The first three parts of my sit-down interview with UT Arlington Athletic Director Jon Fagg focused on a near singular topic each. As the interview reached the half way mark, the topics came closer in time and at a quicker pace. There has been a small delay in the release of part four as I originally envisioned part four being the last portion. However, the post itself started becoming too long.
As we transition from the topic of football, we started discussing the sports we have on campus.
The Maverick Rambler: Well let's talk about pouring the efforts into, into men's basketball.
Jon Fagg: Yeah, sure.
TMR: I, I would have to guess, tell me if I'm wrong.
JF: Sure
TMR: Football number one, you've probably heard about the Scott Cross firing number two.
JF: I have heard about Scott Cross. I have heard his name. (laughing)
TMR: So unfortunately, and I've said this before, if, if that was my way of protesting, I just didn't do the blog for a few years because I was very frustrated.
JF: I can see that.
TMR: Us fans were like he should have left on his own terms. How he left, and then I, I'll say this, I give Baker credit. I said he went out on a limb.
JF: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TMR: If it works, you are a genius. If it doesn't work, everybody is upset.
JF: Yeah.
TMR: And unfortunately...
JF: Yea, it just didn't ...
TMR: It didn't pan out.
JF: ...it didn't pan out.
TMR: K.T. Turner has brought a little bit of excitement that I haven't seen in a while.
JF: Yup.
TMR: So tell me about the state of the men's basketball program.
JF: Yeah, so, I think ... you know again, we haven't done anything yet. You gotta do it. You gotta do it on the court. Results are results, right. Wins and losses are measured and are clear. We think we are really good this year. Year one, I, I think we, you know we, we injected a different energy than we had had for a while. Year two, without getting into the details, because I don't think it is fair, but I ... in some manner, we accomplished what we set out to do last year. Which was weird. We got some better talent. We were actually more talented last year than our first, than K.T.'s first year, at least in my standpoint. We had a couple other, more high-profile players and some things like that.
TMR: Just need to make some free throws.
JF: Well, and, and we had players with some great stats.
TMR: Yea.
JF: We forgot to bring the W's along. That's, I, jokingly account, you know, you know in a moment of levity try to say we did a lot of things, we just forgot about the W's. And so I think we're, I think our team this year so far has a lot of chemistry. We're really talented. The ... through summer workouts. We go check 'em out pretty, pretty regularly during summer workouts.
TMR: Well, it's easy, they are right there.
JF: Yeah, exactly! And so, the, the description we have all used with ourselves is there have been more dunks this summer than my first three years combined. Just more athleticism, more size, more ability and it appears so far to have really great chemistry, which no guarantee...
TMR: You can't guarantee that.
JF: No guarantee at all. And so, we brought back Raysean Seamster. He went in the Transfer Portal and came back.
TMR: I saw that. That was surprising.
JF: It doesn't happen all that often. And so we, we appreciated that. You know, we honed in on our strategies a little bit. You know, tweaking some recruiting strategies, tweaking some scheduling strategy, tweaking some practice strategy.
...
We think we can be really good. We think we can win. We really do.
And then, even though you really didn't ask, you probably would, but women's basketball ...
TMR: I was, that was actually ...
JF: Yeah, yeah. Women's basketball, I think they may very well be better than the men. We have, again, we didn't, we didn't probably sing it quite loud enough, we probably could have. I'm a little bit under the radar kind of person. I don't like singing from the mountain tops very often. We have by far the best player, at least on paper, by far the best player in school history. I mean not even close.
TMR: (raised eyebrow) Interesting. Who would that be?
JF: And I, I ... It's going to be funny in a second. I can't remember which one. There are three of them.
TMR: The sisters?
JF: The sisters. We call them the triplets. The freshman.
TMR: Okay.
JF: I can't remember which one is which.
