So You Want To Buy a Beard Replacement

Is it 2028 already

I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life; I mean, sure, I wish I had invested in Apple stock in the early 2000s, or that I had shorted Tesla stock a year ago, or in 7th grade I hadn’t frozen up when an older, popular girl in my school named Brittany had told her friends she thought I was cute and came up to me to say hi and all I did was pretend to fall over out of shock and then had literally nothing else to say because this is a harbinger of how dating would be for me for the next 18-20 years, that memory isn’t imprinted on the inside of my eyelids at all every night when I go to sleep feeling good about myself. I’m fine; it wasn’t a seminal moment in puberty or anything, I’m totally fine. Totally fine.

One regret I do have, and I’ve mentioned it here before, is deleting the Shaka Smart coaching replacement options article I wrote on Barking Carnival when I was prepared for him to leave/get fired going into the last month of the season where COVID cancelled March Madness. It was a draft I had spent no small amount of time on; it had color-coded charts with advanced stats on several coaching options, three tiers of coaching names as well as some outlier possibilities, it had the kind of depth you might expect from an article I spent two months polishing. Then COVID happened, and Shaka/CDC said he was coming back, and the next season started so well I thought “guess I won’t need this” & deleted the draft like two months before ACU happened and Shaka Smart walked out the door forever. And now I need it for the second time in less than 24 months. For fuck’s sake. Somewhere in an SBNation data archive that article exists, lonely and unused, wondering what kind of short-sighted asshole would consign it to eternal purgatory.

So, here we are again. Chris Beard has fucked off to a I-35 Econolodge, day-drinking while wondering why he hired a legal team with no proofreaders, staring into a mirror & practicing an expression that normal humans associate with something approximating remorse, and texting with the Liberty AD about how soon he can find Jesus and its associated coaching paycheck. Rodney Terry is running the ship until the season is over, and every sports site on the planet is coming up with the same 3-4 names in their Texas coaching options list. (Did you know that Jay Wright was retired? More breaking news to follow!) I will be including some of those names, as well as some others that may or may not be on your radar. I’ll include stats where I have them, but Substack sure doesn’t love HTML tables so this will be a poor man’s version of the mythical Barking Carnival piece (RIP, to the article and the site.) Let’s get to it.

The Primary Options

Chris Beard

Just kidding, he can eat a septic tank full of whale penises.

The Actual Primary Options

Shaka Smart

Still kidding, but have you watched Marquette this year? If his teams played like that at Texas more than the final year, he’d still be at Texas right now. It would be pretty hilarious if Texas hired him again and he stopped pressing and went back to the slower tempo, and by hilarious I mean somebody would need to barricade me in a closet while they took a sledgehammer to my internet connection & removed anything pointy from my home.

I Mean It This Time

Jay Wright

Look, this is 99.9% not going to happen, even though I would live-stream myself running across I-35 in Oak Cliff while wearing a hoodie that swore fealty to Greg Abbott to make his hire a reality. I bring this name up because our dear nonagenarian reader MarkInAustin recently mentioned the idea of calling people like Jay Wright as coaching consultants to help with the search. Ask him - Wright, not Mark, god rest Mark’s clearly-close-to-death soul, he’s enjoying retirement and its nearly unlimited tapioca supply - if he wants the job, have a Brinks truck show up at his house while you’re on the phone with him, and have the delivery team open up the back where CDC is sitting with a literal blank check in hand. When he says no, ask him if he wants to make a quick 100k to offer up a handful of names and vet others Texas has in mind. There are maybe five people in the country who would better know what it takes to run a program at the highest level for an extended period of time, if that many.

Or you could just do whatever the boosters want again, I guess.

The Upside

• There are zero options I would take ahead of him.

• His offenses are beautiful and he knows exactly what type of players work in his system.

The Downside

• It ain’t happening. For the first time in decades he’s allowing himself to wear the same pair of sweatpants for weeks in a row, he’ll probably answer the door for CDC in those pizza-stained sweatpants. Ask him, but the answer is going to be no.

