Texas Basketball Loses Heartbreaker at Kansas State, 84-80

“an ill-fated handoff from Myck Kabongo to J’Covan Brown resulted in a K-State steal and slam to seal the game.”

Really? That was a better tackle than anything I saw in the Alamo Bowl. I didn’t realize that when you want the ball, all you have to do is just simply bull your way through the offensive player to get it.

admittedly, I was shocked we were even in this game after the first 4 minutes. It looked like we were going to get run out of the gym. KSU was flashing some serious man D and it just didn’t look like we’d overcome it. credit to our guys for staying composed and knocking down some tough shots early.

Tend to agree with all of the analysis above. That said, I’m trying to look on the bright side. Even though he put up some points, this was def an off night for JCB. I wouldn’t have guessed we’d even be in it with such a stat line. the light is clearly coming on for Kabongo. while he’s not “there” yet, he’s making better decisions and learning to utilize his speed in proper ways. McClellan looked like a beast last night. and Lewis picked his spots better.

so there’s a lot to be excited about. although a tourney invite is certainly questionable at this time. and as alluded to above, I’m also nervous about Kabongo making such strides that he’ll be gone.

will give Barnes some credit here…coming out of the gates, you could see the talent. but 6 or 7 games ago, I was convinced this team would amount to nothing. while I’m probably searching for a moral victory, I do feel we’ve played well against KSU and MU on the road. don’t get me wrong, we’ve got some serious deficiencies. but things have come together a bit, including squeezing productivity out of Chap and Wang. and in case nobody noticed, we actually shoot FT’s very competently this year (19/21 last night).

looking at the schedule, we might need to win our first game in the big 12 tourney to get to victory number 20. and that might not be good enough to get us into the tourney.

K-State really tightened up from the free-throw line and gave us an opportunity to steal the game. J’Covan missed at least 2 shots he never misses late in the game, but he drained that deep 3 and the circus lay-up to keep us in it. Disappointing but encouraging loss, for sure.

" He ended up with 14 points and 10 rebounds (good), but also 6 turnovers (bad)."

I think Myck actually had 10 assists (and 1 rebound). He was also 1 of 2 from 3 and 3 of 3 from the line.

Yeah, I noticed that to. I applaud the KSU players effort but he flat ran over Myck to get the ball. It should have been a foul instead of a dunk on the other side. I know there is the whole adage to let them play at the end of a game but the rules are the rules. The refs needed to call that.

On the flip side, Texas has to be tougher. They made a lot of mistakes and they weren’t that tough on the boards or in situations like at the end of the game. I tend to be pessimistic and college basketball is a immediate rewards kind of game. But in this case Texas is relying on too many freshmen who are only so talented. The one sure fire prospect isn’t very consistent. So there you go.

My favorite part of the whole game was J’Covan’s passing. I don’t how many assists he had but he threaded the needle over and over again during the game. The game was fun to watch just because of that.

Good stuff Jeff. Thought Myck, Sheldon, and J-Lew all grew up a bit last night. There were times when Texas was just beating KSU up with talent, but our lack of depth led to some understandably tired legs.

I fault Barnes for not playing Lewis more (7 minutes, WTF?) and resolving our perimeter depth issue.

Really bad from Barnes on that front, as well (obviously) as general offensive coaching. Barnes still doesn’t comprehend that giving the ball to bigs at the high post/three-point line who can hardly catch the ball, much less facilitate the offense, is asinine and indefensible.

KSU fans at Bramlage suck. SUCK. Stop booing, you sound like petulant 6 year olds.

I only watch the last 5 minutes of games now. Rick’s brand of hoops is too ugly for me to watch. Especially if we’re losing.

After the last steal it looked like the kid on the ground reached the ball over mid-court and then pulled it back. Over and back. Texas ball.

Oh well.

Barnes still can’t coach an offensive.

Really rough officiating against Texas in the last minute of the game, after I thought the refs had done an outstanding job for the first 39 minutes in a rough environment against two teams who are tough to officiate. They went from calling stuff to letting KSU maul us a couple of times (offensive rebound off a missed FT and the steal—> breakaway dunk).

I loved the way we fought and competed and just everything about the effort. We are really young and really small, but we are CR and a year or two of development away from being legit final four contenders, and if Myck and J’Covan come back and everyone who says they are committed shows up I think this is a top 15 team most of next year.

