enough. Smart has stocked this roster with well-regarded depth while also signing three elite one-and-done big men (Jarrett Allen, Mo Bamba, Jaxson Hayes) along the way. It’s just that trap doors have opened that no one could predict: late-season injuries to Bamba and Cam Ridley, Andrew Jones’ leukemia battle, Eric Davis appearing on the list of agent Christian Dawkins, Kerwin Roach’s suspension in February 2019 that essentially upended any push to an NCAA Tournament bid. And that’s only a partial list. But for all of the talent, the offense has never been great in Smart’s tenure; finishing 29th in efficiency in 2019, per KenPom.com, was the best Texas had done.

It might be fairest to say that it hasn’t been one thing, or one person. Everything and everyone haven’t aligned.

“Inconsistent,” junior Jase Febres says, when asked what he thinks outsiders think of Texas. “Really inconsistent.”

The pursuit of something more steady had begun in May. As the players left campus after final exams, Smart gave them homework: Text me your thoughts about what specific habits Texas needed to improve on in order to be a championship team. He didn’t want buzzwords or clichés; Smart asked for at least 200 words of meaty, well-considered analysis. The responses generally coalesced into four core principles: Holding teammates accountable. Receptivity when held accountable. Eliminating distractions. Winning above everything else.

Smart believed the NIT run was born of a more player-led culture; coaches delivered a game plan, and the players took ownership of it. The summer-break exercise was an attempt to extend the vibe into the fall. “Coach did a good job of putting that in a bottle for us,” sophomore forward Kamaka Hepa says. Still, here in October, the phrase “captive audience” is scribbled on the dry-erase board in Smart’s office for a reason. It’s up to him to ensure the message sticks.

“If Coach A’s audience is 50 percent more locked in on what’s being said and executing that,” Smart says, “they’re going to be that much better.”

Some message-deliverers have changed too. Andrea Hudy, previously the assistant athletics director for sport performance at Kansas for 15 years, arrived in August as the head coach for basketball strength and conditioning. She’s a walking talisman of winning, and by the time she pulls up a bench to chat in October she has overhauled practically the entire training space with EliteForm and Sparta Sports Science with ShotTracker devices on the way, changes that are both practical and symbolic. (Even the bench is indicative; there are no chairs in sight, because as Hudy says, the players don’t practice sitting.)

Above all, Smart has empowered Hudy to get the Longhorns up to speed — sometimes literally — in whatever way she sees fit. “I think Coach (Bill) Self had been in the weight room two times in my 15 years there,” Hudy says. “He trusted me to do the job, because we get results. Shaka has been absolutely wonderful with me. And I think I’m one of the older ones on staff now, so I think he’s using me as a resource more than what I’ve been used as a resource in the past.”

The arrival of Luke Yaklich, meanwhile, is meant to enhance a strength. The Longhorns have played winning defense, mostly, under Smart; they ranked 21st, 12th and 26th in efficiency, respectively, over the previous three seasons. Yaklich, in the meantime, drove Michigan’s defense to finish third nationally in ’18 and second in ’19. John Beilein’s departure to the Cleveland Cavaliers led to a whirlwind that brought the 43-year-old former high school teacher and coach to Austin, where his general philosophy sounds easy enough to install before a Nov. 5 season opener against Northern Colorado: flawless execution of a simple system based on contesting shots “with every fiber of your being,” getting two back in transition defense, limiting fouls and eliminating open 3s.

But then the inflection point of words and actions will define the next six months. In a pre-practice meeting, Yaklich proposes a drill — the Sparty Drill — to build toughness and focus on defensive rebounding, both of which he has assessed as weak spots. It’s essentially four-on-four and restricted to the lane area, with nonstop screening. Yaklich stands at the top of the key and narrates at full volume. “Good players don’t get screened!” “Where the hell is the talk?” “Protect the damn rim, 5-man!” “Get your tuxedo off! When you take the entire tuxedo off, you can get rebounds!” When freshman Donovan Williams doesn’t quite follow directions to the point of exasperation, he is banished to Hudy and the VersaClimbers in the corner of the gym.

“When your name is called, you can’t be stuck in your head,” Febres says. “You have to come out here and produce.”

Above maybe all else, Smart’s antenna is attuned to the idea of self-pity. A woe-is-me attitude is self-destruction he believes his team must avoid. It is why he has attempted to insulate his group from the insinuations about the significance of this season. He wants to manage their frames of mind for as long as he can. But that does leave room for brutal honesty about what the Longhorns need to do to get what they want. When one side loses to another 21-0 in one drill, Smart sends the losers to the line and upbraids them, saying they don’t even look upset about the result. When Febres complains about a foul call, as he attempts to hold off Jericho Sims for a rebound, the head coach interjects.

