The 2016-17 basketball season will mark a first in Rick Barnes' coaching career by giving him his first 2 year losing record ever, in my opinion. Last season he had his 2nd worst overall record of his life coaching college ball, but this season will, again in my opinion, become his worst. If this should happen, then he also will miss his 2nd year of postseason play, which has never happened to him before.
If you check his Wikipedia stats, then you will find that he has had only 3 years where his team finished below .500 in league play, but 2 of those years have come in the past 3 seasons. If what I predict happens, after this upcoming season, he will have 3 losing league records in the last 4 years. No one can justify this pitiful performance based on what he inherited after arriving here since he has had 2 recruiting classes of his own and he did inherit rising sophomore Admiral Schofield.
Other than last year, he has missed postseason play 1 other time as a P5 coach, that is if one also considers that Texas had to pay in order for his 3rd to last season as The Longhorn head man's bb coach to participate in the CBI. In that CBI postseason affair, his team lost to Houston in the first game.
Speaking of postseason play, out of 22 NCAA appearances for his teams, 21 came due to an at-large invitation; and then only 6 times did his team advance past the first weekend.
His winning percentage is currently at 65, but I believe that it will never reach this threshold again in his career. In fact, if he should choose to remain in coaching until he reaches the age of 70 and finishes here at Tennessee, I can easily see his winning to drop below 60%.
If it were not for his first 13 seasons at Texas, he would have a sub-.500 record overall in P5 league play.
If the majority of Volunteer Fans want a program that continues to decline into the near future, then I believe we now have the coach to help make that happen.
If anyone does not believe the stats that I have posted here, then that person or persons can check them out for themselves, as I have already said, at Wikipedia and click on Rick Barnes.
My final 5 questions are: did Barnes have success at Texas because he was a knowledgeable bb coach or because topnotch talent just wanted to matriculate there because of the school's aura? Did that type of talent start to wane after the word got around that he was not a winner of a coach? All American, D. J. Augustin had unpleasant things to say about him, for example. Was Texas not justified in firing him? Why did Dave Hart hire him, when there were many other more desirable candidates out there?