I’m not upset with this team b/c I’m not watching in the here and now but with an eye to the future. I haven’t seen anything all year (even the blowout to UNC I thought I saw some real positiives) to make me believe that this program isn’t headed in the right direction.

KSU plays an ugly brand of bball…beat you to death with waves of bodies, it’s hard to watch. McGruder and offensive rebounding was the offense for them. Texas stayed in the game with good free throw shooting and bad KSU free throw shooting, however that was some what off set by McGruder having a career night and J’Covan struggling.

Before this brutal stretch of six games, I was thinking a decent result would be to win 1 maybe 2 games. Now I think one would be good, but it wouldn’t suprise me to lose them all. I’m not dissapointed, they are playing hard and competing but just aren’t there yet, and the Big 12 has a pretty solid group of teams at the top end of the conference.

Not going to go as completely negative as Frank but he does make a good point about Baylor. Local talk show here was having a good laugh at how Baylor is dominating Texas right now in just about every sport. Granted, Vandy and KY have been kicking TN’s butt the last two years so I’m not sure I’d call the kettle black just yet.

Frank, you do realize that we lose all our great players early to the NBA, right? Sheeeeesh!

Yeah, I wish we wre more like Baylor. Let’s start covering up homicides, and hire that choir boy Scott Drew.

Sheesh.

I wish BC would start requiring people to pass a Nelson-Denny exam before they are allowed to post comments.

This is what I have come to expect from Barnes’s squads. Always some fatal flaw that results in losses to quality teams. One or more of the following: (1) cant make FTs, (2) can’t bring down defensive rebounds (3) can’t avoid stupid full court passes that kill a rally (4) have only big men with Edward Scissorhands in the paint, (4) can’t recruit anything but flashy freshman who won’t stick around so that OUR experienced upperclassmen can wear down the other guys 18 year old man-child that has yet to see the inside of a weight room.

And most of all, Barnes and Brown have combined to lose about 10 games in a row to a land grant school in Kansas with less $ but more brains that our overpaid coaches in Austin.

You get what you settle for. Moral victories. Fuck that.

You get what you settle for. Moral victories. Fuck that.

ATPL: Pretty sure you didn’t hang on for the postgame, in which Barnes said he told the team that coming close is not enough.

Even so, this is a rebuilding year. Barnes isn’t going to say it, but that’s the way it is. Demanding excellence is great…. this wasn’t going to be a B12 champ, isn’t going to the Sweet 16, may not even make the NCAAs. But if it does, it will be an example of an excellent coaching job from the beginning to the end.

If it is the NIT, they join the club that has included Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio State, etc., in the last five years. It happens.

Blake: It seems like Barnes made a concerted effort to go big and try to outmuscle K-State inside. He started Wangmene and Bond, and went with Wangmene+Chapman for long stretches of the game. Lewis picked up his 2nd foul midway through the 1st half, then his 3rd in the opening minutes of the 2nd half (where Barnes started with Wang+Chap together). With McClellan playing so well offensively, Barnes simply didn’t see any need to put Lewis back in.

That said, I didn’t like how Barnes kept Kabongo defending Spradling when Myck was clearly exhausted. I would’ve switched Kabongo to the offensively punchless Rodriguez or given him a blow by inserting Lewis to defend Spradling and letting Brown get a couple minutes at point.

The K-State fans might be irritably grating with their need to boo everything, but at least they care. That’s more than you can say for our fans at The Library.

Andy: Neither can the French but they’re still around.

All: crying for a foul at the end of the game is a fool’s errand. Unless you’re Cory Joseph on a four-second count, refs will tend to swallow their whistle unless it’s something egregious. There was no reason for the guards to try that play and invite an extra defender into their living space. If we wanted to get the ball to Brown for the game-tying shot, do it the old-fashioned way and pass him the damn ball.

Bob: Nail on head. This is not an NCAA Tourney team but they still have a chance to get there. The problem is, as I stated at the beginning of the season, is that if Kabongo leaves and Ridley doesn’t come, momentum is further stalled and you’ve left fans wondering if it’s ever going to return.