Okay, Seriously, The Real Primary Options

Eric Musselman

If we’re looking at a graph with one axis as “sure thing” and the other being “gettable”, Eric Musselman has to be the coach who most closely fits both attributes. He is recruiting at a level Arkansas hasn’t seen in decades, his teams have been to two Elite Eights in a row and were on a path to national title contention this year before injuries likely lowered their ceiling. He’s a tireless advocate for his teams and generating home court attendance, he has success in March, and he’s succeeding at a program that is on the same general level as Texas. (Arkansas has history on its side, but the last 25 years or so have been much kinder to Texas.) That said, how “gettable” he is probably depends on who you ask. It’s not unprecedented for a coach to do that well at a high-major & leave for a similar-level job - just ask Texas 18 months ago - but it is fairly rare and he really has the Razorbacks program rolling. Texas & Arkansas can offer him roughly similar compensation packages, so the question is really if he wants to live in a big city enough to move on from Arkansas. (I mention the big city angle because apparently it’s legally required to mention that he likes living in big cities in every article about Texas potentially trying to hire him.) Maybe Texas can poach him, maybe they can’t.

The Upside

• He plays fast, and I’d rather a team play at a high tempo than not.

• His defenses are aggressive and force turnovers, but it’s not a one-trick pony. He will change things around depending upon the opponent.

• He could not only keep Ron Holland in the fold, but bring a couple other 5-star recruits with him, which would help next year’s roster math.

• He’s big on analytics as well as digging for new ways to use them, it’s unlikely he’s going to be called archaic any time soon.

The Downside

• Arkansas’ AD is very attentive to Musselman rumors and is probably working out a contract extension for him as I write this. As with some other names on this list, Texas might end being a lever for coaches to get raises at schools they’re already happy with.

• He has built two programs in the last decade but I haven’t seen him sustain a single one yet because he keeps moving around. Texas is ideally looking for a 10+ year hire, and Musselman has a limited track record in this regard. It’s entirely possible he knows when to bounce rather than deciding to stick in one spot; I don’t think it’s an accident he left Nevada when the Martin brothers graduated, and he might do the same to Arkansas…and Texas.

John Calipari

Calipari has a history of entertaining other jobs long enough to land him a raise, so I was skeptical last go-round that he was actually interested in leaving Kentucky. After Beard was hired, multiple people told me he was actually quite interested, so I can’t discount the idea this time around. Kentucky fans tend to chew up and spit out coaches at a velocity that makes Bama football fans jealous - they pushed Eddie Sutton out in 5 years, and Billy Gillispie still hasn’t recovered from his three seasons under their glare - and this is his 14th season at Kentucky, the longest tenure since Adolph Rupp. It’s possible he’s tired of aging in dog years and would like to try his hand at a gig with objectively less stress & attention. Texas will have to fork over a ton of money for Calipari, but for that name CDC should be able to rake in donations.

The Upside

• The last decade, the one where Kentucky fans eventually turned on him, includes a NC, a title game, a Final Four, and a pair of Elite Eight appearances. They were a likely 4-seed in the COVID year and were a 2-seed last year. This decade would be bar none the best decade in the history of Texas basketball, much less the years before it.

• He has no issue with the brightest lights and the biggest stage. There is only one active coach with more NCAA Tournament wins than him. (Jim Boeheim)

• Recruiting would not be a problem*, and recruiting shenanigans are basically legal now so nothing’s likely to get vacated years down the road.

The Downside

• Kentucky fans are tired of him for the last 4 years more than the previous 6, and there’s something to be said for being a bit cautious about hiring a 63-year-old coach whose results are trending in the wrong direction. That said, Tennessee did basically this with a 61-year-old Rick Barnes and I don’t think they’re complaining. The last two Texas coaches prior to Beard have flourished with a change of scenery, and Calipari definitely has the chops to get re-energized if he so chooses. I know I just put me arguing an upside play in a downside bullet point, I have no rebuttal to your point. Moving on.