TMR: I'll go back and find it. (NOTE: The triplets in question are redshirt junior forward Mila Reynolds from the University of Maryland, redshirt sophomore guard Amiyah Reynolds from Purdue and freshman forward Kira Reynolds)
JF: Yeah, so the freshman. She was I think number 30 in ESPN top 100.
TMR: Interesting.
JF: Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue, Maryland.
TMR: So why UTA?
JF: Because her sisters were coming.
TMR: Was that's by design I take it?
JF: By design.
TMR: And don't they have a prominent parental figure?
JF: In their dad (Steven Reynolds, Jr.). He's one of our coaches. Not everybody wants to do that. We decided that that was well worth it. And, and, in turn they're great kids. Like, their dad is fantastic. I was worried about their dad being a super dad.
TMR: Sure. (laughing)
JF: So, so far, they're doing great. And so we think we are really good. Because her sisters both played in the Power 5 too.
TMR: Yeah, I saw the transfers.
JF: You know, I think Maryland and Purdue, or whatever. I have a feeling that's right. Maybe Maryland to Purdue to here for one of them. But, and so, we just, you know, got some returners. We actually return about half the team. Which is, you know, which, which is ...
TMR: ...unheard of now.
JF: ...you don't do. And we went to the WAC championship game. And so we think we have a chance to be phenomenal in the women. So we've literally already started talking about what are we gonna do when we men and women and we both go the NCAA Tournament at the same time.
TMR: That would be a pipe dream that I've never got to experience and that would be fantastic. Last time baseball made the tournament, I went to Baylor. And we were trying to make Iowa State work the last time the women went.
JF: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
TMR: I just couldn't make it work. But I would love to have that problem. "Where would I go?"
JF: Yeah, yea. I mean there's no question what we're trying to do here...
TMR: Yeah.
JF: ...is win.
TMR: Well the women have established that for the last ...
JF: Yeah, yeah. You know Sherika is going into her sixth year. You know, we, we, we haven't announced, but we're about to announce a contract extension for her. Things like that. And we clearly, internally, we talk about winning.
TMR: Mm hmm.
JF: Which, ironically, lots of athletic directors, departments don't do.
TMR: Well it's funny you say that that because ...
JF: Lots don't. They don't mean not to. But they just don't.
TMR: Your, your counterpart when I was a student, Pete Carlon, he, he, he was around when football was getting the funds and everything else. It was in a tiered fashion or whatever. And he talked about the state, you know, I started here in 2000, and he talked about how we are fully funded in all sports, the Commissioner Cup comp...competitors every year.
JF: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TMR: And I've always, I've said this school more than once, I've always looked at Louisiana-Monroe and just shook my head. If you are going to field women's golf, field women's golf to win a championship.
JF: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
TMR: And it just, it ... I don't know how you recruit to a school that says you're here because we have football.
JF: Yup! Yea, yea.
TMR: And so I'm a firm believer in the same principle as he. If you field it, I wanna, I don't care.
JF: Yeah, yeah.
TMR: I know about men's tennis and their recent success. I don't know how many other people do, because to me, going to the tournament, the things that they've done is just as valuable.
JF: Yeah, they're our most successful team.
TMR: Actually by pure number of championships, I think they finally passed volleyball.
JF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And certainly in recent times.
TMR: Yea. And speaking of! Volleyball has to be the highlight of the year, right?
JF: Yea, volleyball was phenomenal last year.
TMR: And what a WAC championship game.
JF: Yeah, oh my god. Like literally. I've been a part of some really, really cool stuff. And like ... I just, talk about snatching victory from the defeat.
TMR: No kidding.
JF: Unbelievable! The kids love to talk. They talk about it, I mean like they themselves, they just, they weren't gonna lose. You know and so that, like I said, my goal, we ... my ... I actually talk about things that aren't goals, like these are things I'm doing. It ain't a goal, no fail operation here. This can't be a no-fail operation. But my goal, we joke that we are going to win every championship in the same year.
TMR: I would love for that to happen.
JF: Right, me too! Now we know that'...
TMR: Sure.
