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In the fallout of the Chris Beard firing, lots of questions emerged – will the recruits stay? Who will take over in the meantime? Will Texas hire from outside, or promote from within? These were questions nobody thought would ever be asked a month ago before the story broke about Beard's alleged domestic violence against his fiancee.
The story is horrific, but college basketball isn't on pause – Texas needs to make moves on a head coach as soon as possible and try to lock one in for the 2023-24 season, both to establish the new offensive and defensive systems as well as try to salvage the recruiting classes as much as possible.
The Longhorns job is a highly coveted one – the amount of resources paired with the brand-new Moody Center make it an attractive offer to any coach out there, who will have a huge boost in recruiting due to the amount of money pumped into the program. So who will take over?
Here are some of the rumored candidates and ideal candidates for the Texas basketball head coaching job.
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ERIC MUSSELMAN, HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
Eric Musselman is a high-energy coach that recruits prep talent incredibly well and is a master in the portal. He had a top-three high school recruiting class this year according to Rivals, and he's been to back-to-back Elite Eights with the Razorbacks. He has a very talented team this season that could stretch that Elite Eight streak to three given a few things break their way and key guys like Nick Smith Jr., the no. 2 recruit in the nation, return. In the highly competitive SEC, Mussleman has won 85 games to 31 losses overall, performing at a level not seen in Razorback basketball since the Eddie Sutton/Nolan Richardson days in the late Southwest Conference.
Musselman would be an absolute home run of a hire; the question isn't whether Texas wants him, it's whether or not Texas can convince him to leave Fayetteville. He's clearly in love with the school, evident in his behavior since landing there. His enthusiasm for the Razorbacks may make it difficult to pry him away. He would be, in my opinion, the best option out there for Texas basketball, but that doesn't mean the feeling is reciprocated.
Musselman is absolutely beloved by the Arkansas fanbase, and considering the fact that the Razorbacks will be bunkmates with Texas in the near conference future, it may be even more difficult to convince him to leap SEC West teams. Beard was willing to do it, but Arkansas is a better job than Texas Tech is.
Regardless, Musselman would be a massive success in Austin, both with his coaching and his ability to bring in top-tier talent. It's a problem of getting him to come to the 40 Acres. Whether or not Texas makes him an offer he can't refuse, we'll have to see.
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ROYAL IVEY, ASSISTANT, BROOKLYN NETS (NBA)
If Texas wants another homecoming for its head coach, former player Royal Ivey sticks out as a possible option for the gig. Royal Ivey has been an assistant with the Brooklyn Nets since 2020 after a journeyman's career in the NBA as a shooting guard, where he played for Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Oklahoma City over a 10-year span.
His coaching career started in 2014 with the Oklahoma City Blue, a G-League team affiliated with the Thunder. In 2016, OKC elevated him to the NBA team's staff instead of the developmental league's staff, and from there, he would serve as an assistant with the Thunder, the Knicks, and currently, the Nets. He also served as head coach of the South Sudanese AfroBasket national team, where they reached the quarterfinals in the 2021 African tournament event.
The issues with Ivey are that he (a) has no head coaching experience and (b) has no experience in the college ranks, where recruiting is key. This isn't to say he won't be good at landing big-time commits; the problem is that we just don't know yet. It would be risky to swing for the fences for a guy that has no hands-on exposure in one of the most important aspects of the college game. For these reasons, I believe they will look elsewhere for their hire, though I also would not be shocked for them to keep it in house to an extent and go after a former Longhorn.
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NATE OATS, HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
After four very successful seasons at the University of Buffalo, Nate Oats took the head job in Tuscaloosa, coaching the Crimson Tide and bringing a lot of attention to a basketball program that had often been an afterthought due to its being in the shadow of Alabama's mammoth football program.
At Buffalo, Oats didn't have a single losing season, and won three Mid-American Conference tournaments in his four years at the helm. He had some tournament success as well at a school that had been to the tournament just once before his arrival. In back-to-back years, he got them to the Round of 32, raising his profile and prompting the University of Alabama to hire him on as their leader in 2019-2020. Buffalo has not made the tournament since Oats' departure.
At Alabama, Oats has boasted similar success: he won both the regular season title and SEC tournament in 2020-21, a season in which the conference recognized his success and granted him SEC Coach of the Year. His highly talented roster, composed of stars like Jaden Shackelford, John Petty, Jahvon Quinnerly, Herb Jones, and Josh Primo, helped them advance to the Sweet 16, where they lost to eventual Final Four squad UCLA. They finished 26-7 on the season and a blistering 14-2 in conference play. They landed in the top 25 in the nation in points scored per game at 79.7.
Oats is an offensive-minded coach – his teams don't struggle to score the basketball. The defensive end has been a problem for them, however, so Oats would bring in a much different vibe to Texas basketball then they've had recently, where defense was the key. Oats is a great recruiter as well, having the best freshman in the country in projected top-five pick Brandon Miller, a small forward who leads all freshmen in points per game so far at 19.1. It would be an adjustment to go from a grind-it-out team to a finesse-based scoring machine, but Oats would be another monster hire if Texas could pull it off.
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JOHN CALIPARI, HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Coach Cal, as he's known by his players, is a controversial candidate due to a couple of things. First, he's had his issues with the NCAA, having vacated seasons at every stop in which he's coached other than Kentucky. He had a championship vacated at UMass after the Marcus Camby situation, where the highly touted recruit took inadmissible benefits to play for the Minutemen in the school's first and only trip to the Final Four in 1995-96.
