Texas Basketball: 2017-18 season preview for the Longhorns

After an 11-22 season, the Texas basketball comes back with a much different roster. Will the changes yield a return to the tournament?

The honeymoon period for Shaka Smart at Texas is officially over. Last season was a big disappointment for the Longhorns program after the previous season being considered a relative success.

After giving the VCU the greatest seven years of basketball they’ve ever experienced, Texas decided that Smart would be the replacement for Rick Barnes, the previous longtime coach for the school. Texas was sliding in terms of their role as one of the top teams in the Big 12.

Despite having a lottery-type player in center Jarrett Allen and some talented players surrounding him, last season went poorly from start to finish.

When it came to the non-conference portion of the year, just about all of the games were closer than they needed to be. Although they came away with several victories, they finally paid for playing close games with bad home losses to Texas Arlington and Kent State. Things went from bad to worse when the leading scorer of the team, Tevin Mack, was dismissed from the program due to disciplinary issues. He is now enrolled at Alabama.

What really doomed the team was the awful shooting, though. As a team, they shot just 29% from distance and couldn’t hit any jumpers. That caused the defense to collapse on Allen, limiting what he himself could do late in the year.

After finishing dead last in the conference at 4-14, some changes needed to be made. Assistant coach David Carson was relieved of his duties, and a bunch of top-100 players are coming in looking to play early.

The biggest one of all could possibly be the top pick in the 2018 draft, and the key for a Longhorns bounce back to the top.