Respectfully disagree. My point is that this should not be a rebuilding year. We are forever in a rebuilding year. All the time and treasure used to develop Hamilton, Thompson, Joseph, Durant, Augustin, Gibson, Aldridge etc. goes for the benefit of the NBA and does nothing to bring the program up to the level of the schools you mention in your post.
Kansas, UConn, North Carolina recruit fabulous talent. While they have rebuilding years, they do consistently make deep runs in the post season with the occasional championship. Barnes has been here forever, has a deep budget and a big arena, a great city to go to college, and does not approach that level of success.
At some point, as in business, you have to produce. Barnes has not.

jc, while I agree with you in theory, I think you should be able to run a handoff without having a guy get body-checked and lose the ball. John Calipari would have loved to be able to have that happen back in the day.

As to the state of the program, without Kabongo and Ridley, they’re building with a bunch of four-year pieces who look to be better than that. I see no signs that they’re failing in recruiting. OTOH, if being a FF threat is what it takes to get people to care about Texas basketball, then maybe I really have been wasting my time for all these years.

Can’t give up on Ridley, even though the world is going to be coming at him in the spring.

ATPL: Sure, let’s dig in. Give me some names. Who do you think would do better?

The fact that we can argue about Texas basketball is a tribute to Barnes. He’s without doubt the best coach the program has ever had and we as fans should be thankful. Before he was around noboby cared about Texas hoops. The team and program are in a great spot and these guys will only get better as I don’t see any early entries after this season.

There’s definitely some Barnes fatigue among people I know. He has been around a while. Even with success things can sometimes grow stale. Highly acclaimed teams flaming out in the 2nd half of season’s and in the NCAA’s doesn’t help. The challenges presented by our youth this season create a different story line, and there is some measure of hope in these young players that should stick for a few years. But I don’t blame people who aren’t excited about what Barnes brings to the table these days, because at this point we feel like we’ve seen it all already (the good and the bad).

BIH: Who do I think is better and available? You mean who do I think can recruit quality high schoolers and will mentor them so that will stay more than 1 year? Good question. Maybe Deloss knows the answer.

  Compare and contrast for me the tangible success of the program (Big 12 Titles, Big 12 Tournament Championships, Deep NCAA runs), since the Syracuse loss in 2003 vs. the successful programs with similar resources, facilities and demographic fan base. The results are not there. 9 rebuilding years.

Maybe your right to imply there is no coach available that can take the program up to Rockchalk Jayhawk level and turn Erwin into a feared destination. Hoping for a Sweet 16 year, or a NIT Championship is what we settle for, and what we get.

I long for a Sweet 16. It’s been a while.

If we had a purpose built BB arena would it make any difference? Probably not I guess.

My simplistic take on the loss: if we had inside players who could actually control and secure a defensive rebound, we win last night. Allowing 16 offensive rebounds to the bad guys won’t get it done when you’re a team playing on margins.

As always, when Barnes detractors are asked to name a replacement, there is none and we are supposed to assume DeLoss has the answer. Nice. Obviously Barnes has his faults. Honestly, his faults are more salient than basically any coach out there. Recruiting 1 and Done’s is not one of them. Pushing his players to the NBA without compensating for their intended departure by recruiting other players is.

We shouldn’t have had to bring in Gibbs and Bond that late because Barnes should have been more on top of that situation instead of relying on flake DeAndre Daniels or a bunch of transfers coming to Texas. This problem should have been adjusted to a long time ago and isn’t particularly difficult to identify.

Jeff: I’ll take Lewis at 100% for 5 minutes in the second half over McClellan about to pass out, regardless of how well he was playing. Great thing about this scenario is that A prevents B from happening. The joys of substitution patterns. Another thing Rick has yet to master.

Making Myck run in circles with Spradling seems moronic, but the alternative is J’Covan doing it instead. Assuming Myck has better conditioning, I guess I can see it. The other option is putting Sheldon on him, but he was tired too and more liable to come unconnected from Sprad in my opinion. I had the same initial thoughts you did, but thinking more about it I’m just not sure there was a winning scenario here once Barnes decided not to sub.

ATPL:

Let’s get real here. Texas doesn’t have a structural advantage when it comes to basketball. You talk about “resources” as if this was football. It isn’t. In football, the deck is stacked in Texas’ favor (great tradition, great high school players that come from the state). Texas has no tradition of success in basketball at all. That is a big recruiting disadvantage. And Texas high school basketball isn’t anything special. It isn’t the utter hell hole it was a decade or two ago, but being in Texas grants no special advantage when it comes to basketball.