“That’s a losing response,” Smart tells Febres. “That’s why your team is getting your ass kicked.”

At the end of the second day of practice, the Texas coach gathers his team at midcourt, as usual. He has noticed how the results are unbalanced at times when groups compete against each other, depending on personnel. He has noticed how things fall apart when certain players aren’t in the mix. He reminds the Longhorns that, for all the coaching corrections they receive, there are a dozen really good players standing around him. He says that’s one of the strengths of the group.

The implication, of course, is that Texas is going to need every last one of them.

II. ‘It’s not always pretty’

The bus bends around Grand Army Plaza and makes the right onto 59th Street, then passes the horse-drawn carriages lining the south end of Central Park before a couple more turns bring it to a stop by the rear entrance of the New York Athletic Club. There are establishments that lay claim to descriptors such as “august” and “revered.” Then there are establishments that have been open for more than 150 years and had a member participate in the first modern Olympics in 1896. The NYAC is the second kind of establishment.

Today, Texas is its guest for a basketball practice. The Longhorns are in town for a two-game set in the Empire Classic, and well-aged elevators transport the traveling party to Raymond G. Lumpp Gymnasium. The court is dimly lit in a sort of yellowish glow, and treadmills and free weights are in use beyond either baseline, as is a mezzanine track overhead. It’s part of the charm, like the fact that the place is B.Y.O.B.: Bring Your Own Basketballs. The players sit on narrow benches along the wall to remove warmups and cinch sneakers while J. Cole’s “Middle Child” blares from a portable speaker. One wonders if it’s the first time J. Cole has been heard on these grounds through anything but personal headphones or accident.

Anticipation and good vibes abound. Texas has played four games and won all four. Most impressively, the Longhorns traveled to Purdue, at that moment a top-25 outfit, and emerged from the raucous cauldron of Mackey Arena with a victory in only the second outing of the young season. Smart’s crew arguably could not have performed better that night, in terms of sheer execution and toughness. That is an auspicious thing in early November. “It’s like putting a deposit in a bank,” Smart says, standing on the sideline of the NYAC floor. “Once you make the deposit, it’s there, and guys can draw on it.”

Now, less than two weeks later, the Longhorns face Georgetown at Madison Square Garden, and another win most likely would set up a showdown with Duke the following night. This can be a showcase for where Texas is and how far it has come. This is when the Longhorns can start spreading the news. “These games are always such a golden opportunity, from a lot of standpoints,” Smart says. “Most importantly, it’s where are we, what do we need to improve on — regardless of win, lose or draw, we’re going to have to get a lot better when we get home. It gives you a real barometer in a lot of ways.”

The team’s energy is, accordingly, expectant and urgent. As NYAC club members in sport coats and slacks look on from by the elevator bank, Smart inveighs his bigs to “fight like crazy” for rebounds against Georgetown’s 7-footer, Omer Yurtseven. If a big gives up a lob, Smart declares, he is coming out of the game. Assistant coach Neil Berry implores the guards to run, run and run some more. “We should get layups and open 3s all night,” he tells the group. When sophomore Courtney Ramey throws a sloppy behind-the-back pass during a five-on-zero walkthrough, Berry sends him to Tyler Janota, the team’s assistant strength and conditioning coach, for a set of punitive sit-ups.

Even during the breakfast buffet at the Shelburne Hotel the next day, what’s to come can’t be escaped. Georgetown film clips, spliced with Texas practice footage, roll on a flatscreen in the corner as the team hunkers down over everything from bagels to cereal to waffles to fare from the omelet station. Smart catches Sims, who will be Yurtseven’s primary foil, before Sims leaves to walk to the ad hoc film room across the lobby. “You ready for this dude?” Smart asks. Sims simply nods. Smart laughs. About the only non-basketball interruption comes from Smart’s daughter, Zora, right after he and Berry decide to get to the “Stack Burn” play call early against the Hoyas.

“Are you going to the M&M Store?” Smart asks his 8-year-old, one of many Texas family members along for the trip.

“Mommy!” Zora exclaims. “Can we go to the M&M Store?”

“You know there are M&Ms in Austin,” Maya Smart replies.

“But there’s not a store,” Zora replies.

