Harry

Hodge is McCasland's main assistant at Ark St. He is from Dallas. Here is his info: http://www.astateredwolves.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=35067&SPID=2746&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=7200&ATCLID=210884922&Q_SEASON=2016 Ross Hodge Bio Courtesy: ArkansasState Release: 04/12/2016 Ross Hodge is in his first season as Associate Head Coach on coach Grant McCasland's staff at Arkansas State. Hodge, named the No. 6 recruiter in an ESPN.com top-10 list of recruiters outside the high resource conferences, joined the A-State coaching staff after four seasons with head coach Larry Eustachy at Colorado State. Hodge, labeled as the No. 14 recruiter in a CoachStat.net top-25 list of coaches outside of the high resource conferences, served as the lead recruiter at Colorado State and helped the Rams to an 87-48 record over his four-year stint. During his time at Colorado State, the Rams advanced to postseason play twice, including the NCAA Tournament in 2013. This past season, the Rams posted an 18-16 record and completed a four-year stretch with 87 wins, the most in program history. Colorado State has led the Mountain West in scoring each of the past two seasons, ranking 36th nationally in 2015-16 averaging 79.4 points. The Rams posted a program-best 27-7 record in 2014-15, ending the year in the NIT for the fifth postseason appearance in six seasons. Colorado State, which was ranked in top-25 polls for the second time in three seasons, opened the season with the program-best 14-0 mark. Coming off a third round appearance in the 2013 NCAA Tournament, Colorado State posted a 16-16 record in the 2013-14 campaign. Hodge was named a top-five assistant coach in the Mountain West conference by Next Up Recruits in 2013. The Rams went 26-9 in 2012-13 bowing out in the third round of the NCAA Tournament to eventual champion Louisville. The Rams led the nation in rebound margin (+11.9) and ranked 31st in scoring margin (+9.3) and Colorado State entered the national polls for the first time since the 1954. Hodge, a Dallas native, joined the Division I coaching ranks when he was hired by Eustachy as an assistant coach at Southern Miss prior to the 2011-12 season. The Golden Eagles posted a 25-9 record and finished second with an 11-5 mark in Conference USA. Southern Miss received an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament and was paired against Kansas State in the No. 8 versus No. 9 seed matchup. Before joining Eustachy at Southern Miss, Hodge compiled a record of 146-24 in head coaching stints at Midland Junior College (2009-11) and Paris Junior College (2006-09). In his two-year stint with Midland College, Hodge guided the Chaps’ to an impressive 63-7 (.900) record. Hodge saw his 2010-11 squad post a 33-4 record while winning the Western Junior College Athletics Conference Title, the Region V Tournament championship and advance to the NJCAA Championship game. In his first season (2009-10), following McCasland’s departure to Midwestern State, Hodge led Midland College to their best start in program history (26-0) before ending the season in the Region V Tournament title game with a record of 30-3 and the nation’s No. 1 ranking. Hodge coached for four years at Paris Junior College, the last three as head coach. In those three seasons, Hodge led the Dragons to an 83-17 (.830) record. The Dragons won two Texas Eastern Athletic Conference regular-season championships and in 2006-07 he was named the Conference Coach of the Year. The following season, Hodge earned Region 14 Coach of the Year honors after his team won the Region 14 Tournament and finished eighth in the NJCAA Tournament. Between 2003 and 2005 Hodge served as the assistant men's basketball coach at Texas A&M University-Commerce, where he helped the Lions to the 2004-05 Lone Star Conference Championship, and a spot in the NCAA Division II Sweet Sixteen. Hodge was a two-year starter at Paris Junior College, where he won the Bobby Walters Leadership Award in 2001. He finished his playing career at Texas A&M-Commerce, where he was honored with the Terry Allen Award for leadership and positive representation on and off the court in 2003. Hodge, a native of Dallas, Texas, and his wife, Shelly, have a daughter, Emery, and a son, Reed.

