NCAA Basketball: 10 candidates to replace Chris Beard as Texas HC

Royal Ivey

Every good coaching search needs someone outside the box, or at least someone vastly different than each of the other considered candidates. Ivey has never been a head coach at any level and has never even been a collegiate coach. Going the NBA route in hiring coaches has often been a losing proposition at the college level, but Ivey’s connection and experience with Texas make him an appealing name.

Ivey was a star guard at Texas in the early 2000’s before a decade-long NBA career. He helped lead the Longhorns to the Final Four as a junior in 2003 and was on the Big 12’s All-Defense team twice in his career. After his professional playing career ended in 2014, he became an assistant and has worked with three different NBA franchises, including the Brooklyn Nets the past few seasons. He has also recently served as the head coach of the national team for South Sudan.

How would Ivey manage as a collegiate head coach? It’s a fair question and one that gets asked every time an NBA coach or player makes his way back to the college game. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The important thing here is that Ivey is a Longhorn and would be able to make great use of the resources available. Could he bring top-level recruits back to Austin? A lot of coaches can do that; it’s all about the on-court stuff against the Big 12 and eventually SEC in the coming years.