• I mentioned recruiting as an upside bullet point, but I do want to make a caveat to that. The one-and-done era is coming to a close soon, it seems very likely that the NBA will lift its age restriction on draft picks in the next collective bargaining agreement, which means a handful of lottery talents who previously went to college will head straight to the NBA now. Those are the players Calipari feasted on in recruiting over the years, several of his best teams were so talented that the system they ran didn’t really matter most of the time; I think it’s entirely possible that no coach in the country will be more impacted by these players going straight to the pros than Calipari. I talked about marginal gains with Beard & the transfer portal, the same warning is out there for Calipari and recruiting/talent level. He can still get the best players available more times than not, but the days of having Anthony Davis turn into a two-way death machine are likely over. Is he going to be able to adjust to not having that talent discrepancy? Rather than Lexington burnout, this might be as much why The Athletic compared him to Jimbo Fisher. (Which begs the question, is Jimbo or Calipari more offended by that article?) No coach is great forever, and being elite for 20+ years is exceedingly rare. I have now made a downside bullet point to argue against one of my upside bullet points. Ambivalence is a core part of my personality.

Royal Ivey

The nice thing about writing one of these articles less than two years ago is that not a lot has changed for some of these names, so you get to read the same bullet points you forgot about before. The only real change with Ivey is that he may not be happy with how the last ‘search’ went and the fact that he basically got Rooney Ruled by CDC. How much does he trust the guy who didn’t give him a real shot before to have his back down the road when he’s possibly a year or two from being a NBA head coach? I don’t know that this bridge is burned, but you have to at least consider the possibility. Anyway, enjoy re-reading the (lightly edited) bullet points.

The Upside

• He gets Texas. As hacky as that is to say, a guy who played here and has maintained relationships here understands the pros and cons of the job better than most. He knows that and is still interested.

• Current and former NBA players rave about him, both as a teammate and as an assistant coach. There’s a common thought that he’s only a few years away from becoming a NBA head coach, so he should havethe chops from a tactical standpoint. It’s possible that if he’s not hired now, he might not be an option the next time. You know, assuming I’m not pasting this in another article in 2024.

• He’s going to be considerably cheaper than someone like Beard OR UHH CALIPARI, which means Texas has more cash to surround him with a great staff. Believe it or not, Texas does have a budget for salaries, and saving a couple million on the head coach could help bring in top-tier assistants.

The Downside

• Raise your hand if you have any idea what kind of offense or defense he’s going to run, because I don’t. I could speculate that he’s going to run a NBA-style offense based on where he’s been, but that’s just speculation. I would also expect him to be a fan of analytics but again, that’s speculation. He might have great ideas for both ends of the floor, but it’s basically a giant question mark until I hear some details.

• As mentioned above, he’s going to need to be surrounded by really good assistants as he gets used to the college recruiting game. Texas will need to get him a couple of really good recruiters to help out (more on this shortly) while he builds those relationships or else he runs the risk of dealing with roster issues the first couple of seasons. If you don’t think that’s an issue, look at how long it took Shaka to really find his groove and what it did to the trajectory of the program.

• It has to be acknowledged that there are some people who seem to like this idea because they want to “do a Juwan Howard” without really understanding how that worked out uniquely well for him and may not be replicable. Maybe Texas can do it, but it’s not the norm.

Ivey is definitely a higher risk play, but I’m very open to the idea. I may be in the minority here, but as a Texas fan who cares about basketball and not football I was born for this world of unpopular opinions.

Nate Oats

Frankly, he should be a level lower because his buyout is large (just under $10m) and he’s at a school willing to pay him at or near what Texas could offer. I’m putting him here because I would take him in an instant if he so much as winked at Texas, but he’s likely a pipe dream.