After this, Calipari ended up at Memphis, where his 2007-08 NCAA Tournament Runners Up team starring Derrick Rose had its records vacated as well due to academic fraud that occurred with the star point guard and future number-one overall pick. Their official record that season was 0-1, the one loss being to national champion Kansas.
He then ended up at Kentucky, where he brought in several of the best recruiting classes in NCAA basketball history. The list of athletes that have played for Coach Cal and went on to illustrious NBA careers is jaw dropping – here's a quick list:
Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, Anthony Davis, De'Aaron Fox, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyler Herro, Keldon Johnson, Tyrese Maxey, Malik Monk, Jamal Murray, Julius Randle, Shaedon Sharpe, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Jared Vanderbilt, and Ty-Ty Washington.
Cal's ability to recruit talent is unmatched in the current era, even with teams like Duke closing in on these records. The problem with Cal is his ability to develop players on the fly and get them to play together as a team. Despite all of the talent that has passed through Lexington, he has just one national championship, in 2012.
For the reasons above, I think Texas passes on Calipari, as they haven't had issues recruiting in the first place. Plus, with the circumstances of the firing of their last coach, they need to go with a squeaky-clean candidate this time around. Calipari doesn't fit the bill.
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TOMMY LLOYD, HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Tommy Lloyd was Mark Few's right-hand man at Gonzaga for 20 years, helping to turn a mid-major into a national powerhouse that develops legitimate NBA talent and competes for national championships. In his first season as the head coach Arizona, he took what he'd learned from Few and put the Wildcats back on the college basketball map, going 33-4 overall and starring a top-six pick in shooting guard Ben Mathurin, who is currently one of the best rookies in the NBA, playing for the Indiana Pacers.
Lloyd is another offense-first guy, as the Wildcats averaged a white-hot 84 points per game in 2021-22, good for third in the entire country. They run uptempo offenses that resemble what Gonzaga runs: height and speed are key. They run their big men out in transition, guys like Azuolas Tubelis, and dominate opponents in run-outs and fast breaks. Using these rim-running bigs allows for transition threes as well, due to the fact that the defensive players migrate to the lane to stop easy baskets from the fours and fives. Gonzaga runs a similar offense, as you saw with Chet Holmgren last season, but Lloyd knows what he's doing when he recruits bigs with speed and stamina.
In this current season, Arizona is averaging 85.8 points per, which ranks them seventh out of 363 teams in the country. They sport a 14-2 record and have arguably the best big-man 1-2 punch in college basketball between Azuolas Tubelis and Oumar Ballo. Again, much of this is due to Lloyd's system, which prioritizes athletic big men and gets them running.
The only knock on Lloyd s is that he isn't an elite recruiter of top-end talent; he develops the talent he does get really well, but he has yet to bring in a five-star player, which is important for the Texas boosters. He is underrated however in that he brings in guys that stay multiple years; one-and-dones are important, but guys who stay 2-3 years and create a backbone for the program are just as important as top-end NBA prospects are. Besides, equipped with UT's resources, he would probably have no problem recruiting, especially considering he has an "in" at Duncanville after singing 2023 SF KJ Lewis.
Lloyd would be another excellent choice, but a guy that would probably take a year or two to integrate with his system, as Texas has players and recruits that aren't necessarily built for this offensive tactic (outside of AJ Johnson, who would thrive).
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RODNEY TERRY, INTERIM HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
The simplest strategy would be to promote from within and make Rodney Terry the head coach; he has a great rapport with recruits and players alike, and is known as a strong culture guy who has head coaching experience in his past. That being said, he is probably the least likely to land the permanent HC job besides Calipari. Texas wants to make a splash with the new hire, and retaining Terry as the leader of the program seems unlikely since this is their goal.
Terry has been a head coach at Fresno State and at UTEP in the past, but has failed to achieve any kind of major success at these schools. In 10 seasons between the two schools at which he was the head man, his team made only one NCAA Tournament appearance, which was 2015-16 at Fresno State, where the Bulldogs won the Western Athletic Conference tournament and earned a tournament berth.
This is not to rag on Terry or say that he's incapable of being an effective head coach. It is, however, a realistic look at his odds to take over for Chris Beard full-time. In my opinion, it would require a massively successful season in which Texas:
• wins 30 games
• makes an Elite Eight/Final Four
• retains all recruits that committed to Chris Beard before his firing
Even if those three things happen, I still find it hard to believe that Texas wouldn't look in another direction. Will they keep him on staff? Ideally yes, because I think he's an excellent assistant, but most likely, a new head coach will want to bring in his own guys to take over for the staff. I'd be very surprised to see Rodney Terry leading the program next season, at least as a head coach.
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Honorable Mentions.
Dennis Gates, Missouri
Jerome Tang, Kansas State
Jay Wright, retired HC, Villanova
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On the whole, this is a miserable situation all around, but that doesn't mean that good can't come from it. Some of the coaches I've listed above are excellent and could bring a new wave of talent to Austin, creating a basketball culture that could compete with the one that Beard was building. Obviously this is not the ideal way to clean house, but it's up to the university to turn lemons into lemonade here. The resources, the venue, the culture, and the fan involvement paint a pretty picture of what can be done on the 40 Acres from a hoops perspective. There is really no excuse to struggle when this much money has been funneled into the athletic department.
Beard was a massive hire when it happened. It's time for Texas to find their next successful head coach.
