Rick Barnes

Rick Barnes

Richard Dale Barnes (born July 17, 1954) is the current head coach of the University of Texas Longhorns men's basketball team. He has coached Texas for the last fourteen seasons, taking the team to the NCAA Tournament each year, including a Final Four appearance led by T. J. Ford in 2003. Barnes previously coached at George Mason University, Providence College, and Clemson University. He is a 1977 graduate of Lenoir-Rhyne College where he was a member of the men's basketball team.

Barnes' success at Texas, a traditional football powerhouse, has sparked interest in college basketball at the university and throughout the state of Texas. Hired in April 1998, the basketball program immediately displayed Barnes' impact. Despite playing with just seven scholarship players for the majority of the 1998–99 season — and opening the season with a 3-8 record — the Longhorns won 16 of their final 21 games, winning the regular season Big 12 conference championship by a two-game margin, and finishing the year at 19-13 and in the NCAA Tournament. Barnes received his third Big 12 Coach of the Year award on March 10, 2008.

Barnes has had great regular season success with 400+ wins and has transformed Texas into a one of the top college basketball programs in the nation. He also led Texas to their first #1 ranking in 2010. However, he has won only one post-season conference tourney championship (Providence, 1994 Big East) in his 21 years as a collegiate head coach. He has an overall record of 20–20 (.500) in the NCAA tournament (18-14 at Texas). In nine of his fourteen years at Texas, the Longhorns went on to lose to a lower seed in the NCAA Tournament.

As for his coaching tree, Rick Barnes has had four of his assistants hired to head coaching gigs with Larry Shyatt coaching Wyoming (formerly Clemson), Dennis Felton at Western Kentucky and Georgia, before being fired, Frank Haith at Missouri (formerly Miami), and Ken McDonald going to Western Kentucky.

In 2007 Barnes made a cameo appearance in the NBC television series Friday Night Lights as a recruiter for the fictional school TMU.