Shaka Wants Brown in Texas
Only hours after it became public that Shaka Smart would be accepting the head coaching position at Texas, and before the school had even held a press conference, he made his first scholarship offer at the helm of the Longhorns program and it went to Bruce Brown.
Brown has strong ties to Smart's coaching staff having been initially recruited to Vermont Academy by Jesse Bopp, who was the director of basketball operations at VCU this season, and then having a breakout sophomore season under Cody Hatt, who was a graduate assistant for VCU this season. In fact, it was in January of his sophomore year that the Rams became one of the first schools to offer Brown a scholarship.
VCU has been in hot pursuit ever since, with Smart making multiple trips to New England himself, and so while it wouldn't have been surprising to see them continue to recruit Brown at Texas, the sheer speed at which they reached out to him made a clear statement.
While Smart established his VCU program as a recruiting powerhouse, landing five different ESPN 100 prospects in the last two years alone, he will now have access to an even higher level of talent given that the state of Texas is considered to be one of the most talent rich regions in the country.
Nevertheless, he made it clear that Brown is a player he wants at any level of college basketball, as he would be an ideal fit for the "havoc" system that will apparently make it's way from Richmond, Virginia to Austin, Texas.
Bruce Brown