During the post-breakfast, pre-shootaround film session, confident defiance fills the room. Smart tells Coleman that Georgetown has no answer for him. Berry directs the Longhorns to attack Yurtseven and make him play on his heels. “We’re going at his neck,” as Smart puts it. Yaklich calls for “Big 12 championship rebounds” in his defensive spiel, and later, before shootaround begins at the Garden, he recites a Sun Tzu quote from “Art of War” for the group. The primary directive is to own the paint on both ends and continue to coalesce as a group in order to find success. “Remember,” Smart says, “this team is better together.”

Just after 9 p.m., the Texas coach walks back to the locker room with damage control in mind. Georgetown, a team that entered the game with the 63rd-most efficient offense in the country, scores 82 points and runs away to victory with former Texas stars Kevin Durant and Jarrett Allen watching from the front row. (“Thank you for coming,” Smart tells Allen after the game. “Usually we play better than this.”) It is a failure; a look-in-the-mirror moment, as Smart tells reporters after the game. Mostly it’s a lost opportunity. The glamor and challenge of facing a program such as Duke, at Madison Square Garden, is tantalizing. The consolation — a game against Cal, as it turns out — is not much consolation.

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What was supposed to be an opportunity to play against Duke was squandered when Texas could not get past Georgetown. (Vincent Carchietta / USA Today Sports)

Still, Texas goes to work to respond. The following morning Yaklich gathers the big men and tells them they have to change their behavior as a group; they weren’t aggressive enough the night before, and he declares that the next game is a “personal pride check.” When the players matriculate into the film room, they see Smart standing by the projector screen. On it is a picture of a lion with blood all over its face. Next to it is a posterboard featuring one word: WILL. “Understand this,” he says. “We are going to get back to what we trained to be, in terms of our will. Our will. Who we are. What do you see when you see that fucking picture right there? A killer. What else? Hungry. That right there — that trumps any type of scheme or pick-and-roll coverage or plays we can run. That’s more important. If we are that, we win. Georgetown was more that than us. We are going to be more than Cal. We’re going to find at least five that are going to be that. Guys, it’s not always pretty. Motherfucker had to eat. We’re trying to eat tonight. Bottom line, we get on a plane and go back to Austin 5-1, that’s a decent start to the year. And we’ll have learned a ton about our team. And put in a valuable, valuable deposit as it relates to our ability to respond.”

That evening, it takes 30 seconds for the applause to die and the music to go mute and the dancing to stop after a 62-45 win over Cal. Smart waits another six seconds to survey the locker room and let a little of that anticipation build back up. Then he asks a question.

“Feels a lot better to win, right?”

III. ‘Keep punching’

It’s a Tuesday in early January. More than a month has passed since the Empire Classic, and it featured six more wins and one ugly, forgettable night in Providence when little went right and a 22-point loss was the result. Then came the Big 12 conference opener at Baylor, and all of the possibilities embedded in the 18 games to follow. It was a remarkable dud: 44 points scored in a 15-point loss. Texas is 10-3 overall, but the two losses in three games have created a sense of something wobbling. Instead of momentum — to win games and go to the tournament and save jobs — the Longhorns have questions. After just one Big 12 game, it feels as if Texas is at an inflection point.

So Smart wants to stoke the fight in his group. In a 2 p.m. huddle at midcourt, he tells his players to look like they’re going to punch somebody. That’s how he wants them to start the next night against Oklahoma.

“And then what are we going to do?” he asks, semi-rhetorically. “Keep punching.”

He’s a bit more wired today, louder than usual. He slams his offense when a possession consists of one pass, one screen and a fadeaway 3-pointer. That ain’t it, Smart tells his team. He is still in search of that elusive it with this team and program. So during the post-practice film session, he brings out a guide.

Hudy stands and walks to the middle of the conference room. She has been asked by the head coach, she says, to talk about the elements of a championship culture. And Hudy has a lot to say on the subject.

“Who are you as a player? Sit down and write down who you think you are. Unfortunately, I think it changes every day for you guys, where it shouldn’t.”

“They give you the answers to the test. Until you understand your role and follow the scouting reports, we won’t win. The answers are right in front of you and you fail.”

“I think you’re a good guy. At least let us know who we’re fucking getting every day.”

“We’re not here for you. We’re here for Texas. We’re here to win for Texas. And we want you to be a part of it.”

“You looked like you were content losing the other day.”

“I would say that some of you guys don’t want to be here. Do I want to call out specific names? Absolutely. But I won’t, because we have a game tomorrow night.”

As Hudy finishes, Smart leaves his seat and then matter-of-factly addresses his team. “She just challenged you,” he tells the Longhorns. “Tomorrow night, at 8 o’clock, we see what the answer to the challenge is.”

