sorry, but this is gonna be long (title of my sex tape).-
i really suffered through the shaka years. it was seriously upsetting to watch the program that i love so much being run by such an inept, unqualified, buffoonish snake oil salesman. we recruited better than all but a handful of programs, and yet the product on the court was unwatchable, and the results at the end of the year were just a gut punch. here's how bad things got for me towards the end of shaka's reign of terror:
from an older post of mine, re: Texas losing to ACU:
the end of gbat game was a super surreal experience for me. the entire night vs ACU was just a miserable experience. it was so fucking frustrating to watch Shaka Smart's opus, the absolute zenith of his ass-backwards, incomprehensibly brain dead style of coaching. it was slamming your dick in the door for two hours. but then, with time running out, my favorite player of the Shaka Smart era, Andrew Jones, hit a clutch three to give Texas the lead...and my heart sank into the pit of my stomach. wtf?!? how in the fuck did we get to a point to where my favorite player hitting a go-ahead three with time running out to give Texas the lead in an NCAA tournament game MAKES ME ILL. it's not like it was a conscious decision- that three went in and my heart sank before the ball even hit the ground. that is how bad things were under Shaka. we were going to win the game, and i was devastated by that fact. i felt like a battered spouse who couldn't escape their abuser. it was absolutely fucking surreal, and not in any kind of positive way.
i was crestfallen; disconsolate; inconsolable. i was having my heart ripped out because the team that i love so much and have loved for so long was about to win an NCAA tournament game. but then ACU got the ball, they got into the lane, they got fouled, and now they've got two shots at the line to beat my beloved Texas Longhorns, and here i am, sitting in my living room, praying to god that this kid from Abilene Christian sinks both FTs and beats the team that i love so much. and he did. and here we are, about to open the very next season in the top 5 of the polls, and Shaka is 1,000 miles away. just totally, completely surreal.
Things were so hopelessly terrible under shaka that my inner most being, the core of who i am, wanted Texas to lose and to fail, no matter what it took, just to get rid of the cancer we had at head coach. as someone whose literal first memories are of loving Texas Basketball, that's a pain i don't wish on any sports fan, save sooners and aggies. to make it worse, my dream hire, chris beard, gad been given an extension at TTU only a year prior, meaning he was not a serious candidate to replace shaka. and then a miracle happened.
from another recent post of mine:
chris beard got to Texas, immediately signed the top transfer class, won the program's first tourney game in 8 years, got all eligible players from said transfer class to return, signed two 5 stars, and by week three of his second season had Texas in the top 5 and receiving first place votes. he did all of that in the 18 months immediately following shaka's loss to ACU.
you wanna talk about surreal? to go from absolute anguish over the state of my oldest and first love, to then suddenly overnight seeing the program at the doorstep of being a top 5 national program year in and year out- it was like i had been brought back from the dead and was suddenly surrounded by victoria's secret angels whose only job was to give me sponge baths and feed me chicken wings. ab. so. lute. ly. surreal. from hell to heaven, in the blink of an eye.
at least that's how it was up until two weeks ago. now it's as if i'm just waking up from a coma, and the entire chris beard era was nothing but a drug induced wet dream. now i'm waking up to find a fat, sweaty orderly telling me that all of my organs are failing and that unless i get a miracle transplant i'm going to die. the never ending future of limitless possibilities and chicken wing sponge baths was all just a dream, and now reality has smacked me awake and i'm right back where i was when Andrew Jones hit that three pointer: crestfallen; disconsolate; inconsolable.
i am right there with slx and pancho in terms of what this program means to me, but unlike most here i could not give a shit less about UT football compared to Texas Hoops. Texas Basketball is my lifelong no.1 love, from as far back as i can remember, and nothing else really comes close for me. i grew up at practices, in the locker rooms, at all of the games. travis mays was the first person who i considered to be "my best friend", back when i was just four years old. fast forward a decade, and it's rick barnes's first practice at Texas, and i'm off to the side playing 1 on 1 with his son, Nick. my entire childhood was shaped by Texas Basketball, my first love, and that love has never waned- it's only caused me to feel great pain during our hard times, and unbridled joy during the good times. and to this day i still have countless relationships with people from the UT Basketball family, from the 80's all the way up to today. Texas Basketball has always been my life.
i still can't believe this is happening. i took nearly a week off from posting when the news hit, because i was already grieving, and in no mood to be talking about basketball with anyone. now i'm back, and i'm just waiting for the final, official word that my dream, a dream that i actually got to live, is being crushed. without going into it too far, i'll just say that my mental health issues have led to some serious physical health issues for me, and things were not looking good for for a while there. i had to have some tough conversations with my loved ones about how much time i might have left. then suddenly we had a breakthrough, and i've been experiencing an unexpected good turn with my physical health, which happened to coincide with our fantastic start to the season.everything was coming up derka. and then the news hit. my mom came over that evening and i said to her, "this was the best thing i had going for me; this was keeping me alive." to which she solemnly replied, "i know."
why am i writing all of this? perhaps it's an attempt at finding some catharsis? i don't even know. and that's really it- i can't even wrap my head and my emotions around this enough to find myself on stable footing in terms of how i feel or where i stand. i'm still in a daze from finding out that my waking fantasy had only been a dream. the thrilling present and the amazing, unlimited future have just been snatched from beneath me, and now i'm just dead inside all over again. i watched that k state game and felt absolutely nothing. my needle didn't move one iota. and that's because my heart is dead, and the only AED's that exist (donovan, wright, calipari) ain't showing up any time soon.
to wrap this up, please allow me quote the late, great augie garrido: "you may have a lot in your life; i don't." i used to have a life, a career, and (somewhat) healthy mind and body. but with all of my health problems and my loss of employment years ago, now i have my mom, my failing health, and my sports teams. and all of those teams combined mean less to me than this UT Basketball program. this one really is an all-time hurter to the heart for me. i honestly may never feel the same way about UT Hoops ever again. this one may just too big of a blow for me to ever fully recover. this one really hurts.