But I can’t see a good reason to replace him, especially if it’s for some “up and comer.” I think the fanbase should take the lesson of Mack Brown: Many wanted Mack gone a few years into his tenure, but now nobody does. I think you’re right about evaluating how Barnes reacts to failure. As polite and nice as Mack Brown seems, he fights back with a vengeance when he gets backed into a corner (such as after that humiliating performance in College Station in 2007). Will Barnes? I hope so. Before we know it, we may be bragging that he’s one of those “elite” coaches in the country.

As for what I want to see from Barnes:

1. If we’re going to keep the offensive philosophy that we have, he’s going to have to recruit hard after players who can create offense for us and also be patient with those that he has, like J’Covan Brown. Believe me, Brown did things all season that made me want to bang my head against a wall, but at the least, he had both the confidence and the ability to create things on offense that hardly anyone else would.

2. If not, then there obviously needs to be a change in that philosophy. Either Barnes needs to learn it or needs to bring in an assistant that can help him do it, because this incoherence on offense that we saw this season just can’t be tolerated. True, it would have helped if we were a far stronger defensive team, but we weren’t, and good offense helps players play defense anyway.

3. He needs to understand when to ride someone hard and when to teach in more “chill” way. I had trouble understanding what Barnes was doing this season. Sometimes, he seemed like a hard-liner with quick substitutions when somebody messed up, benching J’Covan Brown, and winding this entire team up tight. Then he often let them hang out to dry when they were on the bad end of a big run (which unfortunately happened quite a bit this year). In other words, there are times when a coach needs to let players play through mistakes and learn from them, and there are times when a coach needs to step in in a strong way. Barnes seemed to mix them up.

Anyway, I’m all for him staying, but man, we can’t have collapses like this again. That was a painful season.

Wow. Well, I’m honored that could be such a source of inspiration; even though I know you’re responding more the reactionary types that surround Texas basketball, than actually responding to me. Still, it’s quite an honor. You’re a brilliant writer and a great fan so it’s nice just to be noticed. However I still disagree with you. Well, perhaps not as much as either of us thinks. Let me explain.

I don’t think it would be wise to let Rick Barnes go after one disappointing season. In fact that would be ridiculous and would wind up do perhaps irrevocable harm to our program. No coach in the country would want to come to a school that caved in to such absurd fan expectation. No, I’m willing to let Rick go based upon his body of work; and because this is not his first disappointing season. Last year’s team was nowhere near as talented as this year’s team, so why do the two feel so similar? Why is that last year’s team started off so strong (and they did), playing hellacious defense, only to wind down the stretch completely lost on offense, unable to guard any kind of offensive set, and showing absolutely zero basketball IQ? I honestly don’t know. The problem is that clearly Barnes doesn’t either. Because the same problems from that team, have manifested themselves on this team. I suspect next year’s team will start off strong, show tremendous defensive ability early in the year, and then fade into a shell of its former self around mid January. Before this year I think most of us wrote it off as Rick’s teams getting "gassed"; but now I’m beginning that it’s just his M.O.

His disappointing teams don’t just include the last two years either. Everyone talks about how great the Kevin Durant year was. It wasn’t. He was fantastic. I’d dare say he was the greatest college freshman of all time. Perhaps one of the greatest college basketball players ever. And Rick Barnes took that sort of supernova talent, paired it with another future lottery pick in D.J. Augustin, coupled those two with some tremendous role players and produced….what, exactly? A second round exit? Do you truly believe that there are many that coaches out there that would struggle to obtain those lofty heights with that kind of talent? Perhaps you do. I do not. In fact I suspect that certain coach now plying his trade in College Station could have achieved such success, if not more so. To me, that’s such an incredibly sad statement I almost cannot even compute it.

Now I know some are going to come back with the D.J. led Texas team that reached the Elite Eight the following year. That was a hell of a coaching job. I never said Barnes isn’t a good coach, just not a great coach. Sometimes it seems like he struggles the most with his most talented teams. More than one naysayer has wondered if he isn’t better suited to coaching a team that has one great talent (hopefully a point guard) surrounded by solid to good role players. The problem with that of course is that it almost always takes an elite amount of talent at multiple positions to win a national title. Since I have no doubt that’s something that Barnes wants, he’s continually forced to put himself into a coaching weakness.