The team that shows up at the Erwin Center isn’t scared of anything. It is revved up. It is swinging hard.

Final score: Oklahoma 72, Texas 62.

IV. ‘An unshakeable belief’

A hiss of bus hydraulics outside the Oread Hotel just after 6 p.m announces the arrival of the Texas men’s basketball team, but no one is paying attention.

Well, almost no one. Bellmen open doors and the front desk guy helps distribute room keys. That’s pretty much the extent of it, though. It is Super Bowl Sunday. The Kansas City Chiefs are playing. All eyes are fixed upon the two large-screen televisions in the bar area as the Longhorns make their way through the lobby. Managers lug heavy equipment bags down a set of stairs and through a hallway and jump a little when there’s a detonation of joy and noise as they pass a closed door to their left. The Chiefs have scored their first touchdown. A few steps away, in the Griffith Room, Texas’ base of operations for the next 24 hours or so, hotel attendants scramble to turn on TVs and tune them to the channel broadcasting the game.

“Oooooh, they got the best color Gatorade,” junior guard Matt Coleman says as he peruses the options to wash down his dinner. “Riptide Rush.”

All is well with the meal spread and the beverage selection. Everything else feels distinctly tenuous during this annual pilgrimage to Kansas. Two weeks prior, the Longhorns led these same Jayhawks at halftime in Austin, only to promptly collapse to a defeat, outscored by 14 after the break. Two days later, Texas traveled to West Virginia and imploded, losing by 38. The program didn’t flub its chance to make a statement in consecutive games against top-15 conference foes; it just made the worst kind. The ghastly particulars of the meltdown in Morgantown threw into sharp relief the mounting pressures on Smart, both simply to reroute the season and, in doing, avoid a second straight March without an NCAA Tournament invitation. If the mission this season was to give the Texas administration no reason even to contemplate a change, it has not been accomplished yet.

But here, as the Chiefs and 49ers duke it out for the Lombardi Trophy, the team scarfing down rice and shrimp and tacos is on a two-game winning streak. Asked what the coaches did in the days following the West Virginia debacle to heal psychological wounds and move forward, Smart smiles. “We did a lot of things.” Generally, in the past week, games against teams at or near the bottom of the Big 12 — TCU and Iowa State — have provided a welcome salve. The trip to Kansas, then, provides another tectonic opportunity. It could be the kind of win that changes a narrative.

Fittingly, conviction appears to be the word of the night, once the Longhorns file into two rows of hotel chairs facing a projector screen to digest film as they digest dinner. It’s another word for urgency, a concept that Texas can’t avoid with precious few statement games remaining on the schedule. The defensive portion of the film work opens with Yaklich obliquely asking if the wolf is still climbing and if there are pit bulls in the house — a chorus of affirmative barks follow — and individual scouting reports on the Kansas roster follow, as recited by players called on by Yaklich. A theme emerges for a team trying to talk itself into believing in itself.

“Tell me about (Devon) Dotson,” Yaklich says to Coleman.

“Fuck him,” Coleman replies. “Tomorrow I’m going to have unbelievable conviction.”

After a breakdown of the Kansas point guard’s particulars, Yaklich calls on Courtney Ramey to discuss Marcus Garrett. “Fuck Garrett,” Ramey begins. Next is Jase Febres on Ochai Agbaji. “Fuck Ochai,” is Febres’ opening statement. Next up is freshman Kai Jones.

“Thirty-three,” Yaklich says, referring to Kansas center David McCormack. “Kai, what’s your conviction?”

“Eff McCormack, I’m going to hurt him in the post …”

Laughter fills the space before Jones can finish the sentence. “All right,” Jones says, exasperatedly, after a moment or two. “Fuck McCormack.”

And so it goes. (Only Sims altogether avoids colorful language in discussing Udoka Azubuike.) Once the defensive clips start rolling, Yaklich commends Coleman for essentially calling off a special coverage for pick-and-roll late against Iowa State, because the junior said he’d just blow it up himself. That’s conviction, Yaklich says. The game plan revolves around forcing Kansas left — “Beyonce” coverage is the code name, because, you know, to the left, to the left — and it’ll succeed only through what Yaklich deems “conviction of purpose.” As he runs through the offensive clips, Berry harps on similar themes: limiting mistakes, moving on to the next play after mistakes inevitably occur, staying the course for 40 minutes. It’s simple messaging. To have a chance, Texas cannot waver.

