College basketball analyst names 2 SEC coaches as candidates for Texas vacancy
College basketball’s coaching carousel is fully underway, and it could have a big impact on the SEC.
Texas coach Shaka Smart took the Marquette job on Friday, leaving the Longhorns with a coaching vacancy.
ESPN’s Seth Greenberg thinks two current SEC head coaches should be considered in the search: Auburn’s Bruce Pearl and Arkansas’ Eric Musselman.
“They need someone that’s going to get that Texas fan base excited,” Greenberg said on ESPN’s College GameDay on Saturday morning, via 247Sports. “I’m going to throw two names at you. How about Bruce Pearl? Talk about a guy that’s gone into a football environment and created frenzy and a winning atmosphere, a winning environment and style of play and energy.
“How about Eric Musselman, who goes to Arkansas, flips it around, all of a sudden the same thing. The use of social media, the use of style of play. Style of play is really important. You have to energize the fan base and get the fan base excited. Those are two guys that make you excited.”
Pearl is a known quantity thanks to his years of success at both Tennessee and Auburn. Musselman is less experienced, but is clearly on an upward trajectory. His Razorbacks are playing Oral Roberts in the Sweet 16 on Saturday evening.
Although Texas has struggled on the court in recent years — including last week’s NCAA Tournament upset loss to Abilene Christian — its resources and access to rich recruiting ground make it one of the best jobs in the country.
It will be interesting to see if the Longhorns can sway an established coach like Pearl or Musselman to try to build Texas’ program into a national power.
Pearl won’t leave. Besides I think Texas has already zeroed in on someone.
Ahh the expert. Now you know the everything going on inside both the Auburn & Texas programs.
I don’t. But would Pearl realistically leave a pretty good SEC program where he’s recruiting a 5-star every year now with 4 years still left on that deal? No. It’s simply not realistic. I don’t have to be an expert to see that.
I think Alabama needs an expert on free throw shooting.
Oh well. It remains the 2019 Auburn Tigers with the ONLY Final Four team from the state of Alabama.
Que sera sera
Yea, he is not going anywhere right now. We all love him around town. He could run for mayor and easily win. We would match any offer to stay right here.
Yes,Texas,please take Bruce Pearl so maybe some of these Metro Atlanta kids will go to Georgia instead of Auburn and back years ago to Tennessee when Pearl was there.
Y’all did manage to sign Camron McDowell from the same school as Isaac and Sharife. I was very interested in him but Pearl wasn’t apparently.
Neither Pearl nor Muss is going to TX. I would bet on Chris Beard if his buyout isn’t crazy. Maybe Kelvin Sampson.
Agree. Beard got to be the favorite. He graduated from there.
Either he goes there or IU. Got choice of jobs
Sampson would love to get into a P5 conference. I’d take Sampson any day over Beard.
Sampson has a lot of baggage from Indiana and Oklahoma. Was a show cause at one point.
Don’t dispute the guy can coach. May not matter to Texas either. But with all that booster involvement, it’s got a hard place to coach.
Pearl has no interest in dealing with a mess in Texas.
Texas has the $$$ to generate interest from anyone they want.
U. of Texas is weird, in a conference they made the weirdest. Not even the exploded Southwest Conference was as weird as the still smoldering, stinking firecracker butt of the Big 12.
What kind of conference would make 3 ‘founding’ members leave at the same time? keep the name Big 12 (denial of obvious reality)…. this still makes me laugh out loud. Then it has an appearance they were forced to add private church schools Baylor, TCU, (and Texas Tech) making 4 members from the same state. Even weirder, they then vote to take a West Virginia University that is 1,360 miles from the closest Texas member, and 879 miles from the closest trip to ANY member…. with at least 5 states in between. Imagine the time West Virginia athletes spend on airplanes to get to the closest member.
Can you figure out how any conference member voted yes to a plan where the TV network would be owned and named after a member? Or voted yes to a plan where one member wanted to keep a large sum like 700 million a year in conference revenue while distributing just about 2 million to the other members? As if the conference membership provided nothing of mutual value to the all the members ? You can’t make stuff like this up, but it happened, before it had to partially unhappen. To this day the fat little boy with the paper king hat on doesn’t know he is naked, confused, or nobody wants to look at him. How this weirdness has lasted 9 years just keeps becoming a bigger mystery. From the outside looking back at the membership it’s really hard to think that Kansas and Iowa State are accepting this public relations starvation diet compared to the old good nutrition they had in the Big 8.
Go coach at Texas but be prepared to feel funny the entire time you are there. Has anybody done a study of the longevity of coaches in the Big 12 vs the Big 8, or before and after the Lowborn Network? No wonder bats fly all over Austin Texas every night, (and actually that’s the best thing you can say about it and easily a good thing by comparison)
The old SWC was a Texas only conference with the red headed step child called Arkansas, and its the reason Arkansas was the first to leave in the early 90’s. Too much control by Texas and the little private schools kept their head down so they didnt get kicked out. Can you imaging a major conference with Rice as a member? TCU was not much better and of course the scandal ridden SMU. But Texas held it together and when Arky left, they blamed the conference collapse on the Hogs, not their China-like need to rule everything. And Texas will be and is the reason why the Big12 will disband with the next realignment.
Id love to see Okla leave Texas behind and come to the SEC
Seems like there is an agreement/ understanding or something in Oklahoma that if OU goes then Oklahoma State goes as well.
May some of the the okies can help with this.
Poor ole Spencer Davis. He reads what the big heads say about Texas, the money, the recruiting grounds and completely ignores the fact that Texas has a large number of DI BB schools that happen to play a little football. A name is thrown out and its assumed that the named coach is theirs for the taking. Here is a shocker..Texas is not known for great basketball and I dont believe they care one way or the other about the game.
If Chris Beard didn’t want it, the guy at New Mexico St is an excellent choice and a real comer in college BB circles.
Tom Crean would be a great choice for Texas. Take him please.
Too hyper.
I would be frustrated with Crean too.
He made his whole reputation on Dwayne Wade.