Passing of a Character

Former UT Arlington men's basketball coach Robert, Bob, "Snake" LeGrand passed away on July 19 of this year at the ripe old age of 81. For those who know the history of the Maverick program, the loss hits pretty hard. He had a personality larger than his impact on the court for the UTA basketball program.

Snake coached from the 1976/77 season to the 1986/87 year. In those 11 seasons, LeGrand compiled a career record of 122-184. That amounts to a winning percentage of .399. Within the Southland Conference, LeGrand was 30-78, a worse .278 percentage.

It is important to note several things working against Snake during this time.

UAC Find

Any time a university changes its conference affiliation, it creates headlines and is a hot topic. It creates conversations on a national scale where people who wouldn't mention a school are now discussing the changes. Some even try to present themselves as experts, though they knew little about the situation or school prior.

UTA, along with the remaining members of the Western Athletic Conference, certainly qualify as they and the members of the Atlantic Sun reorganized 15 schools into two conferences. The members of the two entities rarely garner much national attention so to hear all of these "experts" know the ins and outs of Tarleton State and Bellarmine make me chuckle.

However, I did find the following video on the WAC message board from the Big Mountain Podcast on the WAC being re-branded to the United Athletic Conference and the reorg with thew ASun. The Big Mountain guys tend to focus on all conferences in the western end of the U.S. and have more knowledge than the average folks.