Written by Joseph Nardone at Bloguin
When Shaka Smart was hired to become the Texas Longhorns’ new head coach, the move was hailed by many within the college basketball community, and rightly so. The success Smart had at VCU, given somewhat limited resources, remains rather incredible.
However, there are reasons for skepticism.
I touched on this when Smart was originally hired. Texas isn’t a place where landing top recruits and having them buy into a selfless system will be easy. Others have successfully pulled off similar feats, such as John Calipari convincing every All-American prospect in the land that playing team-first hoops will still lead to NBA lottery-pick status. However, that’s not the norm. One should not assume everything will work out.
Moreover (this is a pet peeve of mine), it is not as though Smart built VCU’s success from scratch. Last I checked, there was a fellow who got canned at Alabama who did marvelous things with VCU. (I still think Anthony Grant is a good coach, so don’t listen to me.)
Perspective is required here. Simply acting as though a great mid-major coach automatically means he can be a tremendous power-conference coach ignores a lengthy history of failures on the part of previous coaches who have made the same types of attempts.
Shaka Smart is also being viewed as an upgrade from Rick Barnes. The latter, who is definitely limited as an in-game coach, has been solely blamed for the Longhorns’ lackluster track record in recent years. Then again, folks are also ignoring that he led Texas to 17 NCAA Tournaments in 18 years, while reaching five Sweet 16s or better.
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