NCAA Basketball: Creighton’s fall, Mountain West success among biggest takeaways

10. Speculating the next move at Texas

We are not going to speculate on the allegations surrounding Chris Beard; there are real people involved who have been negatively affected by this situation in ways many reading this can’t even imagine. Instead, we’re going to focus solely on the basketball season, which continues to function in his absence.

Rodney Terry was named interim head coach for their game on Monday and the Longhorns really struggled, needing overtime to dispatch of an unimpressive Rice team. It’s hard to directly measure, but the controversy surrounding Beard certainly affected things on court for Texas. This is a very good team this season, recently ranked as high as #2 in the country, but can they avoid everything falling apart?

For the time being, it looks like Terry will be leading this program and the Longhorns are lucky to have someone of his caliber on their staff. A longtime former Texas assistant under Rick Barnes, Terry spent a decade as a D1 head coach, leading Fresno State to the NCAA Tournament in 2016 and engineering a turnaround in three seasons at UTEP. His career record sits just above .500, but he’s clearly got a lot more firepower in Austin than with those other schools.

Moving forward, Terry should be able to lead this program for the foreseeable future. It’s too early to speculate about this job becoming available, but there are likely numerous candidates who would be attractive in the offseason to lead the Longhorns. When the Longhorns swiped Beard from rival Texas Tech it was seen as one of the best coaching moves in recent memory, and this season’s results may have proved that. While there’s not another Beard out there, there’s potential for Texas to bring aboard a new head coach who can produce results, though it’s far too early to speculate at who they could target.