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It is not, but what else was she going to say?

During her nine years at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, Barnes referred to her club’s improvement as “the climb.â€� And for five years, it was about as impressive as you can imagine, all the way from 6-24 to the national championship game. And then it stalled.

She will probably find “the climb� at SMU to be more challenging.

The Mustangs drew an average of 1,359 fans per home game last season, No. 17 of the 18 ACC clubs. They drew as few as 356 fans for a home game. The Mustangs play in antiquated Moody Coliseum, built in 1956, probably the worst basketball facility in the ACC, or close to it with Stanford’s Maples Pavilion.

One of my golf buddies, Stewart Schwensen, an SMU alum, national concert promoter and prominent SMU athletic booster, told me that “the school throws in four women’s basketball tickets for $100 with my men’s basketball tickets and I donate them to local high school teams.�

More? SMU lost its final 14 games last season and hasn’t qualified for the NCAA Tournament since 2008. In the vast Dallas metro area, at least 10 or 12 teams outrank the Mustangs women’s basketball team in relevance.

Expect Barnes’ climb to require much more effort and an absolute fortune in NIL/transfer donations.

What makes Barnes’ departure from ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ so notable is that she is just one of 10 Wildcat head coaches to exit for another job in the last 50 years. However, she is the first to leap to a job that didn’t include a bigger stage. Here’s the group of 10 ex-UA coaches who left ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ since 1975:

– 1977: Jim Young, football, went to Purdue for more money and a bigger stage. After later coaching at Army, Young was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999.

– 1987: Larry Smith, football, went to USC for more money and a bigger stage. He went to three Rose Bowls and completed his career at Missouri.

– 1988: Wendy Larry, women’s basketball, went to Old Dominion, which had won the NCAA championship three years earlier. She won 559 games at ODU, played in 17 NCAA Tournaments and was in the 1995 Final Four.

– 1993: Kim Haddow, women’s golf, went to Florida for more money and a bigger stage. She was fired four years later and ended up coaching at Embry-Riddle University.

– 2000: Todd McCorkle, women’s golf, went to Georgia for more money and a bigger stage. He won the 2001 NCAA championship but was fired in 2007.

– 2020: Tony Amato, soccer, went to Florida for more money and a bigger stage. He was fired in 2023.

– 2021: Jay Johnson, baseball, went to LSU for more money and a bigger stage. He won the NCAA championship in 2023.

– 2023: Jedd Fisch, football, went to Washington for more money and a bigger stage. He went 6-7 last season.

– 2024: Laura Ianello, women’s golf, went to Texas for more money and a bigger stage. Her Longhorns are ranked No. 6 this week. Barnes and Ianello are the only ex-Wildcat athletes in the group.

At Barnes’ welcome-to-SMU media conference, athletic director Damon Evans, who has been at the school for just three weeks, said that Barnes “will change our basketball program forever.�

We wish her the best in a job that looks to be more challenging than the one she took at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ nine years ago.