The Upside

• He checks every box on my list.

• His teams are very fun to watch.

• His buyout is quite large, but with the ~$28m Texas saved by firing Beard for cause it might be something Texas is willing to swallow.

The Downside

• I’m not sure why he would leave Alabama for Texas. They’re investing a ton of money in him and his program, and there’s a good chance they’ll match nearly any offer Texas could put up.

• That’s it, that’s the list. Oats would be a great hire.

Mark Adams

I only put his name in the article to make Texas Tech fans’ eyes bulge out of their collective head for a half-second before they realize I’m kidding. He wouldn’t leave Lubbock, that’s where his dead twin brother’s widow lives.

Rodney Terry

I’m putting Terry in the primary section because he’s literally the coach right now, but I don’t know that I’d heavily consider him unless the team really lights it up the rest of the season. If that happens, then he’s earned an interview and a chance to make his case, but if one of the names above him on this list is interested then it’s going to be a tough hill for him to climb.

The Upside

• He has been at Texas multiple times and understands what it’s like coaching here.

• He’s an above-average recruiter.

The Downside

• With the caveat that making noise in March Madness as a mid-major is historically tough to do, his head coaching history at Fresno State and UTEP doesn’t paint a picture of someone who can make deep runs. He made the NCAA tournament once in 9 chances (I’m not counting the COVID year, though UTEP wasn’t projected to make the field anyway) and he had as many seasons (4) under .500 in conference play as above it. He had Bryson Williams on his team for 4 years at two different mid-major programs and a combined sub-.500 record was the result.

• I’m not trying to be too hard on the man because a lot of head coaching success is external to coaching ability so a 1-to-1 link is always a bit tenuous, but this doesn’t seem to me like the path forward for a program that wants to contend for conference titles in the Big 12 & the SEC.

Tommy Lloyd

The only reason he’s not at the top of the list is because his buyout is even higher than Nate Oats; it is reported to be $12m if he leaves this year. That probably rules him out, but I’m going to be making moon eyes at him and his entirely-too-symmetrical eyebrows regardless. Arizona plays incredibly fun basketball and are possibly going to be a 1-seed for the second year in a row.

The Upside

• He’s younger Mark Few.

• Did you need another reason?

The Downside

• I don’t have $12m in disposable income.

• Unless somebody wants to give me $12m. (Mark?)

• Which I would then use for something else because even having Tommy Lloyd as a friend can’t allow me to retire two decades early.

I want to put Dan Hurley in here because what he’s doing at UConn is impressive, but he’s a Hurley brother and I’m a basketball fan between the ages of 35-55 so he and every member of his family can go straight to hell.

Also Matt Painter should be in here so Texas can land every 7-footer in the Western hemisphere, but he seems pretty happy at Purdue. They’re going to build a statue for him there, and it will be made out of bronzed jock straps from every disheveled Big 10 post defender who openly wept in the visitor’s locker room during his impressively long Purdue tenure.

My Wildcard Idea

Jason Hart

You may or may not be familiar with the name, but he’s a former USC assistant coach and the current head coach of the G League Ignite program. He has a long history at USC of bringing in recruits and with his G league stint he’s probably tight with every AAU program of note. He’s used to coaching NBA-friendly systems as well as helping young players learn how to play at a higher level, and he’s only 44 so he’s potentially got a long shelf life as a head coach. I don’t know his salary, but suffice it to say he could be had for both cheaper than Chris Beard and well above what most G League coaches make. Maybe he’s not the HC, maybe you pair him with Royal Ivey as the top assistant and let the recruits come calling. I think he’s a name to watch in general, and it’s a different angle than I’m seeing from most other people.

The Secondary Options

I think if Texas gets into this group, one or more people said no and they may be scrambling. Of course I say that and the first name in this list is someone I enjoy watching.

