I also wrote this last year:
No. 6 – The worst thing you can say about a Longhorn coach …
Geoff Ketchum@gkketch
The worst thing you could say about Shaka Smart right now is that his product reminds everyone too much of Charlie Strong, but it's true.
9:28 PM - Dec 30, 2016
"For the record, I am a Shaka Smart guy. I think he’s a coaching star and while there’s no question that he’s going through a wretched season, my expectations for him at Texas are still incredibly high.
Also, I fully acknowledge that there are some difficult circumstances in play that helped create the disaster that it is this season. It’s easier said than done to simply snap your fingers and have a quality point guard arrive out of thin air.
But, I stand by the comments that I made on Friday night for three reasons.
1. While Rick Barnes delivered some ugly basketball over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like the needles into eyeballs torture that this team is creating when we’re compelled to watch it. The closest thing to it in terms of pure ugliness was a Charlie Strong football team.
2. The point guard situation reminds me of the quarterback situation in that the inability to find an answer, no matter how hard finding that answer might have been, doomed this team before the season ever started. One of my biggest criticisms of Strong in his three years was his inability to treat the quarterback needs with more urgency. It’s only fair to hold Smart to the same type of no excuses, by any means necessary approach to finding an alternative answer that situation demands.
3. The bottom line is the bottom line and we’re midway through year two under Smart and the quality of basketball isn’t better than the brand of ball that got the previous coach fired, which is exactly the type of thing that was true about Strong in his second season.
You can argue with me all day or night that Smart and Strong are nothing alike and the situations are totally different, but I’ll maintain that those three points above justify me seeing similarities."