It’s why, after the nitty-gritty film work, Smart stands to the left of the projector screen with a picture of Kobe Bryant splashed on it. The helicopter crash that killed Bryant and eight others had occurred one week earlier. In this graphic, Bryant sits on a couch and smiles, while a quote hangs in the space above his head.

Smart begins by reminding his group that nothing great occurs in life without an opportunity to do it. But to seize this opportunity, at Allen Fieldhouse, Texas must eliminate self-pity and “selfish intent.” (Back in Austin, he’d written those concepts on a board and then slashed an X through them.) Then he redirects everyone’s attention to the screen. Smart tells the group he can’t stop thinking about Bryant and the impact he had, but in this moment he wants to make the unrelatable relatable. He reads the quote aloud: I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill. We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.

“So conviction,” Smart continues. “Conviction, all right, is an unshakeable belief, without need for evidence. Unshakeable belief. They make a few baskets, your belief shaken? Crowd gets into it, your belief shaken? Our conviction has to be stronger than the crowd. It’s gotta be stronger than the last play. It’s gotta be stronger than any self-doubt. That’s what he’s such a great example of. When you go to bed tonight, man, just think about that. Be excited about this opportunity. You guys have done a great job this past week, putting us in a completely different position than we were in. Completely different. Now we got this right here. This opportunity. Let’s go grab it.”

Before the bus departs for shootaround the following afternoon, another Bryant graphic is on display in the Griffith Room. This one is slightly less philosophical. I’m not apologizing for saying I’m going to kick some ass, it reads above a photo of the Lakers star in his shooting motion. I’m just not going to do it. “Don’t apologize for the mentality that you’re going to Allen Fieldhouse and taking this shit,” Smart tells his group before the buses load and roll away from the hotel.

It doesn’t work.

Maybe due to the Super Bowl hangover, $9 would get you into the building for college basketball a day later. Or perhaps the idea of a rerun muted interest. Because Texas leads Kansas again at halftime. And again Kansas overwhelms after the break, smothering the Longhorns defensively and emerging with a nine-point victory. The emotion at tipoff, the backslide and slog through the second half … by this point it’s a refrain as identifiable with this group as “Texas Fight.” This time, the inconsistency drowns the chance at a season-defining win.

Maybe this group’s inherent personality flaws mean such a chance is only a mirage. But it sure seemed real enough for long enough to lament it. “Individually, and as a team, everybody has to raise their level when it comes down to the stretch,” Coleman says, leaning against a staircase rail as the locker room empties. “In games like this, you have to be better.”

It’s nearing midnight when the bus pulls away, headed for the charter flight back to Austin. Outside, the temperature is dropping quickly.

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Texas went to Kansas looking for a statement win. It didn’t happen. (Brian Hamilton / The Athletic)

V. ‘I know how things go’

Jericho Sims, in an Erwin Center conference room in January: “I’m more experienced now. I know where I’m supposed to be at. I know how things go. I know what losing and what winning big feels like. It’s something I didn’t know as a freshman — I didn’t know the importance of each game as much as I do now. And this year I definitely wanted to take a step toward becoming a threat offensively. A lot of times people will say, you’re being selfish if you aren’t being more aggressive offensively.”

Shaka Smart, in the same conference room in January: “He came in here, he was going to need real development in his ability to express himself, to move past mistakes, to use his mind in the right way. That’s all personal growth and development. I’m really proud of him, in that he’s made a ton of strides in those ways. That’s helping him play better. And he’s just sturdier. He can hang in there through the twists and turns that happen in a game, or a week or two weeks. It’s going to be really interesting how he continues to progress. He has a couple more notches in him, in terms of where he can go.”

Sims’ statistics, as of Feb. 10: 9.7 points per game, 8.2 rebounds per game, 65.8 percent shooting, 13 double-figure scoring outings, four double-doubles and five near-misses of a double-double.

Email from the Texas sports information department, on Feb. 13: Junior F Jericho Sims — out indefinitely (back).

First result after Sims’ absence, on Feb. 15: Iowa State 81, Texas 52.

Texas’ record: 14-11 overall, 4-8 in the Big 12, the sort of thing that looks like the beginning of an end.

VI. ‘Kick that ass’

Donovan Williams has the portable speaker on his lap, a device about the size of a small ottoman, and the rest of the Texas basketball team occupies four rows of folding chairs in the middle of the locker room floor. Andrew Jones, who moments earlier held said speaker over his head, dancing to Chief Keef’s “Faneto” while three other Longhorns gyrated in line behind him, is seated and rapping along with the next tune. Before they know it, the coaching staff is upon them. Smart crouches in the middle of this humanity and claps his hands and screams at his players: “Get up! Get up!” Everyone dances once again, spraying water everywhere.