Pat Kelsey

Kelsey is the Charleston coach, and his teams run up and down the floor. Getting that team at Texas could be a lot of fun in the same way the Runnin’ Horns were fun, complete with the generally defense-optional teams Tom Penders had more often than not. He did well at Winthrop and he’s doing well at Charleston, but making that work at a high-major program is a question mark. Maybe next time around, there’s more data to support him being higher on the list. Or lower on the list.

The Upside

• If you like quick triggers, you’re going to love Kelsey’s teams.

• In the better years, his team forces turnovers at a fairly high rate.

The Downside

• His offensive system is fun to watch, but they’re going to put up a ton of threes whether they have the shooters or not.

• Winthrop and Charleston are a world away from leading Texas.
  

Kevin Keatts

I like Keatts’ style in theory, he’s a Pitino acolyte and it shows. This section definitely isn’t the exact same as two years ago.

The Upside

• His defense is a pressure defense, and his offense plays at a fast tempo.

• He prioritizes offensive rebounding and forces turnovers at a fairly high rate.

The Downside

• While he wins a lot in non-conference, he hasn’t been much more than a .500 coach in ACC play and he hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament much in his 6 years at NC State. It’s possible he isn’t much more than a 1st-round coach.

• While NC State fans are almost as crazy as Indiana fans in their expectations so them being unhappy with their coach has to be taken with a grain of salt, it’s still there and they might be right.

Jamie Dixon

Honestly, I’m only including him because of the connection to CDC. Dixon is at his alma mater, he’s enjoying the gig, and TCU is doing really well. Sometimes the grass is greener on this side of the fence, and I’m guessing Dixon knows that. If he makes any signals that he’s sincerely interested in the Texas job, then bump him up the list because he’s doing some great things in Fort Worth.

The Deep Cuts

I don’t think any of these guys become the Texas coach, but if you’re casting a wide net they may start to show up on some lists.

John Beilein

Until he gets a coaching job or dies, Beilein is going to get mentioned for every high-major gig.

Tad Boyle

He’s been in the state of Colorado forever and has built a consistent program, but not a consistent top finisher. Jayhawks fans seem to semi-regularly rumble about him being a potential Bill Self replacement down the road, but he doesn’t fit the profile to me. Maybe I’m missing something.

Dennis Gates

Did his agent send out a mass text or something? He’s not even a half-season into his first high-major gig and multiple reporters have mentioned him as an option. This seems like a reach at this point in his career, plus he spent a lot of time at Florida State with Leonard Hamilton, who isn’t getting any younger. If Hamilton decides to hang it up Gates would rate pretty highly on their list, but Texas? I’m not yet seeing it.

Jai Lucas

I saw an AAU coach mention him and I thought they were listing possible assistants for the next coach. He needs to show he can do it somewhere before I’ll include him in a higher tier; this is the “we have Royal Ivey at home” of coaching options.

No

Kelvin Sampson

He’s 67, he’s as much of a hard-ass as Beard was, and his teams are a better version of the same slow, defensive slog that we sat through last year. Plus he’s got his son as his appointed successor at Houston, so you’re either going to have to ensure Kellen gets the Houston gig or make a similar deal at Texas. Head coaches in waiting are a terrible trend that has mostly died, and it needs to stay dead. Maybe you could hire him, make John Beilein his lead non-blood-related assistant, and see which of them dies on the sideline first. Was that too dark? It was probably too dark.

Dana Altman

Google “Dana Altman + player’s rape case”. Texas does not need that mess coming here, especially with what they’re trying to leave behind.

Scott Drew

Eamonn Brennan, my brother in Christ, are you trying to kill me

I would guess there’s a 90%+ chance the next Texas coach comes from this list, especially since I’ve included approximately 1/5th of all basketball coaches in America. (This article is long! I know!) Some I will be more enthusiastic about than others, and we can get into that when the person gets hired in April. Now that I’ve posted this, expect CDC to hire Thad Matta or Greg Popovich’s cousin, Steve Popovich. I hear he’s great with kids.