There are also those who undoubtedly are going to counter by suggesting that those other coaches may not have been able to get a guy like Kevin Durant to come to Texas. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Personally I tend to believe that Rick Barnes is a tremendous recruiter; but that his success in that area has been a combination of things, and not just a result of his own talents. Towards the end of Penders’ tenure Texas basketball had begun to make some serious strides in basketball recruiting. Chris Mihm was not a Barnes recruit. And although it turned sour for us, Luke Axtell was a highly sought after national recruit as well. Would Tourney Tom have had the success that Barnes has had? Absolutely not. For one he wouldn’t have been sober enough to make to enough AAU games. Would another coach have had as much success as Barnes? Hard to say. Would a new coach be able to capitalize on the momentum that Barnes and (perhaps just as important) the Texas football program has generated and continue to recruit well nationally? Again that’s hard to say. But my brain and my gut tell me yes. And regardless, arguing that a coach should not be let go when he’s producing underwhelming results by saying that he’s bringing top talent, is not really helping his case. There’s a reason no golfer in the world has blamed his sliced tee shot on having an incredible and accurate driver.

Okay, so now it’s getting late and I’m afraid I don’t have nearly as good a gift with words as yourself, so I’ll try and make this last part brief. I apologize for my inability to do that earlier. My problem, my reason for using a phrase such as "self defeatist’, stems from this idea that should Texas replace Rick Barnes they might not get anyone better. Or worse, they might actually get someone not as good. Heaven forbid! You mean instead of hoping for the occasional Sweet 16/Elite Eight run coupled with multiple first or second round exits, we’d instead have to hope to make the tournament and hope for a first or second round exit? You mean we might slip from our mighty perch of slight national relevance to a lowlier plateau of tiny national relevance? Whatever would we do? I mean besides fire the coach that allowed that to happen? You know, three years after he got here? And then put together a package to go after an even bigger, better name? You’re right though that those three years might be rough. Might even be as rough as say having a team go from being ranked #1 to being knocked out in the first round by an underwhelming 9 seed. You see my problem here is this fear that in reaching for greatness, we might fail. So what? At least we’re reaching for greatness. I can live with that. You yourself have pointed out the fickleness of the Texas fans when it comes to basketball. If you’re worried that the casual UT fan will stop caring and stop coming because Texas isn’t ranked in the top 25 every year like they are with Barnes, you can go ahead and stop worrying. Texas fans don’t care and don’t come to games now. And trust me, having the general fan base get its expectations to such lofty heights (ranked #1), only to see them come crashing down at the end has done more harm to trying to reach the average Horn fan than three or four years of mediocrity could ever do. And that might be the most disappointing thing of all from this season.

Having said all that, there’s no way Rick Barnes gets released. In reality, he’s done more than enough for this program to warrant a long leash, and I’m sure he’s got one from DeLoss. Is his leash as long with the fans? Not as long as it used to be, that’s for sure. I understand that I’m upset, and I know that in the coming weeks and months my ire will probably subside and I’ll realize that it’s foolish to think about letting Rick Barnes go. I mean I like Rick, I really do. I hope he can have a career renaissance similar to Mack’s. I seriously hope so; and not just for Texas’ sake but for his own. I hope he brings in some incredible offensive guru and gets this thing turned around. But for now, I’m left with my anger, and a certainty that we could do better.

Hook’em

Admit that I didn’t see any BB games in person this year (after a 15 year absence, prayer was rewarded and we moved back to Austin this month) and didn’t see every game on TV. That said, it seems like Barnes is in exactly the same position Mack was in following the 2006 loss to tamu. He needs to walk over to Mack’s office and ask for some advice, because the parallels are eerily similar — lack of coherent effort from an abundance of talent, seemingly weak effort from assistants, etc. Just a thought.

We have one of the biggest arenas in college basketball. It may not seat as many as the biggest, but it is one of the biggest in terms of size. We absolutely have to get a new arena only for longhorn basketball. If we can cut the seating capacity to 9-10,000 we will fill that thing up every night. It would create the home court advantage we don’t seem to often generate and it will also breath new life into Rick Barnes and the program as a whole. The fan base will be more energetic, the players will be more energetic and the coaches will be more energetic.

