I tweeted this when Texas was up 52-51. It’s not that I called Texas losing the game or anything, rather it’s the state of mind of someone who has been hurt enough times by a sport that it’s now the default response. It’s not really gallows humor if there’s no humor. Call it gallows reality, I guess? I would have loved to be wrong, deleting tweets is free and I’ll take getting dunked on after a victory with the best of them. Thankfully there are only like 6 ACU fans on Twitter - I imagine their Parler contingent is significantly more robust - so I’m not hearing it too much today. There was one guy who said they were blessed with a win, and only a devoutly religious fanbase can find God’s glory in that spectacle of a game.

This really sucks.

No, really.

I’m eschewing the normal format here for a couple of reasons:

We can talk about the turnovers (credit to ACU for playing the passing lanes expertly) or Andrew Jones’ huge shot (that ended up meaning little) or Matt Coleman’s foul call (it was a foul, but compared to what got let go the previous 39:58 it’s nothing) or a half-dozen other things, but it’s not what I’ve spent the last 14 hours processing. The season is over, so the macro is the story.

You spent a decade as the worst sports loss of my life, and you have been replaced.

There are a number of reasons why last night’s loss was such a gut punch beyond simply being out of the tournament or losing to a much lower seed. One of the primary themes of this season was the idea that this year was a potential inflection point for Shaka Smart’s tenure; he finally had 4 full classes of ‘his’ guys, his Large Adult Son Matt Coleman was fully realized, they had a top-10 freshman incoming, things were lined up and a good season could keep the ball rolling into next year while Shaka works more on reloading than rebuilding. And up until March 19th, things mostly worked out; Texas finished 3rd in the Big 12, ended the regular season ranked 9th in the country, and won the conference tournament. Pretty great! Now they just had to win a couple games in the tournament to keep this narrative trucking along, provide the evidence necessary to extend Shaka a couple of years for recruiting purposes, and keep the experiment humming.

Welp.

Instead of sitting here a week from now and looking upon a program that is rolling in the right direction, everything is stopped dead in its tracks. It was one thing to understand that Texas was probably going to take a step back next year - any non-blue-blood program that loses as much talent as Texas likely will should expect less the year after nearly half the roster graduates/goes pro - but at least they would have had something to show for it like a Sweet 16 or better. Nicole Auerbach asked this question yesterday after the Virginia loss:

The answer is 1000% yes, you take that. Banners fly forever, and the other painful seasons are made less so because you won the whole thing. This is true for Texas as well, and while I guess winning the conference tournament is something Shaka can sell to CDC, it’s been significantly blunted by the ACU loss. Rationally speaking, I know that March Madness is a small sample size and that there are better barometers for a program’s health. In a lot of ways that matter, Shaka Smart’s program has shown real growth. But man, he’s 0-3 in the tourney at Texas, and that’s ultimately the place where he’s getting paid to perform.

I’ve had several people ask me if I think Shaka is done at Texas. I don’t have any inside information on that at this point, so take this as the speculation it is: I don’t see a viable path forward for Shaka at Texas. Here’s why: the situation reminds me of the 2007 Dallas Mavericks. They were having a great year, rolling through the NBA, Dirk was about to win NBA MVP, and they get popped in the first round by the 8th-seed Golden State Warriors. They spent an off-season hearing everyone shit on them, and they went through the 2008 regular season winning games that nobody cared about because the only way they could answer the critics was in the postseason. How did it end up? They lost in the first round again; for those of you who weren’t in DFW at the time, the vibe around the franchise was profoundly negative. Whether it was the franchise, the fans, the sports talk stations, everybody was down on the team. Avery Johnson pulled all the levers he could pull and none of them worked, things were toxic and he ultimately lost his job. They needed a new voice in the locker room, and Rick Carlisle was the new voice. There is an important difference between the Mavs and the Longhorns in that the players haven’t tuned Shaka Smart out at all, and maybe that’s the tiny crack he can squeeze through to rebuild things.

Still, I don’t know how he comes back from all of this; the team as I’m imagining it next year will be a step or two down (like on the right side of the bubble, but probably unranked a fair amount of the season) and how many Texas fans are going to invest in that team with the past 6 years of waves at everything sitting on their emotional ledger? The only real way he can get people to buy in is to over-perform in the regular season *and* the postseason, and do it repeatedly. I can maybe see the former happening, but the latter he has to prove to everyone. If I’m CDC, I’m working with Shaka’s agent to help him land the Marquette gig. Give the Marquette AD a glowing recommendation, tell him how well he connects with players and talk about how a fresh start could do him good, maybe save yourself several million dollars by showcasing his best attributes. When he goes, you write a nice press release thanking him for his time while lining up your list of preferred replacements you can now afford due to saving yourself $6m+ finding Shaka the soft landing.

This is the most sensible path to me; the team is probably going to be in line for a reset this year, and the transfer portal will be crazy busy with all these guys getting a free year so with the right coach you could build a patchwork lineup of grad transfers to get you to the next recruiting class and the new arena. I don’t know if it will happen, but from my view it makes the most sense for everyone involved.

None. Lick your wounds, watch some basketball that doesn’t impact your psyche.

Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football and/or our Twitter account. This podcast recording will be…interesting. My next recap will come out next season. Also, I have a Patreon if you want to tip me for telling you everything is terrible.

NOTE TO PATRONS: If you want to shut down/pause your Patreon sub since the season is over, I totally get it. I won’t be posting again for awhile (unless, for example, the scenario I described comes to pass) so it’s entirely up to you.

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