Bio: http://www.astateredwolves.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=7200&ATCLID=210811791 Grant McCasland Bio Courtesy: ArkansasState Release: 03/17/2016 Grant McCasland was named the 15th head coach in Arkansas State's history on March 16, 2016. A 17-year coaching veteran, McCasland holds a 199-44 (.819) record as a head coach at the junior college and NCAA Division II levels. THE McCASLAND FILE GRANT McCASLAND College Baylor, 1999 (B.S.) Texas Tech, 2001 (M.S.) Family Wife: Cece Children: Amaris, Jett, Jersey, Beckett COACHING EXPERIENCE Year School, Position 1999-01 Texas Tech, Director of Operations 2001-03 Northeastern JC, Assistant Coach 2004-09 Midland College, Head Coach 2009-11 Midwestern State, Head Coach 2011-16 Baylor, Assistant Coach 2016-present Arkansas State, Head Coach POSTSEASON EXPERIENCE 2004-05 NJCAA Elite Eight (Midland) 2005-06 NJCAA Region 5 Final (Midland) 2006-07 NJCAA, National Champions (Midland) 2007-08 NJCAA Region 5 Semifinals (Midland) 2008-09 NJCAA, finals (Midland) 2009-10 NCAA Division II, Elite Eight (MSU) 2010-11 NCAA Division II, Elite Eight (MSU) 2011-12 NCAA, Elite Eight (Baylor) 2012-13 NIT, champions (Baylor) 2013-14 NCAA, Sweet 16 (Baylor) 2014-15 NCAA, First Round (Baylor) 2015-16 NCAA, First Round (Baylor) McCasland spent the last five seasons as an assistant coach at Baylor, helping lead the Bears to NCAA Tournament appearances in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Prior to Baylor, he spent two seasons as the head coach at Midwestern State and led the program to back-to-back Elite Eight appearances in the NCAA Division II Tournament. McCasland also has head coaching experience at the junior college level, leading Midland College to the 2007 NJCAA national championship. Working on head coach Scott Drew’s staff at Baylor, McCasland has helped the Bears average 26 wins per year, posting a 125-55 record, including a 10-3 postseason mark. The Irving, Texas native helped Baylor rise to national prominence with five 20-win seasons, five postseason appearances, the Big 12’s first NIT championship and Baylor’s first postseason tournament title in its 107-year history. In his final season at Baylor he helped lead the club to a program best third straight NCAA Tournament apperance. The Bears posted a 22-11 mark this season, playing 18 games against teams that are in the 2016 NCAA Tournament. During the 2014-15 season the Bears went 24-10 and earned a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, tying the best seed in program history and recorded the program’s first-ever back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances. It was the program’s seventh 20-win season in the previous eight years, accounting for all but three of the 20-win seasons in school history. A school-record seven of Baylor’s 24 wins came against top-25 ranked teams during the 2014-15 campaign. Baylor became one of just 12 teams nationally to reach three Sweet 16s in a five-year span (2010-14) with a late seasons surge that saw the Bears reach the 2014 NCAA Tournament. The Bears advanced to the Big 12 Championship title game and posted 26 wins in the 2013-14 season. The 2012-13 season saw Baylor become the first Big 12 team to claim a NIT title. The Bears won five straight that culminated with a 20-point win over Iowa in the championship game. In his first season with the Bears (2011-12), McCasland helped the squad to a school-record 30 wins and an appearance in the NCAA Tournament South Region Final, the second in three seasons. Baylor was ranked throughout the season, a first in program history, reaching as high as No. 3 in the polls while not falling below 14th. Before his five-year stint at Baylor, McCasland spent two seasons as head coach at Midwestern State (Texas), posting a combined 56-12 mark. In the 2010-11 season, McCasland, the Lone Star Conference (LSC) South Division and National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) South Region Coach of the Year, saw his Mustangs finish 25-9, win the NCAA Division II South Central Region title and reach the NCAA Division II Elite Eight. The Mustangs were knocked out of the national tournament with a 70-64 loss to eventual champion Bellarmine. The previous season (2009-10) saw Midwestern State earn the LSC South Division title, the LSC Tournament championship, the NCAA Division II South Central Region championship and a berth in the NCAA Division II Elite Eight. Prior to his tenure at Midwestern State, McCasland spent five successful seasons as the head coach at Midland (Texas) College, taking the reins of the program prior to the 2004-05 campaign. It didn’t take long to see the impact he made on the program as his first season as the head coach resulted in the Region V championship and trip to the NJCAA Elite Eight. In the 2006-07 season, the Chaps finished 29-8 and won the national championship. In his final season in Midland (2008-09), the Chaps finished 33-4 and lost in the national championship game and McCasland ended his time at Midwestern State with a record of 143-32 while earning district, region and national coach of the year honors. Preceding his time at Midland College, McCasland was the assistant coach at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colo., for two seasons (2001-02 and 2002-03). He began his coaching career in Lubbock, Texas, where he served as the Director of Basketball Operations on James Dickey’s staff at Texas Tech in the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 seasons. A three-year letterman and four-year player for head coach Harry Miller at Baylor, McCasland earned Academic All-Big 12 honorable mention honors in his senior campaign of 1998-99. He graduated from Baylor in 1999 with a degree in entrepreneurship and management and received his master’s degree from Texas Tech in 2001. Grant and his wife, Cece, have four children: daughters Amaris and Jersey and sons Jett and Beckett. What they are saying: Baylor Head Coach Scott Drew "Coach McCasland is a proven winner. He has won wherever he's been, and I know he will have the same success at Arkansas State. In addition to being a home run hire on the court, Coach Mac is a great man and a great leader, and he will be a major asset on the campus and in the community. He will truly be missed at Baylor." James Dickey, Former Texas Tech head coach and current Oklahoma State assistant coach “You ought to be ecstatic. He is a wonderful young man. I’m an old Arkansas guy and I know they love basketball in Northeast Arkansas. He will represent Arkansas State and make you all very proud. He is a quality young man with an infectious personality. I’d coached against him when he was a player, and I had watched him work my camp and observed how he conducted himself. I jumped at the chance to hire him to be a part of my team at Texas Tech. He has the whole package – a strong recruiter, great X’s and O’s, and he’ll be a community member. Grant and his family will be great representatives of and ambassadors for A-State basketball, the athletic department, the university, the city of Jonesboro and all of Northeast Arkansas.” A-State Director of Athletics Terry Mohajir “Grant McCasland has proven himself as an outstanding coach and recruiter, winning on many levels. He is coming from a program that carried out one of the nation’s biggest turnarounds and then sustained its success. We have high expectations for our men’s basketball program, and we believe Coach McCasland has the skills, drive and determination to build a consistent championship-caliber program here at Arkansas State.” Arkansas State System President Dr. Chuck Welch “I knew within minutes of meeting Coach McCasland that he was the right person to lead our men’s basketball program. He has been a big-time winner at every level, and his energy, enthusiasm, and intensity are infectious. Our fans are going to love him and his family, and I have absolutely no doubt that he will elevate our program the right way and bring winning basketball to the Convo immediately.”