Even during an uneven, trying season, it can’t all be bloody lions and Kobe quotes.

And on this night, Texas has beaten West Virginia. The ensuing locker room scene is more mosh pit than nightclub. Berry leaps into the air to go shoulder-to-shoulder with 7-foot freshman Will Baker. The collision sends Berry backward, crashing through two rows of chairs. Berry gets to his feet smiling. With two starters out for the season — the official phrasing is “indefinitely,” but everyone in the program knows Sims and Febres are done — and two reserves sidelined, with the arena nowhere near full, Texas somehow has beaten West Virginia. It is the Longhorns’ third straight win. Once the music dies and the bodies return to their seats, all eyes turn to Smart, standing before a whiteboard with “ATTACK” written large upon it.

“That was as good as I’ve ever seen a team stand up to another team,” Smart tells his group, his voice somewhere between full-throated and nearly hoarse. “Unbelievable. We said attack and finish. Did we attack? Did we finish? It’s amazing what happens when we lose ourselves in the fight. Lose ourselves in the fight, you kick that ass. Lose ourselves in the fight, you kick that ass. That’s the formula, fellas.”

It takes Smart longer to wind down after wins, so a lot of texts get answered and he watches the game film as well as the next video in a series from “The Untethered Soul” author Michael A. Singer before he can rest. But Smart has returned to his routine and reality when he hops in a car en route to his weekly coach’s show taping the following morning. He is in a makeup chair by 10:30 a.m., the word GORGEOUS painted on the wall above the mirror. He chats up Longhorn Network host Lowell Galindo about Galindo’s opening a baseball training facility in the near future. He asks the makeup artist about her daughter’s cheerleading competitions and sends good-luck wishes. It’s just another day. It can’t be any more or less than that, if Smart wants to make it through however many days he has left.

After returning to his office, he takes a chair and a swig from his Aquafina water bottle. Texas is 17-11. It is both in the top half of the Big 12 standings but also sub-.500 in league play. It is very much in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year and the third time in Smart’s five seasons. The defense, as it turns out, has been fine; an adjusted efficiency rate of 92.4 is the best of the Smart era. But the offensive efficiency rate (103.1) would be the worst since he arrived. The Longhorns don’t get to the line (their 325 free throws attempted rank 353rd, or last, in the nation) and the defensive rebounding (326th in the country) is atrocious despite the staff’s efforts to emphasize it. It is an inconsistent and accommodating group. It has looked how Smart wanted it to look at times, but not often enough.

“I would say part of the evaluation is what areas could we be consistent in? What areas could we thrive in?” Smart says. “We’ve constantly been trying to create for our guys the best way for them to be successful. And that’s been a twisting and turning path. Different players have had their winding journeys. We have a lot of guys on our team that I do believe are taking significant steps in their progression. But unfortunately, and this is not unique to us, it’s not a linear path where it’s just up and up and up and up and up.”

Take, for example, Courtney Ramey, the former top-50 recruit and razor-edged guard from St. Louis. Of maybe all the players on the roster, the sophomore is wired to bring a serrated attitude to the gym. And in the immediate aftermath of that dispiriting January loss to Oklahoma, he sent a text to Smart. I will be better, Ramey wrote. I’m with you. What do you need me to do? Smart judged the next six days of Ramey’s leadership as “phenomenal,” and not coincidentally Texas bounced back with two wins. Then Ramey’s edge dulled again. Then, when circumstances became dire again, Ramey’s voice returned. And, not coincidentally, the Longhorns began the process of saving their season.

“He just gives off a real energy that completely changes our team,” Smart says.

Asked if he wishes all of his players had a little more of that in them, he replies immediately: “Yes.”

So why hasn’t it been there? “It is in there,” Smart says. “I think it’s a matter of them and us as coaches bringing it out. Every guy on our team that comes in here on scholarship has a goal of going to the NBA. Part of our job is to help them understand what that’s going to take. But I think that part of it is, if you want to be that good, you got to go get it. You got to go after it. And we have had a lot of guys that for a variety of reasons have maybe lost sight at times of the aggressiveness with which they have to pursue, whether it’s the ball or pick-and-roll or whatever.”

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Ramey (3) changed Texas when he was locked in, doing all the little things. But that wasn’t consistent enough to avoid damaging, dispiriting losses. (Scott Wachter / USA Today Sports)

These, of course, are all his guys. His hand-picked recruits. So how much Smart should own the inconsistency probably defines any debate over whether he should return for a sixth season. And it seems like a complex debate indeed.