Rick Barnes is the only reason that any top player would play at Texas. Seriously. How many McDonald’s All Americans played at Texas prior to Barnes? The answer is, one. Kris Clack, who was from Austin. Barnes put Texas basketball on the map.

My take is that Texas is one of the 15-20 best basketball programs in the NCAA right now. The problem is that they occupy a conference inhabited by one of the blue bloods. You aren’t winning many conference championships when you are in the same league as Kansas. Just a fact of life.

I will take your challenge and find a program to compare Texas with since the loss to Syracuse. The program I pick is Syracuse. Since that loss, Texas has had somewhat better NCAA tournament results. Texas has one loss in the round of 16, and two in the round of 8 since that Final Four. Syracuse has three trips to the round of 16, all of which were losses. And they went to the NIT in 2008. Syracuse has managed to win their conference tournament 2 times and regular season 1 time. Over the same time period, Texas has not won their conference tournament, but has shared the regular season title twice.

Syracuse is a top program with a hall-of-fame coach. And over the time frame that you proposed, it is hard to argue that they have been any better than Texas. They clearly have a lot of financial resources that they can throw at basketball, although they aren’t as wealthy as the Texas athletic program. But they also play in the Big East (on TV all the time) and have regional access to much better recruiting areas in the northeast.

Of course, Syracuse is better this season.

Reggieball: I think you’re shorting the program in terms of the last decade. It’s solidly in the top 10 when you combine NCAA seeds (which roughly measure regular season performance) and NCAA victories.

It’s also interesting to look at Marquette and Kansas, the other teams with Texas and Syracuse in that FF. Marquette made its first S16 since ‘03 last year. Kansas won the 2008 title, thanks to Memphis’s brain locks and poor FT shooting. That’s the only FF KU has made. In the meantime, Bill Self has lost to three double-digit seeds and once in the second round as a top seed. That’s four tournament disasters. Yet, with all that, KU is arguably the best program in the country from 2002 to 2011. Sure, Barnes looks poor in comparison… so everybody does to some extent.

Barnes would fade a lot of heat if he somehow could win a NC. (Can you imagine how hot Self’s seat would be had he not won in ‘08?) He blew a shot at it last year and won’t contend for another one for a couple of years even if recruiting holds up.

And most of all, Barnes and Brown have combined to lose about 10 games in a row to a land grant school in Kansas with less $ but more brains that our overpaid coaches in Austin.

But B & B do so well in the recruiting rankings, which are the only ones that matter!

The K-State fans might be irritably grating with their need to boo everything, but at least they care. That’s more than you can say for our fans at The Library.

Very true, but at the same time Barnes’s brand of ball is painful to watch.

Bob:

I think you can make a pretty good top 10 case for the Texas program over the last 10 years. I just didn’t want to get bogged down trying to make that. It is pretty much indisputable that they are a top 15 or top 20 program. I don’t think we really disagree here.

Joetx:

If you want more aesthetic basketball, with players running up and down the court throwing lobs you must have enjoyed the Penders’ years. Those teams were a lot of fun, although they certainly weren’t as good as what we have now. No one was at the Erwin center in those days either.

To be fair, Penders’ ‘97 team is still on the books among the top five attendance averages for the season. That team wasn’t that good (even though it made the S16), but it was the first year of the B12.

When Barnes came in, he had to build up. We all remember him grumbling about attendance for years. However, Barnes ’10 team now has the best average, except for the opening year of the Drum.

But B & B do so well in the recruiting rankings, which are the only ones that matter!

Two questions:
1) Why do you assume that recruiting rankings are what matter to them?
2) Would you rather they not sign the best players they can?

BIH, I think Joext statement about recruiting rankings is sarcasm. B and B do not care about recruiting rankings. The fan base has Obessive Compulsive Disorder about this BS.

I would rather we sign the best players that we can develop into their fullest potential over the course of several years. We simply cannot compete at an elite level with freshman making freshman mistakes in crucial games, always a year away from development but never around for the school to get a return on investment.

The question about an alternative coach is a hypothetical quibble. I jumped into this spirited debate not because I know of a great coach out there, but because the current coach has done some good things, but he has not built a team with a disciplined offense and tenacious defense that can potentially run the table. I look at UT’s playing of UConn to basically a draw mid season last year, follow the path the two teams took afterwards, and you see where Barnes coaching, development, and recruiting do not measure up.

