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Some of y'all are pointing to coach-torch-passing from times beyond the Wild Wild West that is unlimited transfers and NIL. We can't stamp our feet and say PROMOTE FROM WITHIN BECAUSE IT HAS WORKED!! We're staring a 2nd straight year of a complete rebuild unless the new coach can convince BLo, Grant, & Jasper (if he has eligibility) to stay. Coach McCasland was able to convince Wooly, Zach, & Mo to stay, and they were incredibly instrumental in our early success! Maybe a new guy can do the same. Remember Coach Hodge was under McCasland pre-UNT. That's 7+ years of tutelage under an incredible motivator. As we're seeing now in Lubbock the past 2 years, the defensive tenacity was not necessary for McCasland to win... He can motivate a rec team to believe they're better than the Dream Team & play like it. Likewise, as we've seen in Denton the past 2 years, Coach Hodge can motivate as well (likely picked up a lot of those nuances from Mac), however, the defensive mentality is HIS. Who says Coach Herl fully-subscribes to Coach Hodge's defensive identity? Maybe he wants to run the floor more? Maybe he wants to play aggressive transition-style offense instead of the methodical offense we've seen over the past few years? Did he glean enough off of Hodge in his 2 years here (much different than Hodge's 7years under Mac!) to really keep it going? There's no way we can know that.

That's a lot of underwhelming at a time where we need fan and student engagement more than ever. Maybe Thin Wren needs an Asst AD?

I’ve had a chance to be around the team a few times and I noticed that Ross always ate with Herl. To me, that meant that Ross confided in Herl and also valued his opinion. That’s just another indicator to me that Herl might be the right guy to keep the momentum going.

I hope he gets it right! It's way more difficult to replace a winning coach than a losing coach. Fans will not have much patience once they smelled winning!

If a team has no identity, how could they possibly know what is expected of them or have a winning culture?