He runs a low-maintenance operation at a school where football insanity basically demands that. But it’s Texas. And Texas demands more than NIT bids. He and his coaches never figured out how to field a great offense after Isaiah Taylor left campus, but as the calendar moves to March 2020, Ramey and Jones look increasingly assertive and efficient. It’s out of necessity, yes, but it wasn’t happening until it happened. Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte declares the Smart era “snakebitten” when he’s asked by Austin American-Statesman columnist Kirk Bohls for an evaluation of his basketball coach as the end of the season draws near. But how much cushion can a power-conference school give for bad luck?

Over Smart’s left shoulder, two words appear on a dry-erase board in his office. FIGHT MONTH. He likes to have a theme for every month; this one is his wife’s idea. It certainly fits. He readily admits he has seen both sides of this. He has been the guy who everyone wanted. He’s now the guy with the uncertain future. All he knows for sure is that he turns 43 two days after the national championship game and he’s going to continue to coach basketball.

Asked if he thinks he’ll coach Texas basketball next year, Smart grabs the water bottle. He takes another swig.

“I’m here now,” he says, twisting the cap back on the bottle. “Anything can happen.”

VII. ‘Who Killed Malcolm X’

Final score from Lubbock four days later: Texas 68, No. 22 Texas Tech 58.

Back home that evening, having helped resurrect a team absolutely left for dead in Ames, Smart celebrates a fourth straight win by watching the new Netflix documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X?” with his daughter.

Fun family fare, he’s told in a text message.

He responds with a laughter emoji.

VIII. ‘Reflections and corrections’

“That’s embarrassing,” Brock Cunningham says with a bit of a smile. He’s hopping awkwardly from step to step, boarding a bus with one functioning foot and the other ensconced in a protective boot after he badly sprained an ankle about an hour earlier during an open practice at the Sprint Center. Texas is here for a Big 12 tournament in which it might only need one win, over Texas Tech in the quarterfinals, to ensure an NCAA Tournament invitation and eradicate any and all uncertainty about the future of its head coach. And now an already depleted roster may be down Cunningham, a 6-6, high-motor freshman from Austin who has emerged, out of necessity, as a key lineup adhesive and a folk hero with his own cowboy hat-wearing cheering section at home games. Another snake bite, at the worst possible time. What else is new.

After the bus arrives at the Sheraton Crowne Plaza hotel, the Longhorns trickle into Salon D on the 28th floor for a pre-lunch walkthrough on a “court” rendered on carpet by blue painter’s tape. The head coach moves to the posterboard facing the ad hoc floor and picks up a marker. To Smart’s right is a dry-erase board featuring three commandments for this latest adventure: LEAD WITH OUR D, LEVEL 5 TALK + JUICE and LOSE OURSELVES IN THE FIGHT. There are games left to play; that good word still must be spread. So Smart stands before the easel and adds a couple more on the poster board, all-caps and underlined.

WIN ANYWAY.

It’s another Maya Smart special. “She should write a book,” her husband says following the walkthrough. Moments earlier Smart had gathered his team in tight and pointed to Cunningham, sitting with a leg propped up on a chair, and told the Longhorns they could cancel the game and fly back to Austin … or win anyway. Whatever else you think of the job he does, Smart rarely fails to communicate his message concisely and, if necessary, inspiringly. It was two days earlier that Texas gathered in a multipurpose room at the Erwin Center, still stinging from a desultory home loss to Oklahoma State, for an unvarnished chat on the concept of “reflections and corrections.” Smart asked the Longhorns to reflect on what they’d learned from the last six games of the regular season — five of them wins — and then got the players to verbalize what they needed from the staff to finish the work in Kansas City. Smart believes it was one of the best, most honest meetings he has had in his tenure, which is the sort of breakthrough that gives him conviction about good things following here.

“I wouldn’t say it’s gratifying — you wait until the end of the season to truly reflect like that,” he says of the late-season renaissance. “But there’s a crossroads you can find yourself at during a season, or at times in your life, and the way to deal with that is just to keep going and keep trying to improve and try to find what’s the right way, in our case as coaches, to help these guys see the light.”

