Horns247 Board

IMO, it's the toughest job in sports. I really believe that. Your entire career is pretty much based on a single elimination tourney. How f'ing difficult is that? You can go 30-2 but if your bounced early, you suck.

On one hand I think we have it better than a lot of people realize and on the other hand, I want to be better. When you're good, expectations rise. That just comes with it. Barnes welcomes that. I think it's unfortunate we weren't prepared roster wise to continue building on our changes to our offensive philosophy. But that falls on Barnes too.

Great programs and coaches miss the tourney. Donovan, Knight, Roy Williams, Coach K, etc. They all do it from time to time. But they have higher highs despite having lower lows. We need more highs. I'm fine with Barnes staying the basketball coach until recruiting drops off or we miss the tourney two years in a row. Those things will probably go hand in hand.

Option A for me.

I recognize what he's done, but the program has stalled out momentum wise. I'm ready for a change. I've never had the feeling that Barnes has a vision for what he's trying to do. It just seems like he throws pieces together as he gets them, coaches them up on D as best as he can and then hopes for the best.

I'm ready for a change.

You don't take out the championship years under any circumstance.
That gives you house money to have the seasons they had after Noah, Horford and company left.

In case anyone was curious, current count is:

A - 4
B - 6
C - 2

C- 2 reasons:

1) Year in year out he always does a great job of developing the talent he has on hand-+ we're always a competitive team

2) Given the conditions imposed by the media + NBA, it's difficult for any team to develop as a traditional college power, ethically these days-I think Barnes does a really good job of keeping the program on an "honest" ongoing path-one day I think he'll get to the Championship if left alone

A-B

I think Barnes is a high floor/low ceiling guy. I think you can expect to make the tournament with him but not much else.. I think he gets out coached consistently in the tournament. I read that he's never beaten anyone seeded higher than him, but I'm not sure if thats true. I would believe it though. I think he struggles to make in game adjustments as well as in season adjustments. As evidenced by late season collapses 2 of the last 3 years. I think that his team struggles in the last 3 minutes of games(Zona last year and Tech this year).

I think offensively his teams are lost. Even with one legitimate scorer this year like JCB there are still things that they can take advantage of on the weak side to get guys easy shots but it doesn't happen.

I know his calling card has always been defense and rebounding but even then there aren't many teams who struggle to get good looks.

What I think bothers me the most are some of his post game comments where he blames the players ( I'm all for calling out players of they're not playing well ). What I'm referring to is this year when he was asked (paraphrasing) why he didn't call timeout at the end of the game to call a new play. His response was, again paraphrasing, it wouldn't matter because they wouldn't or couldn't execute it. That's coaching plane and simple. If at that juncture late in the season you can get your guys to execute and OOB play then that's on you. That's a BS excuse.

I think Barnes is a lot closer to the 20th best coach in America than the Top5. Imo to think that you couldnt find anyone better is ridiculous. I also think that if Duke, Kentucky and UNC can develop a presence in the state, like they are currently trying to do, its going to get a lot tougher for him.

A

Agree to disagree. This recruiting class is why Florida did so well. Out of there 5 complementary players they had three superstars that stayed an extra year as a bonus. This is from RCSI where their class was ranked 8. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have Donavon over Barnes, but there was definitely some luck involved.

Florida (159 pts)
#25 Corey Brewer
#47 Al Horford
#72 Joakim Noah
Taureen Green
Cornelius Ingram
Billy Donavon has decided to focus more on complementary players rather than superstars with this class but there is still more than enough depth here to make this a very strong group.

Recruiting is on par with the rest of the powers. Keeping them in school is the chore. Rick Barnes is a great defensive minded coach and needs to develop an offensive consistency. When tied with Cincinnati, we failed to rotate the ball from side to side, and this took the ball out of J'Covan's hand to decide the best course. By not having J'Covan coming back we will again be a 20 win team but not much more and until we have an offense and a maturity we can probably expect to maintain this status.

If I had to choose, I'd pick B. However, I do not discount the significance of 14 straight NCAA appearances. That streak is currently tied for third longest. The people who dismiss this feat as if it should be some kind of "minimal threshold by birthright" accomplishment, simply do not understand how hard it is to do, or how many factors beyond a coach's control can derail the streak.

Texas has been playing basketball for over 100 years. Texas has a total of 30 NCAA appearances. Barnes is responsible for almost half of those. Over the last 24 seasons, Barnes and Penders were responsible for 22 appearances in 24 years. Texas made its first NCAA appearance in 1939. It took 40 years for the total appearances to reach 8. So, 14 in a row is nothing to dismiss.

I have said before that I think the signing of Kevin Durant set Texas on an ambivalent course. On the one hand, it brought great prestige and even more attention to the program. It also gave Texas the ability to recruit and secure other highly rated players like Hamilton, Bradley, Thompson, Joseph and Kabongo. However, in part because Durant's class consisted of 7 players, and because every year there was a question about which of those players might leave early, we had recruiting failures on two fronts. One, we missed badly on some of the evaluations, especially on big men. Except for Thompson, who really was playing out of position, Texas has not had a dominant player in the paint since Aldridge. The other problem is that Texas seemed to wind up, often due to unexpected departures, reaching for transfers, foreign players and late signees in the Spring period who just were not major contributors.

This last class, plus the one coming in, shows a lot of promise that it will lay a foundation for growth in the program. I hope that happens, because I think Barnes is a good coach, and I am not sure that the next hire, whenever it happens, will be as good. Just look at what happened in the women's program.

This is a good post and I agree with quite a bit of it. However, I would like to say that I would gladly trade a few tournament appearances for higher highs as well. Just getting to the tournament is great but at some point we need to take the next step, otherwise the program becomes stale as you could argue it is now.

My other thought in regard to the statistics regarding NCAA appearances and Rick Barnes being responsible for nearly half of them is that the tournament did not expand to 64 teams until 1985. Below is the history of tournament expansion. Obviously Rick Barnes has accomplished quite a bit at Texas in comparison to our basketball history, however his NCAA appearances vs all-time appearances is a little bit apples to oranges in my opinion.

This is a breakdown of the history of the tournament format:
1939–1950: eight teams
1951–1952: 16 teams
1953–1974: varied between 22 and 25 teams
1975–1978: 32 teams
1979: 40 teams
1980–1982: 48 teams
1983: 52 teams (four play-in games before the tournament)
1984: 53 teams (five play-in games before the tournament)
1985–2000: 64 teams
2001–2010: 65 teams (with an opening round game to determine whether the 64th or 65th team plays in the first round)
2011–present: 68 teams (four play-in games in the first round before all remaining teams compete in the second round)

I'm a B trending toward A. Texas can do better but do think Barnes is probably the best we've had. The last three years have turned me off, none of those years ended in a top 25 finish, none made it out of the 1st weekend and two finished without a win. 1-3 in tourney play over the last 3 years shouldn't be acceptable. I think it's crazy to pay a coach the ridiculous amount he receives and then say well we're a football school so we shouldn't expect too much.

I am with you Goo, I remember before Barnes and what has happened in his term. Rick has done a better job for us than all the coaches in our history. Not even close. There is a problem with getting elite Texas kid for some reason. Guess everyone loves Waco.