North Texas Taking Time with Search

[Harry]

Which is why it's somewhat interesting to see North Texas athletic director Rick Villareal be so laissez-faire about the idea of hurrying to find a new men's basketball coach. Villareal is charged with finding a replacement for Johnny Jones, who left for the vacant LSU job last week, and while Villareal doesn't want the search to take all summer -- he wants to finish up in the next 10 days -- he told the Denton Record-Chronicle that he isn't hurrying just to hurry, either:

“I know there is some angst and concern, but what I would tell people is that we hired Johnny Jones,” Villarreal said. “We had the foresight and I had the intuition to do that. We hired Karen Aston a year ago, and she did a great job. We hired Dan McCarney, who has increased our program tremendously.We are going to get that kind of person.”

“I’m not going to try to do it in two days, because we don’t have to,” Villarreal said. “We have got some time. I’m going to be diligent and see just who is interested, and at the end of the day make sure that we have the best pool to pull from.”

At this point in the calendar, with much of the high-level coaching intrigue finished for now, this seems like the appropriate approach. Jones made the North Texas job a surprisingly desirable one; Villareal will have a solid pool of candidates to work through. If fans are willing to trust the process, why rush it?

Read more: http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/58158/north-texas-taking-its-time-with-search?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[Greenhorn]

Solid approach. This is an important hire.

[kalebschumann]

All I know is that this new coach better get us to the Sweet 16 in hir first year.. Or else Johnny Jones should be fired----

hmmm.. wait... that doesn't sound right...

[NT03]

We need a private jet sky tracker thread started....

[All About UNT]

We need a private jet sky tracker thread started....

I heard RV just took off on this to head to Lexington KY...... He will return home in 2 months with Calipari in tow.

[emmitt01]

Little known fact: When Apogee was built a helipad was placed on top of the pressbox.

[NorthTexan95]

If you have an ESPN account you should go and add a comment to the article. Let ESPN know that people are interested in reading about North Texas!

[TIgreen01]

So long as he's finished by April 29, right? Or is the goal to let that date slip and hope Mitchell doesn't declare for the draft while waiting on us to name a coach??

[GrandGreen]

A few redundant points on a subject that has been beaten to death.

There is no reason for any player to make a decision before they meet the new hc. Several players need to concentrate on academics or they are not going to play for NT or any other college. Some may feel that they have a little power at this point but they really don't; NT will make the coaching decision based on a lot of factors.

One of those factors is player related, NT should select a coach that matches the talent on the team. Some of NT worst coaching hires were caused by bringing any coach whose style didn't fit the style of the returning team. A three yards and a cloud dust, Jerry Moore, to take over a Fry team build on quickness and mufti-offense attack. A ball control ,Tommy Newman, to replace run and gun, Bill Blakeley.

Forrest as a recruiter, is a big loss for NT as a hc candidate; I can't believe he ever was even considered. IMO, he is not even close to being ready for that job.

I really think NT should be able to hire on paper the best MBB hc ever. Doesn't mean that he will turn out to be the best or even good, but NT can offer candidates a much better job than any time in the past. Better pay, better conference affiliation, and a much better foundation then has existed before. I cannot think of any bb coach that has been hired with major college hc experience. Modern day hires: Harry Miller and Tommy Newman (an only one year removed from high school coaching) from lower division schools, Jank, Gales, and Jones all assistant coaches and Gales only college experience was at NT. NT may hire a relatively high profile assistant but at least they have other options this time.

Jones is going to be very hard to replace, but not impossible.

[untjim1995]

One of those factors is player related, NT should select a coach that matches the talent on the team. Some of NT worst coaching hires were caused by bringing any coach whose style didn't fit the style of the returning team. A three yards and a cloud dust, Jerry Moore, to take over a Fry team build on quickness and mufti-offense attack. A ball control ,Tommy Newman, to replace run and gun, Bill Blakeley.

Two other examples of bad hires for personnel were Vic Trilli's run-and-gun replacing Jankovich's system, as well as replacing Darrell Dickey's run-offense with Todd Dodge's spread. Talent didn't match the system and the results were awful.

[GrandGreen]

Two other examples of bad hires for personnel were Vic Trilli's run-and-gun replacing Jankovich's system, as well as replacing Darrell Dickey's run-offense with Todd Dodge's spread. Talent didn't match the system and the results were awful.

Will Trilli was a special case. In my opinion NT hit an altime low with Trilli. He took over a bad Jank team who played their hearts out for him the first year and then Trilli just kept I think two players from that team and about 7 players were told to search for a new home. Never, understood why he chose to that and I if you believe in karma; Trilli reaps what he deserved. Trilli bought in some excellent players his first year, but most were no better than those he ran off. So, you are correct in that it was a big change in coach style of play but there was so much wrong with Tirlli it was a minor factor in the Trilli' disaster.

You are also correct in the Dodge for Dickey change, but it actually worked well. Dickey left a very bad offensive team.and Dodge improved that side of the ball play. Dodge also inherited a good at least by Belt standards defensive team, that he destroyed.

[Rudy]

The longer this search takes, the more uneasy I feel.

[GoMeanGreen1999]

Modern day hires: Harry Miller and Tommy Newman (an only one year removed from high school coaching) from lower division schools,

I don't know what was harder to watch: the Newman years or the Trilli years.

[Harry]

I think the absolute Trilli low point was a road game against Maryland I think...we lost by like 40 points or something. That was his jump the shark moment!

[CMJ]

I think the absolute Trilli low point was a road game against Maryland I think...we lost by like 40 points or something. That was his jump the shark moment!

We lost by 75 to Maryland if I recall correctly.

[mgsteve]

Largest margin of victory in the history of Maryland basketball.

[curtisdaa]

I think the absolute Trilli low point was a road game against Maryland I think...we lost by like 40 points or something. That was his jump the shark moment!

I was in Las Vegas when that game was play. I saw UNT was a 46 point dog. I placed a bet on good ole UNT and then watch in horror as Maryland almost covered the spread by halftime. Yes we lost by over 70. Can we please not mention the Trilli years or Newman years again?

[CMJ]

It is one game I never hope to revisit. Listening on the radio was almost to level of comedy it was so bad.

As a NT supporter, you'd be better off watching the videotape that was in the movie, The Ring.