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In the final moments of the 2019-20 season, even though they didn’t know it, the Longhorns prepared for a Big 12 quarterfinals matchup with Texas Tech. Brian Hamilton / The Athletic)

There’s one last, late scouting session to get through before game day, before a season and a tenure can somewhat ironically be defined in one 40-minute stretch, what with all the wild variables that preceded it. But as the players return from a dinner at YardHouse just before 7:30 p.m., circumstances appear to be changing by the minute. The coronavirus pandemic has spurred the Big 12 to announce that all games from Thursday on will be played without fans, and now the Texas coaches have another irregularity to manage. (“No matter who’s in the gym, no matter who’s not in the gym,” Yaklich says to open his defensive scout, “the Texas defense is in the gym, at full force.”) It’s lingering in the shadows as everyone reviews a game plan predicated on movement to bother the Red Raiders’ side defense and to goad Texas Tech into 2-point jumpers. There are real-world issues at play, but the only thing the group in Salon D can do is worry about the job at hand.

When it’s Smart’s turn to address the team, he confronts the outside noise. The coronavirus concerns. The NCAA Tournament chatter. He says this group is prepared because it has learned the hard way that winning is the straightest line through it all. “We are going after this thing to win,” he says. “And we’re going to win.” He picks up a collage from the floor. Every player is pictured, with the words OUR WAY splashed on the board in black letters. Smart instructs everyone to sign the collage as a symbolic gesture of total commitment to the cause.

He holds up the finished product in a low-lit room and asks his team what it sees. “Does this look like a group that can go beat Texas Tech tomorrow?” Smart says. “Does this look like a group that will beat Texas Tech tomorrow? Absolutely. Again, I don’t want to understate this: We need every guy. We need everyone. This ain’t the time for you to be quiet. We got to have you loud. Turned up. This ain’t the time for you to be unsure. Go after it. This is our fucking moment. What a story this is going to be.”

He laughs and holds his arms out wide.

“You guys are going to tell your grandchildren about this,” Smart says.

It’s a few minutes before 11 a.m. the next day when the music goes mute and the balls stop bouncing on the Sprint Center floor. Big 12 officials ask players from Texas and Texas Tech to clear out and return to their locker rooms. A news conference is tentatively set for the top of the hour, but everyone grasps what is happening. Concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus are shutting down events across the country. The Big 12 tournament will be canceled too. College basketball is coming to an end right before everyone’s eyes.

By mid-afternoon, the NCAA Tournament will be called off as well. There will be no more games. There will be no final on-court reckoning for Texas and its head coach. So Smart and his Longhorns leave the floor, and they have no idea what will happen next.

IX. ‘An unfinished year’

It’s hot out, pushing 90 degrees in late March, but Shaka Smart is at home and comfortable. A Friday in Austin might as well be any other day; the city, like many others, is under a shelter-in-place order due to COVID-19. The only break in routine is Del Conte’s going public with the confirmation that Smart would return for the 2020-21 season. This is a reasonable conclusion. The late-season surge, coupled with the unpredictability roiling college athletics and the nation, is justification enough. Put slightly more cynically: If other major-conference programs held on to less accomplished coaches, there was no way, in this environment, that Texas could spend $10 million to create more uncertainty for itself.

Smart, of course, has spoken with Del Conte regularly since returning from Kansas City. The news is no surprise. He has been moving ahead, full speed, watching what he says is probably too much film and participating in Zoom meetings with coaching friends and players who are now dispersed across the country. He was going to work until someone told him differently. “I’ve been on both sides of all the media stuff that surrounds coaches,” Smart says. “I was never really comfortable with it at VCU. But it was very, very easy to ignore. Here, I think when it’s kind of negative, it can be harder to ignore. But one thing I’ve learned is all this stuff we ask our players to do, from the standpoint of controlling what we can control, responding to adversity, responding to success, being in the moment, focusing on the people around you instead of yourself — those things all have to start with us. Coaches are really good at telling players to do that stuff. Sometimes we need to look in the mirror and be better at doing those things ourselves.”

Texas held one of those virtual team meetings just a couple hours prior, and the head coach is excited. He thinks everyone will be back and healthy and now will benefit from, as he puts it, “hard-won wisdom” — a line from “Hamilton” that is one of his favorites. The program is a finalist in the recruitment of Greg Brown, a five-star forward from Austin’s Vandegrift High School who could infuse future NBA talent into the lineup. It’s a formula for elevated expectations yet again, but Smart is comfortable with that. He senses his players, during these remote conversations and video chats, have taken ownership of those expectations. All the coaches have to do is help make it happen.

“Obviously it was kind of an unfinished year,” Smart says. “For us, and a lot of teams, it was just an abrupt ending and it didn’t give us the opportunity to see what we could do.”

So the work continues. And there’s no end in sight.

 

https://theathletic.com/1619591/2020/03/30/a-season-on-the-edge-with-shaka-smart/?source=shared-article

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