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Fire Shaka Smart

smokebomb

By smokebomb
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Horn80

Horn80 6359

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3 minutes ago, Red Five said:

You think we've already decided to fire him, but we're going to keep him on? 

Yep. UT doesn’t want to face the embarrassment of such a colossal hiring/contract fail and waiting for the facts to be overwhelming.  Just my two cents.

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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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Disco Missile

Disco Missile 456

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45 minutes ago, Horn80 said:

Yep. UT doesn’t want to face the embarrassment of such a colossal hiring/contract fail and waiting for the facts to be overwhelming.  Just my two cents.

My $.02, but I've never known anyone that operated a successful operation that operated this way unless there was some risk such as a legal entanglement or costs associated with sending them off. 
The exception being my time working for the government, but that's another story.

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Machinator

Machinator 32103

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Inside Texas on Shaka's job security (cross-post from the season thread)

11-8 overall and 3-4 in conference...in year four...with his roster...including losses to VCU, Radford, Providence and Oklahoma State...

If Shaka was hoping to shut up the naysayers and frustrated Texas fans who are beyond ready for his departure from Austin, the previous (poorly constructed as it may be) sentence was not the way to get that deal done.

Instead, anybody looking for kindling for the get rid of Shaka fire has more than enough of that to go around.

Now, there are scenarios where Shaka loses his Longhorn job this season. Not making the NCAA Tournament would be tough (if not impossible) to overcome. Not making a postseason tournament of any kind would be even tougher.

However, the savvy, if underwhelmed, InsideTexas reader needs to be aware of three things that will heavily weigh in Chris Del Conte's decision making when this year does wind down for the Horns.

1. The buyout. If Shaka Smart were to be fired after this season, Texas Athletics would be on the hook for over $15 Million in buyout money. This is a proud, successful athletics program, but CDC didn't get to where he is by being stupid with money. The investment in Shaka has been pretty considerable and the AD is aware of Shaka's recruiting prowess and the local kid who's on his way as well as two other top 50 recruits. If firing him ends up being the play, it will be because they feel like they have no other choice, financially. That's a tough place to get to given the relative lack of concern Texas fans have for basketball and the positive current position of the football program. It might require some donors playing hard ball, or to help foot the bill. Speaking of which...

2. Shaka has a big money donor in his corner. For all the things Tom Herman has done right, there is a Texas-Ex bigwig who has felt slighted (rightly or otherwise) by the football team and has shifted his support over to the hoops team. Texas is a huge place and there are plenty of donors, but this isn't a guy you replace with just a checkbook. He's pretty powerful.

3. The buyout on the other side. Chris Beard would be #1 on UT's wish list, and we've heard that interest runs both ways. He signed an extension last March that pays him handsomely. We don't know what his buyout is off-hand and after a short Google search, but we do know money is playing a factor here as well.

None of this is to say that people can't want Shaka gone. It's not like he's making the most compelling argument that he should stay. Still, Inside Texas' job is to help its community prepare for what's next for Texas sports and it appears that, as of right now, Smart is more likely to stay than exit.

If he misses the tournament, expect the long knives to come out and for Del Conte to do what he's paid to do, make some tough decisions.

We have more emails out to Cigars soliciting comments and this thread may be updated today.

While we haven't written much about Smart's job security, we have been monitoring things behind the scenes with the expectations it would become a story-line.

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Js1

Js1 87182

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2. Shaka has a big money donor in his corner. For all the things Tom Herman has done right, there is a Texas-Ex bigwig who has felt slighted (rightly or otherwise) by the football team and has shifted his support over to the hoops team. Texas is a huge place and there are plenty of donors, but this isn't a guy you replace with just a checkbook. He's pretty powerful.

Cool, Shaka has a Red/Joe keeping him afloat by threatening to withhold money if we fire his buddy.

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SquishMitten

SquishMitten 10497

Posted
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2. Shaka has a big money donor in his corner. For all the things Tom Herman has done right, there is a Texas-Ex bigwig who has felt slighted (rightly or otherwise) by the football team and has shifted his support over to the hoops team. Texas is a huge place and there are plenty of donors, but this isn't a guy you replace with just a checkbook. He's pretty powerful.
Cool, Shaka has a Red/Joe keeping him afloat by threatening to withhold money if we fire his buddy.


For the record, it isn’t me
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MirrOlure

MirrOlure 15273

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Weltlich was absolutely worse. He was here six years and didn’t make the tournament once.
Edit: Granted I think they expanded to 64 his fourth year here, but still.

Either way.....we are talking “historically bad”. Shaka is bordering on being a national embarrassment (on court performance-wise)
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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 50003

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Shaka needs to be reassigned to do something else at UT (work in the History Dept?)...... or do the honorable thing and accept a reduced buyout.

Wiki on Shaka Smart (personal)

Smart's given name was bestowed in honor of the famous Zulu warrior.[12] He graduated magna cum laude from Kenyon with a degree in history, researching and writing on issues related to race and the Great Migration.[13]Smart received an NCAA postgraduate scholarship and earned a master's degree in social science at California University of Pennsylvania. He developed a love for quotations at Kenyon. Smart began writing down quotes into a digital document that is now over 110 pages long. He also likes nature documentaries featuring big cats.[14]

Edited by LTtxfan
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Burt Macklin

Burt Macklin 19230

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Posted (edited)
On 1/25/2019 at 11:25 AM, Bitterwhiteguy said:

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.

So about that potential downside? We’re much closer to the floor than the ceiling. You said in the pod this week that there’s pretty much no way we should lose to UGA. I think that’s about the fourth time you and Tim have treated a game like a foregone conclusion on the pod and then we’ve lost to them. And then usually the next week y’all just make a bunch of excuses and say how we almost beat radford or were unlucky that one guy got hot. 

Anyways, I’m not saying this to bash you or Tim cuz I like y’all and think you’ve done a really good job covering Texas basketball, but I do think y’all make too many excuses for Shaka.

 I’m really not sure how much realistic downside there could possibly be to changing coaches. Shaka is about to have his third straight losing season in-conference and we’ve lost to at least 4 terrible teams this year with a much more talented roster.

Edited by Burt Macklin
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Katfid54

Katfid54 9005

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Just now, Dbeasy said:

The performance of the team is so bad I wonder whether it might actually make sense to can him before the end of the season. Normally that makes no sense

That would be a very costly move (millions more in buyout to fire him now).

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ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9959

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They need to hire a coach and move Shaka to recruiting coordinator. 

Seriously, what prevents them from doing this?  We have to pay him anyway so make him work for it. If he wants to walk that is his choice and “no buyout”. If he mails it in, Fire for cause. 

Is there any rule that says you have to fire him to demote or replace him?  

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Goo Punch

Goo Punch 4275

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bad luck

needs "his guys"

new hire could be worse

we almost beat duke and gonzaga that one time 

needs a pg and everything will be fine 

 

 

 

nah. he sucks. he sucks so bad that some of us saw it years ago. he sucked at VCU, he sucks at Texas, and he's sucking the life out of our program. fire him today. 

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Burt Macklin

Burt Macklin 19230

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7 minutes ago, SDG said:

This team looks checked out (kinda like the cs Kansas checkout). 

Players know when their coach is so bad that he undermines their own efforts and talent. 

The players were at that point with Charlie in Lawrence, Kansas in 2016 and they appear to be at that point with Shaka in Athens, Georgia in 2019. Or at least, they’ll be there by the end of the season.

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