He Deserved Better

My plan is to go over this painful topic and be done with it. It's certainly old news by now. However, for most Mav faithful, it still burns. A lot of the historical what-ifs surround the football program, with a smattering for other programs (such as a new basketball venue in the 1970's). Yet there is a big one for recent memory.

The firing of Scott Cross.

It's hard to say there's a better candidate for Mr. UTA than him. A former student athlete, who came to UTA after one year at Tyler Junior College. He was UTA's first Academic All-American with a perfect 4.0 GPA. A couple of years after graduation, Cross added the title of coach as he joined his Alma Mater on sidelines, becoming an assistant under Eddie McCarter for the 1998-99 season. I started at UTA in the fall of 2000, so he's been a part of the program as long as I have been. When McCarter resigned after the conclusion of the 2005-06 season, Coach Cross exchanged the assistant for head and became the seventh head coach in the 4-year era for UTA. In his second season, he took UTA to the NCAA tournament, winning the Southland Conference tournament. After three unsuccessful attempts in the conference final, the Coach-Cross-led Mavericks beat Northwestern State 82-79.

Unfortunately, that'd be the best success in a conference tournament as he lost to New Mexico State, 64-55, in the WAC in 2013 and to Georgia State on March 11, 2018, 73-64. That last game was his last. On March 26, his firing was completed and announced.

I have never heard so much news surrounding the UTA basketball team as I had then. It made every local news program and was on the front page of national websites like ESPN. Jeff van Gundy mentioned it on a national NBA broadcast. It was a shocker due to the firing coming two weeks after the conclusion of the season as well as the three 20-win seasons in a row at that point.

It also was a bit suspicious when the national search promised by the Department culminated with the hiring of Chris Ogden less than two weeks later. The fix seemed in from the beginning. 

I'll say this, though. I'll give Athletic Director Jim Baker credit for making a controversial decision that he believed would benefit the program. While I think he underestimated the backlash, there still had to be some predicted. However, that's all it is worth. It was clearly a bad move at the time, and after three years hindsight, was clearly one of the worst moves in the history of UTA's Athletic Department.

The entire staff was released as well, further irritating fans and supporters. Demonstrating how severely Baker underestimated the blowback, Greg Young was later retained as the Associate Head Coach. 

Coach Cross left with 125 wins, 63 more than second place Eddie McCarter, even though he coached two less seasons. Coach Cross had a winning percentage of .583, almost 100 points better than second place Mark Nixon. Coach has the only NCAA tournament appearance. He participated in two NIT's, going 2-2. Bob "Snake" Legrand has the only other NIT appearance. Counting the two CIT invites, Coach Cross participated in five postseason tournaments in 12 years. He left after three 20-win seasons. Yes, expectations were high for the last two, but that's the life of a mid-major playing in a one-bid conference. Georgia State was no slouch and UTA, like many other good SBC teams, couldn't get past them.

We were promised an up-and-comer as his replacement. Greg Ogden was an assistant basketball coach at UT-Austin, then Texas Tech before coming to Arlington. Anyone with half-a-basketball-brain could see in a best-case scenario, we had a guy who would leave for a more prestigious position at the first opportunity. However, if he could get that elusive NCAA Tournament appearance and/or win, then maybe, MAYBE, it would be worth it. But we got old UTA, pre-Cross results out of him.

Ogden went 44-47 in three years. The 44 wins is good for sixth out of seventh place on UTA's all-time list. He finished with a .484 winning percentage, good for third out of eight. He did go to the SBC championship game his first year, losing to Georgia State, 73-64. The next two years, UTA was one-and-done. Included in that was a home loss to Coastal Carolina, who had a worse seed than UTA. In an ironic twist, Ogden's last game at the helm of UTA was to Troy. Coach Cross literally ended his replacement's coaching tenure. 

As expected, Ogden left for greener pastures as soon as he could. Unexpectedly, he left to be an assistant at UT-Austin. He left the cupboard bare. In what has the appearance of making amends, Greg Young was named the ninth head coach. The team was picked 10th in this year's preseason poll. Coach Young is holding his own in  Sun Belt Conference play, sitting in sixth at 5-5. It could easily be up to 9-1 or even 10-0, but errors cost us, including a 1-3 mark in SBC OT games. But that's a post for another time.

Coincidentally, after leaving here as the seventh head coach,  SBC-rival Troy named Coach Cross the seventh head coach in their history, after a one-year stint as a TCU assistant. He won only 9 games his first year, improved to 11 in his second and is currently tied for third in the Sun Belt with a 5-3 conference record, 14-7 overall.

In the end, with all the time and energy Scott Cross devoted to UTA, in addition to the previously unattained accomplishments, he deserved to go out on his terms. Whether that was an offer from a higher profile school or retirement. He didn't deserve what occurred.

In addition, fans didn't deserve both what occurred and what the program down-graded into. It's not like the old days where we had Texas Hall to point to our failures and a lack of a winning history. We have state-of-the-art College Park Center, and we had winning history with Scott. Then we didn't. Fans showed their disappointment as attendance dropped 20 percent year-over-year, despite a second place finish and a conference tournament championship berth in the immediate aftermath of Cross' departure. 

Again, nothing ground-breaking or unknown came in this entry, but I wanted to document my thoughts. I was upset at the move then. With the benefit of hindsight, it was completely bone-headed.