JF: ... that that's ... that's trying to attain excellence by chasing perfection, you know. But ... but we ... no one ever sets out to win 67 percent of their games, or 62 percent, or 50, or any other percentage except 100.
TMR: I went to UT-Austin for men's basketball thinking we had a chance.
JF: Yea, absolutely. So why would we act like we don't want to win every championship every year.
TMR: Right.
JF: That's our goal. Our goal is to graduate every student athlete. And we know that may not happen unfortunately. Some things are gonna happen. But we're not going to have a goal, our goal is not going to be to graduate 75 percent of our athletes. I'm not giving up on 25 percent.
TMR: No. I think we hit more than 75 percent as a general rule.
JF: Yeah, but I mean, I just mean that I'm not going to give up on anything.
TMR: Some schools don't.
JF: The only goal is 100. So, nothing else. We're all ... don't, don't ever mistake what we're doing. But yea, that's what I tell the coaches, their staff. So ...
TMR: So I'm going to tell ya about the volleyball story that it, just still irks me to this day.
JF: Mm hmm.
TMR: Me and some of my high school buddies, we, we like to plan certain events. And one had, had graduated his Masters degree ... he went here but graduated his Masters from Texas-Austin. And so we scheduled a football game altogether. And I failed to put two and two together on the dates. That was the volleyball championships.
JF: Oh gosh.
TMR: So I'm literally walking around their football stadium with ESPN on my phone...
JF: (laughing)
TMR: ...looking down, realizing I'm still in a major city, and they're ... better not get jumped or something. We ended up eating in the fifth set.
JF: (chuckling) yeah right.
TMR: And they got down by six and they're like ... And I, I'm just, I'm so depressed. And then when they made the comeback like, I kid you not, tears came to my eyes.
JF: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TMR: I broadcast volleyball back in the day. Last tournament championship that we had ...
JF: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TMR: ... I got to go to the NCAA tournament.
JF: Oh cool.
TMR: I believe it was ...
JF: 2002ish.
TMR: ...at Texas A&M. Yeah, it was definitely 2002, and so... obviously there's a personal connection there. So where our program was, we've been competitive. We just could never get over the Texas State or Coastal Carolina ... And so I'm literally in the middle of Austin crying when they claimed that fifth set. And of course I didn't get to see like the challenge at the end. I'm just looking at like, "what the heck's going on." And I got to watch the replay...
JF: We were in our suite area watching, 'cause we, I like to watch. I either have my iPad with me so I can watch the broadcast. Well, we put it on the TV's and so when we are in the suite, we can watch it up there. And so, the ball hits, and their ... oh my god. We've lost. GCU goes out and I'm like "that was damn close." And, you know, of course we challenge and the first replay we ...
TMR: No! We didn't have a challenge. That was the other part about it. The referees said, "okay, we're gonna look at it." Because that could have ended it there too!
JF: Oh yeah, that's ... yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I forgot.
TMR: So that was another .., another wrinkle.
JF: And we look up at the monitor, at the TV and we see it. And as soon as we see it, first shot, we're like, "it's freaking out." There's no ... it's gonna, it's out. So it may take them a minute to figure it's out, but it's out.
TMR: Well Snook, she was ready ... she knew.
JF: Sure, that it got touched or whatever, yeah, yea. And so like, we're like, "okay, we're back in." Let's go!" And like, just a, just was, that was one of the coolest experiences of my career.
TMR: ...
Let me, let me get to one other thing.
JF: Yeah sure.
TMR: Two the things. With volleyball going into the tournament, softball is now got the longest NCAA tournament drought. So ... what's, what's the prospects there? I know we've been competitive.
JF: Yeah, we've been competitive. Kara Dill is a first-time head coach. She's growing. I love her to death. Again, I think we are going to be better. We've had to tweak a few things, some strategies. I love sport strategy ... right. I mean, I can't spend all my time on it, but I love it.
TMR: Right.