Good sarcasm has a basis in reality. Brown has been called “Mr. February” for years. This is the first time I can recall Barnes being criticized for it.

I would rather we sign the best players that we can develop into their fullest potential over the course of several years.

So you want to be Duke, which is just about the only school to get top-50 recruits to stay for four years (and which actually had a one-and-done leave a year ago). So does everyone else in college basketball. The last team to win and not lose some of its undergrad core to the draft is Florida in ‘06, and those players made a pact to do so because one of the guys couldn’t go. I couldn’t tell you the last non-Duke team before that. There haven’t been any under the current migration.

I do agree that I can’t think of a coach that has been burned by early exits more than Barnes. But his commitment to those players is unyielding. You may hate it, but recruits love it, and you can’t make a national championship cake without some terrific ingredients. Barnes has flaws, but as much as it pained me for TT to leave last year, the recruiting philosophy just isn’t one of them.

It’s interesting that you bring up UConn, since the difference between Texas and UConn playing again basically came down to a poor inbound design (for which Barnes gets full blame) that nonetheless wouldn’t have mattered without a referee who either choked or had an agenda. UConn actually made the Barnes model work (or Barnes is following a good model). Three of the top five players in minutes last year were freshmen and the other two were a sophomore and a junior. Barnes played two freshmen, two sophomores and a senior. I also would dispute that last year’s team did not have a tenacious defense, or that years with pretty good points weren’t exceptional offensively. It’s true, he’s hasn’t been able to do both at the same time. If he could, he probably could have won a NC despite his flaws.

But the point about the coach is not a quibble. I assume you want the program to improve, not get worse. If you can say that Coach X is a good fit and available, I want to hear it. But you can’t — I can pick out flaws in the records of coaches I like… nobody is perfect.

I’ve thought about this one… if I knew that Barnes would not get the NC, I would lean toward cutting him loose. But that doesn’t help me fill his spot, so I also recoil at the thought of cutting him loose. I can’t bring myself to base my evaluation of him on whether he wins the NC. Good coaches and not-so-good coaches have won them, and excellent coaches have had a hard time winning even one.

BTW, I am aware that Texas would have had to beat Duke to play UConn again. I think they could have handled them, although perhaps not as spectacularly as Arizona did.

Good stuff Bob.

I can see your point about cutting Barnes loose. What I can’t see is results from corrective action on the part of the coaches, nor development over the course of a season. I believe the Texas team that lost to Arizona in the second round last year on a bad call would have run them off the court in mid January. Maybe the kids are committed to Rick but they do not play that way as the season wears on, or Rick does not give them the direction they need to adapt and overcome as other coaches watch film. If Rick doesnt need to go, he needs to change. Career counseling

I am class of 81. I do want the program to improve. I continue to support the school financially, watch the games, buy the tickets. Home wins against KU, K-State, stay with BU for 20 minutes, will help. A final four or E-8 berth with a couple of adult men upperclassmen leaders in 2013-2014, I surrender the argument.

Hook ’em.

You talk about the midseason team versus the end of the season. I’m gonna go somewhat off track here to explain where we probably are in agreement.

One of Barnes’s major flaws, as I see it, is that he is a control freak. Most coaches are, but in Barnes’s case he has the tendency to tighten his grip the closer he gets to actually seeing a chance for the NC. If this were to happen more often, he might relax, but so far, not yet.

It happened in 2010 (with internal team rifts that contributed substantially) and it happened last year when they were 11-0 in the league last year and on the verge of reaching No. 1 again. They played tight in losing to Nebraska, and the next week, he urged his team to run at altitude when they were undermanned (Wangmene was suspended that day) and they blew a big lead. It led to them losing the next game two days against Kansas State, because they were dead-legged.

His grip was fist-like against Arizona. They played poorly and got way behind. His response was that they needed to play better defense, when what they really needed was to loosen up the offense. They rode J’Covan Brown all the way back, and then Barnes ordered basically an unnecessary timeout to draw up a play that was almost certain not to work. I’m sure he thought it would. But the problem was underneath — the only person he trusted to take FTs at the end of that game was J’Covan Brown. Problem was that the regular inbounder all season was…. J’Covan Brown. The thing to do was not to try to cross up Arizona, but to show confidence in his team that they way they had done things all season would work.

