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Report: Shaka Smart to remain Texas Longhorns men's basketball coach

In Smart's five seasons as the Longhorns head coach, UT has posted a 90-78 record and been to the NCAA tournament twice in the past four seasons.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Longhorns head coach Shaka Smart will return for the 2020-21 basketball season, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Texas Athletic Director Chris Del Conte told the Statesman "Shaka's our coach." 

“Nothing’s changed. We won five of the last six down the stretch, finished third in the conference," Del Conte told the Statesman. "We have a good team coming back. Nothing’s changed on my end.” 

In Smart's five seasons as the Longhorns head coach, UT has posted a 90-78 record and been to the NCAA tournament twice in the past four seasons. Smart and Texas lost in the first round of both NCAA tournament appearances, including Northern Iowa's 75-72 thriller that ended with a half-court heave finding the bottom of the net at the buzzer. 

Despite his less than adequate 40-50 Big 12 career record, Smart seems steadfast and ready to improve with the Longhorns, a team that will seemingly have most if not all of its players return after the 2019-20 season was cut short due to COVID-19.

“I’m really excited,” Smart told the Statesman on Friday. “I’m big on controlling what I can control, and that’s been my mentality all season long. If I really allowed myself to get super caught up in everything that was said or written, it would’ve been a very distracted season. We have an opportunity in front of us to take a big step, and there’s a ton of urgency inside of our program to do that.It’s easy if you allow yourself to get caught up in things that our said on the outside, but our focus is to help our guys through this challenging period we have now.”

Texas finished the 2019-20 season as the four seed in the Big 12 with a 19-12 record before the Big 12 tournament and NCAA tournament were canceled.

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