O Shaka Smart era came to an end after six seasons with the head coach of Texas going to Marquette to be the new head coach of the Golden Eagles. Smart went 109-86 with the Longhorns, which includes a record of 52-56 in the Big 12 play and a record of 0-3 in the NCAA tournament.
Smart’s final game at Forty Acres will go into the record books as arguably the most impressive NCAA tournament loss in program history, a 53-52 first round loss suffered by Abilene Christian at Lucas Oil Stadium’s Unity Court in Indianapolis last Saturday. Coming on the heels of the show’s first Big 12 Tournament championship – Texas beat Oklahoma State on March 13, 91-86, at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri. – Smart’s mandate experienced the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows over the seven-day period.
The Longhorns have not advanced in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2008 and while the 2020-21 Smart team, which ended with a 19-8 record and finished 9th in the Associated Press final Top 25, won the program Fifth out of the top three in March Madness (No. 3 in the East) since the tournament expanded to a field of 64 teams in 1985, it’s up to the next head coach to bring the program back to the level Rick Barnes had in the mid-2000s with a Final Four (2003), two trips to Sweet 16 (2002, 2004), two appearances at Elite Oito (2006, 2008) and a part of two Big 12 regular season championships (2006, 2008) 2002-2008). With the program about to go through its third coaching transition since Tom Penders was hired in 1988 (Barnes was hired to replace Penders in 1998 and Smart was hired as Barnes’s successor in 2014), Horns247 has put together a list of coaches that could emerge as candidates to replace Smart.
The first edition of the Horns247 Hot Board lists candidates in alphabetical order. According to Chip Brown of Horns247, an apparent favorite for the job has already emerged for the job and he is listed along with a likely choice number 2 and other candidates who are worthy of consideration and could realistically find work in Texas attractive enough to make his way to Austin to be the 25th head coach in the program’s history.