Great find @TheReal_jayD! Great hire! Surprised they kicked in the $500K buy-out but things are a changin at North Texas these days. Excited about basketball again!

That's what I was thinking -- signing period could benefit us to the detriment of another program.

I had neglected to mention this young man suffered a broken leg in his junior year which probably cooled some bigger school interest in him.

He really may have hit on a big under the radar signing here. Add in the point guard transfer and AJ Lawson and there is a NICE nucleus of young talent to build on... for those who haven't followed this kid is from Cedar Hill and really blew up after signing with UNT. 6-9, 230 and very athletic playing in a tough district. here is what his coach at Cedar Hill said about him: "He's playing like a senior who's laying it all out there on the floor every game and that's what you want. He's playing his best basketball at the most important time of the year - second wave of district, heading to the playoffs. The crazy thing is there's still room for improvement with him and he knows that. He's improved the most from junior to senior year of any player that I've probably ever had in my career as a coach." -Brandon Thomas" Here are some stats: Simmons recorded 17 points, 23 rebounds and eight blocks as the state's fourth-ranked 6A team beat No. 12 Duncanville 73-55. The win gave Cedar Hill a two-game lead over Duncanville in District 7-6A. Simmons also had 11 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks in a 66-58 win over DeSoto earlier in the week. Simmons is averaging 16 points, 12 rebounds and six blocks per game this season.

