Shaka Smart’s eye for talent extends beyond the region of just players. In his young coaching career, Smart’s coaching tree is starting to produce some rising coaches in the hoops world, and he seems to know a good assistant, or a future one, when he sees one.
When Smart arrived at Texas, he made sure former Texas point guard Jai Lucas had a place on his staff. It didn’t take Smart long at all to observe the kind of impact Lucas has on Texas - both the hoops program and the state - and that he’s someone the Longhorns need around.
“It was something that for me it took me all of a couple hours when I first got here to realize that Jai Lucas is someone that… he has a real connection to this program, the players here, the former players here; obviously with his connection to the city of Houston being from Houston with his family, it was very obvious to me that this is a guy that we needed to have here. So last year when I got here, we moved him up from where he was to Director of Operations,” said Smart when he met with the media this past Wednesday. “But I knew that we weren’t going to be able to keep him in that spot very long because he’s just a young, up and coming coach and he’s very bright. He has a lot of understanding of the game of basketball that’s advanced for his age.”
Smart’s intuition was correct. TCU saw that potential in Lucas too, and the Horned Frogs, under new head coach Jaime Dixon, approached the 27-year-old Lucas about joining the TCU staff as an assistant coach back in late April and early May, which would have been an upgrade from Lucas’ current role at Texas as Director of Basketball Operations and would have allowed him to be on the road as a recruiter. So the Longhorns, in the final stretch of recruiting paramount target and five-star Jarret Allen, needed to react or risk losing an emerging coaching talent and maybe more in the form of a five-star.
Lucas is the son of the widely respected John Lucas II, who works with top basketball talents, including professionals, and athletes of all ages in Houston, where Jai is from. The elder Lucas is a former No. 1 overall NBA pick, NBA head coach, and if there’s a top Texas hoops prospect, the chances are that prospect knows who Lucas is. That list includes Texas freshman big man Allen, who spent time in Houston throughout his high school career working out with the respected coach. The name “Lucas” is about as well-known as it gets in Texas when it comes to basketball, especially Houston.
However, the former Texas point guard is definitely more than a name, and has really impressed during his time on the 40 Acres as part of the basketball staff. Some people are fortunate enough to be wise beyond their years, and the former Texas point guard certainly fits that description, especially in any area that has to do with basketball. Lucas, who sat on the bench during games offering observations and assistance and was a part of the pre-game scouting in addition to his operations duties last year, is regarded as someone with a very bright future in the coaching world, which wasn't overlooked at Texas. It goes without saying, but recruiting in Texas is arguably the toughest state to recruit in, and there’s no doubt Lucas has the ability to significantly aid the Longhorns in that area.
So, the Longhorns ran into a problem. How could they keep Lucas? In order to do that, they needed to elevate him to a position that allowed his role to expand to areas like getting on the road to recruit and a true coaching title like another Big 12 program was offering. With three assistant coaches already in the mix at Texas, the Longhorns needed to get creative in order to put Lucas in one of those roles and also keep all of those other assistants in the mix in a very similar capacity as well.
The youngest assistant on the Texas staff last season was Mike Morrell, but the 33-year-old has a relationship with Smart that dates back to the 2007-08 season at Clemson when Morrell was a graduate assistant and Smart was an assistant, and even before that when the two crossed paths years before. Fast forward to the 2011-12 season, and Smart made the move to bring Morrell to VCU to serve as the Director of Basketball Operations, a role he filled the next season too before Smart promoted him to assistant coach for the 2013-14 season when Morrell was just 30-years-old. That kind of bump, like Lucas’ now, is uncommon in the hoops world for coaches that age at a major program. But it speaks to Morrell's status as a young coach with a bright future that's been able to quickly rise up the ranks.
“So a situation came up this spring where Jai had some opportunities to leave and take assistant coaching jobs somewhere else, so I decided to reorganize our staff,” stated Smart. “I feel like on our staff we have four guys that I view as an assistant coach. Well, the NCAA says you’re only allowed to have three. So we decided to reorganize Mike Morrell. It was very, very important that we kept him on our staff. You guys know my history with him. He’s been terrific for me. He and I are very close and he is in one year [at Texas] done a great job with our current guys in our program.”
So when the Longhorns were, thanks to TCU, forced to evaluate their program early in May, they knew they needed to do whatever they could to do to keep everyone. Morrell and Smart’s uniquely tight bond allowed for the move that needed to happen, in order to promote Lucas, to happen.
“Everyone knew they had to keep Jai,” a source close to the program told Orangebloods.com. “With the relationship that Mike and Shaka have, Mike was able and willing to do what was needed in order to keep and promote Jai. It might look like one thing, but the reality is Mike stepped up in a big way to help Texas. He knows how much Shaka has helped him in his young career.”
Ironically, when news circulated about the looming Lucas promotion and Morrell being reassigned back in early May, Morrell was contacted by multiple high-major programs about vacant assistant coaching positions, according to a source. He never entertained those offers, though, and remained firmly committed to Texas and Smart.
Smart stated earlier this week that Morrell’s title is now Director of Program Development. He’ll still be able to be involved in recruiting, on the bench for games, and involved in things like scouting and gameplans. The biggest changes are going to be, at least for one season, he won’t be able to be hands-on between the lines as a coach during practices, and won’t be on the road recruiting.
“His role is such that he’s going to be working even more closely with me than when he was before in an assistant coaching role, and I think for him it’s an opportunity for some real personal, professional growth,” Smart said about Morrell and the new role. “One of the things that’s been terrific is he’s looked at it that way too. Mike is a head coach in the making. He’s going to be a head coach relatively soon, but I think he realizes there are certain areas where he needs to continue to grow and I’m going to help him with that. He and I have been working very closely on some program stuff, some stuff with our guys, some basketball specific stuff… he’s been great about it.”
Smart offered more detail about the responsibilities of Morrell’s new role, which sounds like a bit of everything besides those major chances noted above.
“Probably take me too long to tell you his duties because he has a lot of them. His duties, I guess to summarize, would be he’s going to be working very closely with me on projects with our team, basketball stuff, some recruiting organization stuff; he’s really good at helping organize from that standpoint. He’s working really closely with our guys from a mentoring standpoint,” Smart said. “One of the things that’s important to us as a coaching staff is that we make sure our guys have 360-degree coverage around what they need in terms of just their daily life as student-athletes, and Mike is going to be very, very involved in that. And with our coaching staff, he’s really good at helping me organizing a lot of the things we do with those guys. That kind of summarizes it.”
How long will the Texas staff remain organized like it is now? Smart didn’t specify. However, he did seem to imply that the program and staff roles will be evaluated after the upcoming season.
“It’s a change we’ve made for right now. I would say… we’ll see what happens from here. It was really important to me that we elevated Jai and it was also really important to me that we were able to keep Mike on the staff and keep moving him forward in his profession in his career,” stated the Texas head coach. “Because like I said, I really believe he’s going to be a successful head coach.”
Prior to Texas rearranging its staff to keep Lucas, Morrell was the lead recruiter for 2017 targets like P.J. Washington, Matt Coleman, and Chuck O’Bannon Jr., and played a main role in signing James Banks, Tevin Mack, and Dylan Osetkowski. Texas will have to adjust how it recruits some of its 2017 targets, which likely means Smart taking over a few.
So while pieces were rearranged, they were able to be rearranged because of people putting Texas ahead of the individual. And because of that, those on the 40 Acres are very excited about a good group of four coaches staying intact, and about a young, talented roster that received a gigantic boost earlier this month when Allen signed with Texas.
