Lots of great coaches at great schools (UNC, Florida for example) have missed the tournament - even after winning national titles. You're suggesting a standard that only Coach K and Tom Izzo meet. You measure a coach by expectations, and no one remotely had NCAA tourney expectations this year. If he wasn't fired after last year, then clearly they wanted to give him another year to see what happens. If he substantially surpasses expectations, then it would make sense to keep him. If you were going to dump him anyway, they should have done it last year.
I'm not sure how Texas feels about Barnes, but as a guy who's followed him for awhile, I feel like UT can do a lot better. I've never been a big supporter of Barnes. He recruits well but I've never been blown away with what he's done on the court. For a Texas-based school, yeah, Barnes has been adequate but he wouldn't cut it at an elite basketball program. There are too many good basketball players in Texas to not have an elite program here. Hire the right guy and it can be done. Barnes is a typical good state-of-Texas basketball coach. We're in Texas, we only care about football... Nah, I'm tired of that. BCG woke me up. We can do better here. Raise the bar.
I don't disagree with any of that - my only point was that if they kept him last year, then there should been some way for him to keep his job. If he was going to be fired this year no matter what, then he should have been fired last year.
Well, there is a new AD in town. Maybe they'll snag Rudy T and I'll have to kill myself. Or apply to UT Law. Whichever is easier.
Retaining Barnes for a job well done would feel a lot like if we had retained Mack for winning the Big 12. It's great that you surpassed expectations, but expectations probably shouldn't have been that low anyway. I think most reasonable people would agree that both Barnes and Mack have done a good job in their posts. Both coaches took their respective programs to heights they had either never reached or hadn't reached in quite some time. I truly believe that both Mack and Barnes are good, ethical men who care about their players (almost to a fault), and I really hope we look for those same qualities with our next hires (One reason I'm not a huge Saban proponent). That said, sometimes you just need a change, and I think that's where we are with both of them.
True to an extent - but I think people are forgetting what the expectations were this year. Because of the early losses, we forget that Texas was favored to win the Big12 this year and was supposed to potentially be somewhere in the national picture. We had the most experienced team in the country blah blah blah. Winning the Big12 - in a down year - would have been meeting expectations, and the two non-conference blowout losses would have been below expectations. I think if Mack really did exceed expectations - say 11-1 and a top 5 ranking - he would have earned another year. Like Barnes, if that wouldn't have been good enough, he should have been fired last year. And to be clear, I'm not saying Barnes should be retained. I'm just saying that if beating expectations isn't good enough to keep your job, you should have already been let go prior to now. Ziggy had a good point about the new AD, though.
We didn't have a new AD last year. The basketball program has been extremely mediocre for years and I don't think many people thought there was a way that Barnes wouldn't get fired. Just making it back to the tournament won't save his job.
Looks like some one took a private jet to to Austin this morning http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N323P
This is overstating it a bit. Last year, they were flat out awful. The previous year, they were a #6 seed in the tournament in a rebuilding year with one of the youngest teams in the country. The year before, they were #1 in the country as of mid-February and were blowing out top 15 teams left and right before ending in a bit of a free fall (and a terrible call in the NCAA tournament). It's been a quick fall, but they haven't been mediocre for years. Less than 3 years ago, they were at the top of the world - and that team was truly outstanding. It wasn't an illusion or fluke or anything like that.
Agreed. We might have been underachieving for all of the talent we had, but we were still doing pretty damn well. If it was truly Barnes' decision to move away from the one-and-done type players (and not the recruits' decisions themselves), then that's a move I really have to question. Back to the subject at the forefront of Texas fans minds, this is what Kirk Herbstreit said about the situation: “There’s no chance. No chance of that happening. Nick Saban will work TV sitting next to us on our set before he’ll be the head coach at Texas … He’ll be at Alabama for another five years, and then he’ll be working TV after that … I know Nick Saban better than anybody. It’s not going to happen.” I view Herbie as different from most of the sports media, and I don't think he usually says things for shock value or just for the sake of saying them. I tend to believe him.
The national media sure likes to hate on Texas. Fact is it's the best college football job in the country. The best recruiting area and the richest boosters.
Fair point, but I see this situation as different. I don't exactly recall the details of that situation, but I think he was citing a good source that had good information. Decent chance that the mad hatter was headed to Michigan before LSU opened up the pocketbook. I see that as an issue of timing and speaking too soon. Here, Herbie's going off a personal relationship and knowledge of how Saban is wired. Again, who the #$^% knows.
