As Longhorns Swoon, Coach Faces More Questions - StateFans Nation StateFans Nation

Rick Barnes is a dream candidate for NC State fans to be Sidney Lowe’s replacement. As coaches stay longer and longer in one place, expectations rise and criticism grows if results don’t continue to trend upward. It happened to Tom O’Brien at Boston College and it happened to Herb Sendek at NC State. Will it happen to Rick Barnes at the University of Texas as well?

Link to article.

There is no way anyone can call Barnes a bad coach. He has won more than 500 games and will lead a team to the N.C.A.A. tournament this year for the 16th consecutive season, a stretch that dates to his days at Clemson. That ties Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski for the longest active streak. Texas is one of six colleges to advance to the Round of 16 in five of the past nine years. Included in that run is a trip to the 2003 Final Four, the first time since 1947 that Texas advanced that far.

But the ghosts of N.C.A.A. tournaments past still haunt Barnes. He is 0 for 5 coaching in first-round N.C.A.A. tournament games between No. 8 and No. 9 seeds. In his 12 N.C.A.A. tournament appearances at Texas, eight of his losses were against teams with lower seeds.

Some of those were forgivable, like when the No. 1 Longhorns lost to the eventual national champion Syracuse, a No. 3 seed, at the 2003 Final Four. But some losses still make Longhorns fans grimace, like the first-round losses to Temple, a No. 11 seed, in 2001 and to No. 10 Purdue in 1999.

â€œI donâ€™t care,â€ Barnes said late Tuesday of the criticism. â€œIâ€™ve been in this so long, I could care less about what other people think. I quit a long time ago worrying about that.â€

Barnes is worried about his team, which showed that it had Final Four potential in victories over Kansas, North Carolina and Texas A&M. But Texas has also shown enough flaws lately to be the prototypical office pool head-scratcher.

Will their N.B.A. talents and once boundless promise translate to March success? Much will depend on whether Barnes has any magic stored up his sleeve.

106 Responses to As Longhorns Swoon, Coach Faces More Questions

CaptainCraptacular 03/04/2011 at 11:34 AM #

So I say again that Barnes will probably get you in the neighborhood of 25 wins a year but will never win a championship.

To get back to Barnes –
I would be ecstatic with 25+ wins a season, a realistic shot at the ACC title each year, a top 4 NCAA seed, semi-regular Sweet 16s with occasional deeper runs, and relevance in the national discussion. Beside myself with joy. We haven’t had anything even remotely approaching that for what – 20-24 years?

While past success is no guarantee of future success, Barnes has proven himself capable and qualified. As someone else mentioned, if Barnes isn’t good enough, who is?
VaWolf82 03/04/2011 at 11:38 AM #

How can you say the evidences is overwhelming on Sendek?

Because it is.
– 10 years
~$10 million total salary
– 1 Sweet 16
– O regular season championships
– O ACCT championships

That ain’t good enough. But it’s unlikely that he would have ever been fired as long as Fowler had a job.
CaptainCraptacular 03/04/2011 at 11:47 AM #

Granted not very deep in the tournament, very much Barnes like.

Barnes has made it to the sweet 16 or deeper 6 times. NOT Sendek like.

Oh, Jo2g5, Barnes won the Big East tournament while at Providence. So yes, has won a championship.
bradleyb123 03/04/2011 at 12:22 PM #

Are people still debating Herb? Seriously? He’s gone, we’re glad he’s gone, he doesn’t want to come back, and we don’t want him back. I’ll be glad when his name never comes up again. I wish I could pull for him out west, but because of the way people constantly bring him up, I can’t. I have to pull against him in hopes that MAYBE one day everyone will shut up about him.

And I saw it mentioned that Les Robinson was worse that Sidney, and that we gave HIM a sixth year.

Yes, but do we really want to make the same mistakes all over again?
triadwolf 03/04/2011 at 2:09 PM #

It is ridiculus that anyone is comparing Barnes to Sendek! You may not want Barnes as our coach and that is fine, but to think he is on the level of Sendek…

I’ll preface this by saying that Robinson in no way should have continued being our coach, but I am not convinced that he was that bad of a coach. His hands were tied and he was dealt a very tough deck. However, I am convinced that Lowe is a bad head coach and I have very little doubt. Perhaps he’s a decent recruiter, but that’s about it. I’d much rather have a bunch of 3 & 4 stars playing together as a team and getting coached up than a of bunch disjointed 4 & 5 stars who show litte improvement year over year.

If Barnes is interested Yow needs to put him high on the list. Not saying he should be the one, but here are only a half dozen or so I’d consider over him.

Sendek has no relevance to this coaching change and his name should not even come up again… this is the last time I’ll type it.
Wolfy__79 03/04/2011 at 3:01 PM #

any coach that has been at nc state and cannot produce an acc title in five years should not be the coach. there is some simple math that i’m using.

i would even like to see who the possible coaches could be and their track record of beating the likes of duke/unc on a regular basis. if not those teams then teams of the like in different conferences.

to me, barnes would be a great coach to add to the acc. he certainly would have some really high expectations for coming back into the acc though. i’d like to add that any big name coach that comes in will have equally high standards coming in… in the end, the type of coach we would get should understand what the expectations are even now before the official search has even started.