You can't underestimate how critical the relationship between the AD and the HC candidate is. It was huge when RV made the Benford hire. For this hire it may be bigger since it is Wren's first at this level. AD's want a guy that will fit their leadership vision and will mesh well with their management team which in his case is the big 4. Do I think this came into play on the last time around on Fran? Absolutely. Fran was sort of an independent entity and some might argue bigger nationally than anyone else at the school. He was not going to be corralled. If the practice facility didn't have restrooms he was going to scream loudly. Publicly it was communicated that it was was a risky hire and Fran had been out of the coaching game too long. But look at the woman's hire, Coach Pete was about as company man as you could have hired. I for one hope Wren will be willing to go outside his comfort zone on this one but history on first hires seems to point to him going with a known commodity that he knows very well.

@SilverEagle will like this update!

I ask this question with the obvious exception of the great John Hedlund and the women's soccer program... After Jalie's team was pretty much routed by WKU in the second round it dawned on me that we still have a long way to go in most of our sports. Always here about how tennis is great but we are currently 4-6 with the majority of conference matches ahead of us. We know football saw a huge turnaround but even the most optimistic fan would say we have a couple of years before we are challenging for the conference title. Men's basketball we have a new coach on the horizon but it could take 2-3 years to be at or near the top. My main question is what is it going to take to get us at the top of our standings in all C-USA sports and shouldn't that be our goal? Personally - if that goal is just lip service and not intended to be supported at the necessary level, I would prefer that we focus on the sports we have the best chance of excelling in. Part of the problem is we historically (other than soccer) have not had a consistently good program that we could build a tradition behind.

Jackson never really got or supported athletics. That along with the accounting fiasco hurts his legacy in my opinion. Would love to see us land someone like John Sharp @A&M, Admiral McRaven @UT or Renu Khator @UofH. Someone who appreciates and understands the importance of athletics as a window to the university.

Why you should know him Brooks, along with other under the radar players Kishawn McClain and Eric Jenkins, makes up one of the most talented position groups in Conference USA, the Mean Green secondary. Well, McClain may not be under the radar so much, he was an All-CUSA freshman he's been a playmaker for North Texas for two plus years now, but you should get to know all of them. Back to Mr. Brooks. Brooks arrived on campus a skinny kid who was expected to play on special teams and in nickel situations, but he ended up starting his final seven games as a true freshman. He made eleven stops as a true freshman against UTSA at Apogee and generally survived his trial by fire. Enter Seth Littrell and with him Co-Coordinators Troy Reffett and Mike Ekeler, they transformed North Texas' defense into an attacking multiple/flexible unit and oversaw a near ten point improvement in points allowed per game. Reffett and Ekeler's defense skyrocketed and improved from 108th in pass defense in 2015 to 26th in 2016. That jump was aided by a bulked up Brooks who added ten to fifteen pounds for his sophomore season. He used those extra pounds to finish fourth on the team in tackles with 57 tackles, including 36 solo stops. Brooks started all thirteen games for the Mean Green in 2016 and didn't shy away from the big stage. In the Mean Green's trip to the Swamp to take on Florida in September, Brooks led the team in tackles and registered his first career interception. Brooks would make a second pick a few weeks later at West Point. Against Southern Miss in November Brooks would have his best night to date and dismantle USM's offense with two picks, a forced fumble, six tackles, and a pass break up. That win would be the fifth for the Mean Green and, thanks to their APR, would qualify them for a Bowl Game in Littrell's first year. read more: http://swcroundup.com/news/2017/3/9/under-the-radarnorth-texas-nate-brooks

I sense he will get snapped up by a bigger program as a recruiter -- he is good at it and is well thought of in the coaching community. Not everyone is cut out to be a head coach but I think he will be fine.