People say that Rob Lanier has Barnes’s ear, that he can help him back off if necessary. Hope so.

You are right about the wins. KU’s not a great matchup for them, but it’s better than Baylor and they need a couple of wins over good teams along the rest of the way.

When his team was playing defense last year at historic levels, Barnes shorted offense work in practices to work on the few defensive flaws. I am unable to find the quote, but Barnes said something about using 80% of practices to work on defensive schemes and fundamentals.

Control freaks tend to coach mad which is something that Barnes admitted to doing during the 2010 season. Does Lanier help with this?

Barnes spent as much time conferring with his staff as he did in talking to the players during his last three timeouts of the KSU game. Maybe that is to the players’ benefit, but it seems like giving instructions to deny the ball and not foul Spradling would have worked better.

BIH -
 
Great take. What’s strange is that Barnes has had teams in his tenure at Texas where he eased up on them in-game and let them run the show. And the point guards varied from Ivan Wagner to TJ Ford. He’s capable of it.
 
Very impressed by Sheldon McCllelan each time I see him. Once he stops the unforced turnovers, he’s a bad mamma jamma.

Great discussion and it’s clearly not a black and white issue.

I will say that it’s been proven that “football schools” can both recruit and win in basketball. Florida and Ohio State should be the benchmark.

Thad Matta was a home run hire for the Buckeyes and Sean Miller looks like he’ll be right behind him at Arizona. Chris Mack, anyone?

Clearly, if Barnes was to be fired (pipe dream or unfathomable outcome, depending on your worldview), Texas wouldn’t get a day 1 upgrade. Bill Self ain’t gonna up and quit the KU job and tail it to UT. But a hotshot, up and coming coach? Very conceivable. That’s why they say “no risk, no reward.”

jc, I think that in fewer than two minutes after Barnes leaves, however that happens, the AD’s phone will blow up. They’ll be able to find a good replacement, probably very good.

Aside: Chris Mack handled the XU-UC fight horribly. Let the thugs talk, and basically asked, “What’s the problem?” Team went into a tailspin. Mick Cronin, whatever you think of the length of suspensions, clamped down, demanded accountability, and his team bounced back almost immediately. I was very impressed.

Scip, what we’ve seen is that Barnes will let up if he trusts the PG. Happened with Wagner, and especially with TJ and DJ. He also trusted Durant. He tried to give the ‘04 team to Ivey, but he just wasn’t enough of a classic point. I think he wants to trust Kabongo — that’s why he’s been hard on him. Ironically, it looks to me like J’Covan Brown is just about there.

JC:

You won’t believe this, but I was at the Xavier game last weekend and the people behind me were bad mouthing Chris Mack. Of course, they also criticized Tu Holloway for getting too many of his points at the free throw line…

We have argued for 4-5 seasons about Barnes and TX.
Yes we are a #15-20 range and maybe better.
Yes we are just like 20 schools with “W” VS. “L” and we have been to the dance for 12 years or so.
We have top #50 players coming to Tx.
All well and good. The question that I want answered and Bob touched on it is .

 Does Barnes take us to a higher level then where we have been with the major flaws that he has . I do not need to get into how deep the flaws are and what they are. You know them as well as I do.
Will Texas BB ever develop an Offense or /System that we can plug players into.
Do we start to make an effort to get the best Texas BB players, even with all the BS in Dallas.
and Houston.

There would be a lot of Coaches that would want this job,maybe one would be the one to develop players and let them play without fear from the bench.

Texas would get 20-30 calls for a chance to interview maybe one would make changes when your players and coaches level off for what ever reason. Maybe do something different then the stuff you did for the last 12 years.
Where is Trips when you need some insight ???

Skymonkey:

The next step is the hardest. You want to be at the top. The problem is, you are either born into it (Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina), or you hit lightning in a bottle with a once in a generation coach (Coach K, Jim Calhoun). And in Calhoun’s case, it took him a really long time to break past the point where Texas currently sits. So switching coaches isn’t necessarily the answer if you haven’t yet broken through.

It is also interesting that Calhoun shares many of the same flaws Barnes has. Calhoun’s offenses are less effective generally that Rick Barnes’. Seriously, check out the tempo adjusted stats. It may shock you.

