Thanks to a generous reader (Merry Christmas, Dad!), I’m going to Texas’s game against Auburn tonight. This will be fun. I love the Moody Center, I’m excited to watch Auburn play basketball, and either I’ll get to watch a fun showing from my eleventh-favorite basketball team or tomorrow I can write, “I watched Auburn play basketball last night. Texas was there too.”
Every time I go to a Texas game, my heart of course returns to the 2019 NIT. Relatedly, every time I go to a Texas game I’m reminded I still need to break into the new med school building when it gets built over the Erwin Center’s graveyard. Someone has to install a plaque in there commemorating what Snoopy Roach & Co. accomplished in those three home games against South Dakota State, Xavier, and Colorado. Call me a doubter, but I doubt anyone else will put the plaque up if I don’t do it myself.
Anyway, like the guy in Japan who never found out World War II was over until an American shot him in the chest, proving him correct all along,* I am still fighting the Texas vs. Shaka Smart war. Let’s look at a few numbers from the three and a half seasons since UT ran its national champion out of town.
Wins: Shaka Smart 88, Texas 83
An early lead for our guy…
Average Strength of Schedule: Shaka Smart 19th, Texas 45th
…and that’s before adjusting for how hard each team has scheduled. (Used kenpom on this one, counting this year’s number as only a quarter of a full season to make the gap less embarrassing for Texas.)
Conference Titles (Regular Season): Shaka Smart 1, Texas 0
Yet again, Shaka Smart prevails, and if you care about single-elimination play…
Conference Titles (Tournament): Shaka Smart 1, Texas 1
…ok, I forgot Texas won the Big 12 Tournament in 2023. This one’s even.
NCAA T*urnament Victories: Texas 5, Shaka Smart 3
This category favors Texas, though I’m not sure why these specific exhibition games are so important to college basketball fans. Shaka Smart did make a Sweet Sixteen last year, negating the complaint Longhorn fans often made about him. Did we mention, though, that…
Nice New Arenas: Texas 1, Shaka Smart 0
…Shaka Smart’s doing this at Marquette? That’s an added degree of difficulty.
(For Texas fans who don’t know the Midwest, Marquette’s kind of like SMU, if you traded BMW’s for cheese curds and money for Jesuit theology.)
So far, Shaka Smart leads 2–1. He’s won more games against a tougher schedule, won more conference titles, and not won as many games in the lame NIT imitator over which fans inexplicably obsess. As a final check, though:
Incidents in Which a Coach Allegedly Choked His Fiancée, Refused to Take Responsibility, Protested His Firing, and Saddled the School With an Overmatched Interim Who Did Just Well Enough and Was Just Nice Enough That the School Keeps Having to Keep Him:
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.
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Texas 1, Shaka Smart 0
Hook ‘em.
*This is not what happened—Hiroo Onoda finally backed down peacefully in 1974.
