His on court production was not matching his

Posted on: February 5, 2019 at 08:19:39 CT

recruiting rankings the last several years. Barnes recruited very well at Texas, but comparatively underperformed on the court.
I think Barnes is a good recruiter, and with the attention that Texas was getting from football during that era, they attracted very high-level athletes.
I suspect the problem was that he ultimately ended up with a different class of athlete than he was ideally designed to work with. Some guys can handle the elite kids with attitudes and some guys are better suited to work with second-tier kids that are willing to bust their ass.

If you look at Tennessee now, they have no elite recruits. Barnes has coached up a very good team out of mid-level hard workers.


People tend to forget, and narratives change, but at the time Texas fired Barnes, nobody was up in arms, and the national narrative was why does Barnes keep under achieving?

Some guys are just designed to coach a certain type of kid. If you look at the entire story of his time at Texas and Tennessee, you can draw a reasonable conclusion that Barnes is one of those guys