I really feel that for us to be successful in basketball it is not replacing Rick Barnes who really is one of the most consistent coaches in the country. It is to go out find some assistant coaches that will bring in new ideas and new blood, create a home court advantage(something that players would be excited to come to Texas for and play games at), and I think it is no longer acceptable to not hold Texas Basketball to higher standard. It is unfortunate that Rick Barnes is becoming a victim of his own success, but there is no reason that we can’t set the bar higher. If any university in the country has the resources to compete nationally in Basketball, Football, and Baseball its Texas.

He should be given a raise fir putting up with the freshman who think the should be in the NBA instead of learning how the game should be played as a TEAM sport My thoughts on Rick is he is as good a coach as there in in the country just look at Roy Williams this year.

ever since he came to Texas. I watched him pretty closely at Clemson. His MO there was a good program, tough kids, but he did not win big games. He is weak with Xs and Os and coaching within the game. What has he done here. He has won. The program brings in big time recruits. Except for this year, you can pretty much count on the team putting forth excellent defensive effort. But, in tight games (like the Wake game), I don’t see Barnes coaching. I don’t see him defending his players when they are the victims of bad calls (like James’ fifth in overtime). And that sends a message to the kids.

I think we need to concentrate on something Barnes himself unfortunately stuck his foot in his mouth about, and that’s championships. But not NCAA tourney championships, let’s look at conference championships first. And in 12 years, Barnes has zero conference tourney championships. He had plenty of opportunities. The Durant team had that championship in the bag, and Kansas came back and took it away. And that isn’t the only time a Barnes coached team has blown a big lead in a championship game. If we can’t win our conference tourney one time, how can we legitimately say we are a basketball power worthy of consideration for a national title? We can’t.

All in all though, I agree with Peter for now. I think though some people really need to push Barnes to improve is in game coaching. I would like to see him concentrate on winning a conference tournament championship. We need to take that step first folks. Let’s beat KU or KState, or hell, now maybe Baylor or A&M in a conference final before we think we are good enough to beat Syracuse or Kentucky in a Final Four game. Barnes needs to feel some pressure though to raise his game, or we’re going to be fighting for fifth place in our conference year after year after year.

I think you have to look at some factors that have made Brown successful. Brown is known as a master recruiter and he has hired top assist coaches (well, maybe Greg Davis doesn’t fit). Anyhow, numerous posters have mentioned the assist coach issue for basketball so that doesn’t bear repeating. On recruiting, it is assumed that Barnes is a master recruiter like Brown. In the previous “End of the Road” writeup, a poster (flodeth) noted that while Barnes has recruited some top flight talent, there has not been such a strong supporting cast and he presents detail and a pretty good argument for that. Regarding recruiting, an article in this morning’s Houston paper quotes Scott Drew on recruiting (yes, I know there are a lot of questions about his tactics) – “Our job is to recruit elite players and bring them to our school. If we do that, we’re going to be successful. So we’re definitely going to do that. WE’RE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE GOOD PLAYERS, YOU’RE NOT A GOOD COACH.”

Bottom line in my opinion, upgrade assist coaches and try to upgrade recruiting. Barnes can do this and I think he is the best guy for the job right now.

He recruits pretty good, but I think UT draws the recruit. I just don’t see good coaching on any of the past Barnes teams. He’s had good players that brought him success.

I have been a casual observer of BON for a while now, but have never commented before so here is my two-cents for what its worth.

Texas will not win a Natl Championship with Barnes. I may have to swallow my words down the line, but nothing I have seen from Barnes’ 12 years at Texas proves that he can do it.

Yes, he recruits elite talent, but the best of the best leave within 1-2 years of joining the program. Texas seems to be merely a stopover on their way to NBA, and there is no commitment to staying and playing for a Natl Championship ala a Tyler Hansborough or a Colt McCoy. Barnes is cognizant of this and unfortunately from his statements it appears he aids and abets that approach.

And why does Barnes think that way? I believe part of it is because of the fans’ expectations. If the Basketball program was the football program, Barnes would not survive after a season like this and making the statements he did. Texas never had a legitimate Basketball Program before Barnes and whatever exists today is because of RB. As a result the fanbase was also ecstatic at the success and the elite level that he pushed the program to.

