Villarreal wants new coach in two weeks

Harry · April 6, 2012

Only a few days have passed since Karen Aston announced that she was leaving North Texas for Texas, and Rick Villarreal already can see the difference her short tenure in Denton made in terms of elevating the program.

UNT’s athletic director said this week that he would like to have a coach in place in the next two weeks and has a lot of calls to make after receiving more interest in the job than he did a year ago when he hired Aston.

He attributes that change to UNT’s former coach.

“There has been a tremendous amount of interest from places I would have never imagined,” Villarreal said.

“That has been very flattering. The word is out that this is a good job. Karen believes it and the coaches in the Sun Belt [Conference] believe it. There is no reason this shouldn’t be one of the best jobs in the Sun Belt and in the country.”

UNT has finished under .500 in each of the last six seasons, but Aston nearly ended that streak while leading the Mean Green to a 15-16 finish and a 10-game improvement from the previous year.

Villarreal said that he fully expected Aston to be back to build on the turnaround she started, but was aware when he hired the former Charlotte coach that there was one job she would leave UNT for — the head coaching job at Texas. Villarreal said Aston, who spent eight years as an assistant with the Longhorns, told him that up front.

Read more: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/north-texas-headlines/20120406-womens-basketball-villarreal-wants-new-coach-in-two-weeks.ece

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KRAM1 · April 6, 2012

I like this a good bit...ready for the Coaches caravan in May as well...sort of like Coach Aston last year. The part that is so good to hear is that the level of interest in the UNT position has grown in the recent past and there are several candidates who have contacted RV about the position already. That, with the list of folks RV obviously already had on his radar screen should bode well for the Mean Green's search.

UNT IS a great place to coach and Denton is a great place to live, so those two together should make for some "good pickings" for the Mean Green. Seems obvious to me as well that Coach Aston was very positive about the support she received from RV and the Department while she was at UNT and appreciated the growing fan support for her program. That doesn't hurt the search process either.

So, keeping my fingers crossed for a quick hire...but another great hire like Coach Aston....need to reach out to the recruits and current players ASAP!