FORT WORTH, Texas — A few days shy of the one-year anniversary of the third-worst loss in Texas history, the man who coached the Longhorns to that memorable defeat against Abilene Christian looks well.
(The worst loss in Texas history will always be to Kansas in football. Either one.)
Former Texas coach Shaka Smart, and his full head of hair, are in the right place. How he got to Marquette is one of the more amazing feats of college athletic administration maneuvering you'll ever see.
His landing at Marquette made the "transfer" of Chris Beard from Texas Tech to Texas not necessarily possible, but significantly easier. And a lot cheaper.
In the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Fort Worth on Thursday evening, Shaka and his Marquette Golden Eagles were run out of Dickies Arena and back to Milwaukee by the North Carolina Tar Heels, 95-63.
Despite the ugly game, Shaka had a nice first season at Marquette. But North Carolina basketball is just a different strata — the type of level for which Shaka discovered he's not built.
Some coaches are better suited for certain jobs, and certain levels, in their sport.
Shaka Smart was a decent fit for Texas, but he was a bad fit for the slim ball world of power five NCAA revenue sports. He's too nice.
On March 20, 2021, Shaka's six-year tenure at Texas effectively ended when the Longhorns were upset by Abilene Christian, 53-52, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Six days later, he was named as the new coach at Marquette.
That didn't just happen.
Almost immediately after that Texas loss, the Longhorns were resigned to the fact they had to move on from Smart.
UT athletics director Chris Del Conte is not a fan of firing people, and he knew he could not move forward with Smart as the men's basketball coach.
The Longhorns were entering the last year of the Erwin Center, and the prospect of moving into a new arena with a coach whose status was uncertain was less than appetizing.
The problem was Smart still had two years remaining on his contract that paid him about $3.25 million annually. Texas basically has a Fort Knox on its campus, but it didn't want to eat that salary because basketball will never be football.
The day before Texas lost to Abilene Christian, Marquette had fired its coach, Steve Wojciechowki, after seven seasons.
Watching all of this from Lubbock was Texas Tech's Chris Beard, whose dream job was to coach the Longhorns.
According to people familiar with how all of this went down, it was Texas who reached out to the people running the search for Marquette.
Smart knew his time in Austin was short, and Marquette is a good job.
The Golden Eagles have a long, good history in basketball. They won a national title in the 1970s, reached a Final Four with Dwyane Wade as the Golden Eagles' star player in 2003 and have been a competitive team this century under Tom Crean and Buzz Williams.
Marquette considering Smart was not a desperate case of a school looking at damaged goods. They would be hiring a coach with a good resume, whose tenure at Texas wasn't terrible. It just wasn't great.
His resume at Virginia Commonwealth was outstanding. In six years, he reached the NCAA Tournament five times, and the Final Four once.
By nudging Marquette to look at Smart, Texas potentially also would not be on the hook for the multi-million dollar buyout. Smart resigned from Texas and joined Marquette on March 26. And on April 1, Texas announced its Beard hire.
The Golden Eagles were picked to finish ninth in the 11-team Big East this season, yet they finished sixth, entered Thursday's game at 19-12, 11-8 in conference and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
Less than a year removed from the March Madness humiliation of losing to Abilene Christian, the Longhorns are back and feeling a lot better about themselves.
And it all started because Texas found Shaka a home without having to fire him.