But the Bball fanbase, as a whole, at present does not crave and expect a Natl Championship with the same intensity as the Football fanbase. Or like other elite Bball schools such as Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky or Duke with storied histories and a continuing expecation of a Title every single year.

But the level of discontent we see now is actually a good sign. Fans are expecting more and reaching the NCAA’s and winning a few games are not good enough anymore. The benchmark has visibly shifted and that, according to me, is a good thing. This expectation is what will drive and fuel a push for a Coach that can deliver the Title or maybe even make RB realize that past laurels aside, he has now created an avid and passionate fanbase that wants more which would ideally force him to make the changes that will deliver the Title (I know i am contradicting myself here, but its a possibility).

I look at Kentucky, where they let go of Tubby, who took them to the NCAA’s every single year. But their desire for a title pushed them to make the risky move and let go of him and then go after Gillespie and then Calipari. They dont have a title yet, but their desire for one is so great, that they are willing to take the risk. As a Bball fanbase, Texas I believe is not quite there yet.

…then Barnes is all the coach UT needs. Mack Brown had a down season here or there before and after (2007) winning the national title, but there have been two near-title seasons in the past two years, so people kind of forget. Barnes is dealing with a sport with much higher roster turnover and, at the same time, much more impact from each roster turnover that happens, since fewer players are involved in the game. With the amazing young talent, probably no one leaving early for the draft this year, and more incoming talent, I think UT’s going to be looking pretty good in 2010-2011, and people are going to forget a little bit of their criticism of Barnes this year.

I’m not saying I’ve concluded that Barnes is a permanent answer; as I explained in last night’s post, perhaps the best thing we might do is begin to think seriously about how to evaluate the job Barnes does over the coming couple of years. The single best thing we can do to help ourselves evaluate and make meaningful decisions about Barnes down the line, is to think through and articulate — now, ahead of time — what specifically we hope/want to see from him heading forward. Considering the odds facing any and every team, winning the national title may not be the best standard to make our determinations. A title-less season may or may not provide reason to be discouraged about the future; more helpful would be to have thought about what, specifically, are those things we want to see from Barnes and the program, irrespective of whether the team cuts down any nets.

I’ve begun thinking about what I expect Rick Barnes to do on the other side of this season — things that I think can help provide a meaningful basis for making a decision as important and consequential as keep-him-or-cut-him.

Fair enough. Here are my contributions to The List of things RB should work on:

1. Technically Weak on Offense. In watching Texas BB, I’m struck by the consistent lack of BB fundamentals on offense (e.g., streetball over team-play, poor free-throw shooting, missed lay-ups, turnovers, etc.). It’s great that RB stresses defense, but having an efficient offense that doesn’t turn the ball over prevents points off turnovers and transition buckets, energizes the team to play defense, and puts a lot of pressure on the other team to score.

2. Poor Team Chemistry. Yes, we had lots of prima donnas this year and one glaring one last year (Abrams), but I can’t help but think that RB’s stubborn “my way or the highway”/ “the guys don’t get it” / they’re not listening to me" attitude sets the tone for the lack of selfless buy-in that I haven’t seen in a Texas team since at least 05-06 (PJ, Aldridge, Aldridge, Paulino, Buckman) or maybe even 02-03 (TJ, Mouton, Royal, Thomas, Buckman). These days, Texas BB is characterized by a bunch of individuals who don’t blend together. I agree that RB "has got to accept an appropriate amount of responsibility when his team fails and he has got to give us something better than the indifferent and ambiguous "we’re trying to hopefully one day be the best we can be, get in the tournament, hopefully, and we can play for it."

3. Fade Down the Stretch. I agree that Texas teams of late seem to start off strong, playing hellacious defense, only to wind down the stretch completely lost on offense, unable to guard any kind of offensive set, and showing absolutely zero basketball IQ. This trend speaks more to RB’s coaching that to the players.

I still need some shoes and socks for basketball Caradoc if you can help me. Did you read my post on the BU/UT big12 champ game. I’m only 14, but I love Duke and Baylor and would relish a Duke/BU matchup. I don’t even know who I would be for. My stepdaddy went to Baylor, but he abuses me a lot so I have to quiet when I post. After I read my Bible every night I cry myself to sleep but I wake up and feel better.

What if Texas had Baylor’s coach this year? Would things have been different?