With spring in the Texas air, some Baylor University students were navigating the social challenges of another off-campus party, chatting and dancing while trying not to spill their drinks. Amid the swirl, a petite freshman named Jasmin Hernandez lost sight of her friends. Then Tevin Elliott, a 20-year-old Baylor football player dating someone she knew, appeared. Earlier he had been pouring hard liquor for Ms. Hernandez and other underage students; now he was insisting that her friends had gone outside. When Ms. Hernandez expressed doubts, she said, he began pulling her by the wrist toward the door, telling her they had gone outside. But the farther they strayed into the darkness, the more she argued that her friends were back at the party, and that they should return. Without a word, she later said in a lawsuit, the 6-foot-3, 250-pound linebacker picked up the 5-3 freshman and made his violent intentions clear. Panicking, Ms. Hernandez told him that she was sorry if she gave him the wrong impression; that they should just go back to the house and forget this ever happened; that she was, in fact, gay. He acted as though he did not hear. When Mr. Elliott finished raping her behind a secluded shed, an angry Ms. Hernandez used an expletive in demanding her shirt back. “He tossed it over to me,” she later recalled. “And that was the end of the interaction.” Ms. Hernandez, who has appeared on ESPN and who spoke to The Times for this article, assumed that her rape was a horrible but isolated incident at Baylor, a private university of nearly 17,000 students that takes pride in its Baptist foundation. And she wasn’t alone in believing that: Even after Mr. Elliott was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in 2014, Baylor officials said they considered him to be a solitary bad actor preying on a campus of goodness. Continue reading the main story

I tend to agree with you on this.

University of North Texas System Chancellor Lee F. Jackson today announced plans to retire before the end of 2017 from a position he has held for 15 years. Jackson, the second Chancellor in UNT System history, is currently the longest-serving university system chancellor in the State of Texas and has guided UNTS and its three universities through a period of unprecedented growth since being appointed by its Board of Regents in 2002. View Full Article

Looking out of his glass office near the corner of Main and Harwood streets, UNT Chancellor Lee Jackson can see the old Municipal Building where he started his career in Dallas more than 40 years ago. Back then, he was a “very junior” assistant in the city manager’s office, tackling nuisances like high weeds and loose dogs or responding to protesters at council meetings. He moved up in that office and went on to serve as a state representative for a decade and 15 years as Dallas County judge. And now he’s wrapping up a career in public service after serving as UNT’s chancellor, where one of his main charges recently has been renovating the Municipal Building so it can one day house the university’s new law school. Jackson will announce Thursday that he’s retiring from University of North Texas after 15 years leading the system. “I had no idea my career would come full circle to this place,” said Jackson, 67, a native of Oak Cliff. “I could have been an ambassador and traveled, maybe. But really, I never thought I’d live anywhere other than North Texas. I just instinctively know how it works and doesn’t work.” Often working out of the spotlight, Jackson helped usher many major developments in the Dallas area and pushed for regional approaches to the area’s biggest challenges, such as transportation and pollution. As Dallas County judge, he was credited with revamping the juvenile justice system and stepping up efforts to address child abuse. He successfully lobbied for the creation of the North Texas Tollway Authority so the money generated could be spent easing the Dallas area's traffic woes. His support was the final push that led to the creation of the Sixth Floor Museum. Jackson took the helm of UNT when few university leaders were non-educators, a growing trend that was criticized at the time. read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/03/08/unt-chancellor-lee-jackson-retire-four-decades-public-service-dallas-area

There is a connection here as I believe The Wren and Harper coached in the same league when The Wren was coaching at Rogers. im interested to hear @TheTastyGreek and @Cooley etc have to say on this possibility.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2017/03/a_year_to_remember_for_ray_har.html

UNT WINS!!! 65-62 Double overtime

UNT takes a 3 point lead with 6.2 seconds left!!!

DOUBLE OVERTIME!!!