Evaluating how Shaka Smart revived his coaching career at Marquette following Texas firing

Shaka Smart has had quite the coaching journey over the past 15 years at VCU, Texas, and Marquette. It has had its highs and its lows but has since led to his current peak with the Golden Eagles, including their present berth into the Sweet 16 with a spot in the Elite Eight out there for them.

On Friday, On3’s Andy Staples and James Fletcher III discussed why Smart’s tenure in Austin didn’t go as well as his present one in Milwaukee is. That led Staples to wonder if it was an issue with the Longhorns considering two of their former coaches are in the second weekend of this year’s NCAA Tournament, including one who’s there after knocking out Texas himself in the previous round.

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“Shaka was the darling of college basketball when he was at VCU. He goes to Texas, tries the big-time thing, basically gets run out of there to Marquette,” said Staples. “It was one of those, ‘I’m going to take this job before you make the decision and it’s not going to go well for me’. I think we’ve learned that he can still coach. Like, much like Rick Barnes after Texas.”

“Like, maybe it’s just Texas? I don’t know!” Staples said.

However, Fletcher thinks it’s less about Texas and more about coaching fit. It’s much like how a player fits a specific program or roster over another.

To him, Marquette is more like VCU for Smart in how he can build his roster how he sees fit. That’s in contrast to how many would expect him to do it at Texas where major names, whether with recruits or out of the transfer portal, seem to hold more value.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily Texas itself, the program, or anything going on there. Sometimes it’s just the fit. Sometimes coaches are better-suited for the job that they have, for the league that they’re in, or for the level of players, the type of players that they’re recruiting,” Fletcher explained. “When you get to Texas, there’s kind of a different expectation on which players you’re going to be using. Tyler Kolek is not a guy who a Texas-type of program goes after and builds around. But, at Marquette, you can build around a Tyler Kolek. You can kind of develop him over the course of a year, two years, three years. Then he becomes a star in college basketball.”

“That’s not really what Texas is looking to do, especially in the transfer era now. Like, they want the top transfers to come in – Max Abmas this year. They want even Tyrese Hunter. And then they want the big-time – the four-stars, the five-stars who have pedigree. So that’s kind of the difference in the recruiting side of it,” said Fletcher. “Then there’s a difference as well in terms of the public and just how the program is viewed. How it is covered, how everything happens.”

Smart has a career record of 347-171 (.670) but there’s a clear difference between his three stops.

His six years at VCU and three at Marquette have 163 (.744) and 75 (.721) wins respectively. He made the NCAA Tournament in eight of those nine, including a Final Four appearance in 2011. In the one year that he didn’t, which was his first as a head coach, VCU won the CBI. However, over six seasons at Texas, he won just 109 games at a rate of .559 with tournament selections in only half of his campaigns there.

To do the math, that’s 27.2 wins per season with the Rams, 18.2 with the Longhorns, and, currently, 25 per year with the Golden Eagles.

Fit can often mean everything in more than one aspect of life, including in coaching. That’s why, to Fletcher, Smart just appears to be much better off at the moment with Marquette than with Texas.

“It’s interesting to see,” Fletcher said. “Sometimes coaches find they had it better where they were or in whatever kind of setting they were in. Then they head back to something more similar to that and they go right back to having big-time success.”

“You see this in college basketball and in any sport, really, and any level of coaching,” said Fletcher.
“Sometimes you make that big move to the blue-blood program and you realize that maybe there are some negatives to having that level of job, that type of job as well as the positives that come with it.”