I am of the personal opinion that Barnes has a pretty good offensive system in place at this point, although it took him a while to get here. I like the sets that Texas runs. Sometimes the execution is lacking, but that should get better as the players and the coaches gain more experience in the Jazz system. I think as the players grow into it and improve, it can work really well. Maybe you don’t agree with this.

As for Barnes approach to handling his players, he is clearly of the tough love school. This works better with some than with others. The same can probably be said for other approaches as well. How would the Brad Stevens’ “I am going to just stand here with my arms crossed and never yell” approach work with a player like J’Covan Brown? Obviously, Barnes’ approach has really worked for Brown. Brown seems to know this. It is telling that Barnes’ players really seem to like him for the most part, so while he can ride them hard, they know he is out for their best interests. How many coaches can really say that?

Now, Barnes does squeeze a little tight at times. But so do many others. Calhoun does. Bobby Knight clearly did.

I think the fact that we have argued about Barnes for 4-5 years says more about us than it says about him.

“The next step is the hardest.” Getting a NC would be great for Barnes and Texas but we have been stuck on this level. A bump would be nice maybe getting a house on the next street to Kentucky,NC,Kansas and several other that flirt with that street.
The "Q "was do you believe that Barnes will get there or do we throw good money after bad money. To use a gambling term.
Do we do a Calhoun wait and lightning never hits Texas in say 10 or 15 years? Then what?
What is that saying about crazy people doing the same things over and over again and never changing anything?
Are there any small steps we can take such as have a play to throw in the ball that works more then not.
I agree the Jazz system is very good and yes Barnes was a little late to change to it but he teaches defense more then offense. This is year two how many more to have a smooth system in place, maybe 1-3 more years?
 Why not go with our speed and open court game when we are not scoring or getting good shots. No changes make it work !
“Tough love” two parts to this and Barnes( IMO )only uses tough and very little the loving that make players confident and allows them to play to their ability and their game. Confident players makes plays that win games.
JCB was a player when he came to Texas and Texas and Barnes have helped him more then most schools would have done, but JCB does play better when he is reinforced in a positive way then being called out. That has not changed much for 12 years.
Coach Knight was a teacher until the last few years at IU when he started squeezing people and when was the last time you have seen Texas players laughing during the game and having fun on the court since TJ ?
Not changing says a lot about the state of Texas Basketball.

Just to chime in here, I would love to see Texas more of a pure motion offense. There is a reason why Kansas scores so easily. Their high-low motion is a thing of beauty. Now, we wouldn’t be able to execute like they do but our stagnation on offense is horrendous.

As for Barnes, he’s learning. This upcoming recruiting class is going to compliment the previous one perfectly, which is something he hasn’t done. Everyone says that Barnes gets all of the one-and-dones and doesn’t care about winning, but you have to understand that he is changing. It’s just that it takes time to turn a team into an experienced and balanced team. This is the transition year, and we have to live with that. He’s bringing in three-four year type guys. Let’s just see how it all unfolds. I am certainly not ready to give up on Barnes…

Skymonkey:

Ever read “Season on the Brink?” If you think Knight only squeezed in the later years, it might change your viewpoint. That book was about the year before his third national championship. (Great book, by the way. It is hard to imagine something like that being written anymore. Everyone is so much more cautious about giving writers that sort of access. Perhaps because of that book. If nothing else, it will expand your range and use of obscenities.)

To answer your question, “do you believe that Barnes will get there or do we throw good money after bad money?” I think Barnes has a better chance of getting us there than the next random ball drawn from the urn. I am not ready to take a random walk through coach-space. Perhaps others are.

No open thread for KU-Texas???? Dang.

Bob,

like your posts and Kafka’s. Do you see this Texas team making the tourney? Near misses aren’t going to qualify and if they were to make it, they would have a bad draw. The Horns are going to have to get better signature wins than Temple and UCLA. They’ll have two shots at Baylor which they have a chance if BU plays like today where they neglect their inside guys but still not seeing it, Kansas at KU isn’t likely, KState possible and Missouri possible.

thought Corey Maggette was a one and done for Duke.

kemit: Today, no. But if they beat a couple of the better teams between now and Selection Sunday AND get to 10 wins in the league, then yes.

I’m a little more encouraged with each game. Iowa State on Tuesday is very important. As close to a must win as you can have in January.

This game should show the Horns that they can compete with anyone in the conference or I’m hoping they can.