JF: And so, we ... they're actually some, like fundamental tweaks to how they coach, how they organize practice. Who coaches what, how, when, flow, they we think is really going to make a difference. So, so I'm, I'm hoping. And we think we are good, you know.
TMR: Is softball just a difficult sport to ... compete in as a whole, or...?
JF: No, it's really, mostly, just growing so fast. There's lots of opportunity, so that the talent gets spread out relatively thin overall. And I think it's, think it's, like anything, it's hard to actually win a championship. Some of that's ... you have to learn how to win. So we talk about that. I'm, you know, my, my background is phycology and stuff. We're trying to train ourselves to expect to win. Kara and I, in particular, spend a pretty good amount of time together. She try ... she's trying to teach our program how to win.
TMR: Well it's funny, the 2003, where we beat Florida and Florida State, I got to broadcast that one too.
JF: Oh, awesome!
TMR: So that's, I'd love for that to finally be broken.
JF: Yeah, yeah. Yea, I think we can. As much as I hate to take this as an excuse, it's also still true. We also don't have to deal with Grand Canyon.
TMR: It is what it is.
JF: Exactly, it is what it is. Those are the rules of the game. I'm, I, I will take those rules. So we are all excited about that. You know, 'cause, 'cause it was, 'cause their's was a different model, right. Their's, it's, like it's just, you can't ... you almost can't compete. Right? And so, yeah, I, I think we're, feel like we can be really, really good.
Baseball, I think we can be really good. We had some questions that Coach Trapasso was having to answer. And then, then we stumbled ... we stumbled onto a couple of pitchers at the end of recruiting. Which we were shocked that were available. And so that's helped. We're, I think we're really secretly jacked up about baseball as well.
TMR: Well I'll tell ya I think baseball is the hardest one because I felt we were one real solid bat away from being really, really good. And you look at Ryan Black ...for example.
JF: Yeah, yea, right.
TMR: Like, oh, you're only played fifty percent of the games when you would have been an everyday starter here and contributed.
JF: Yeah, yeah.
TMR: And so, you look at out Major League history ...
JF: Yeah, yea.
TMR: There's no path that's blocked to the Majors at UTA.
JF: Yeah, no, no, no. That, that's one the beauties of baseball, right. And for sure of baseball here. And so ... you know again, we're ... It's hard. Life is hard. And, we, we talk about it here all the time, nothing great is easy.
TMR: Yea.
JF: So it's hard. I acknowledge it's hard. Out theme ... We had our first just all-staff about a week ago, you know. And the theme for the meeting was mixed messages. Like, you know, too many times it's, "hey, this is the year."
TMR: Oh, yea.
JF: And our theme, I literally said, "my theme is mixed messages." We're fundraising more than we've ever fundraised, but there's budget problems. We're, 'cause this is a true thing, We're three percent up in enrollment, largest freshman class in school history, but we're three percent down in revenue for the University. Because we're down in internationally graduate students.
TMR: Ohh, yeah.
JF: Because they couldn't get in because of the visa pause by the government.
TMR: Right.
JF: And so, because they pay more than undergraduates.
TMR: Absolutely.
JF: Tuition and fees are higher, they get fewer scholarships, blah, blah blah. So that's a mixed message. We need to be great, but it's more expensive than ever. And so we have potential budget cuts. We're ... we're shrinking our budget, not expanding our budget. While we're also probably spending more money than we've ever spent in basketball. But I still expect tennis to be great.
TMR: Yea.
JF: So we went through all these things of ... and I was like, "and, like you can use that as an excuse not to care. Or you can, or you can bust your ass and, and beat everyone's ass.
TMR: Mm hmm.
JF: You know, I, I ... Nobody, nobody gives a shit. Win.
TMR: Yup.
JF: You have to win. You have to care about people!
TMR: Well, we've proven we can do that in every sport.
JF: Yeah, exactly. We can. We got, we have to have that mentality.
TMR: Mm hmm.
JF: Right? Energy wains. Mindset does not.
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