Scott Cross fired at UTA

[untbowler]

2 hours ago, TheTastyGreek said:

The comparison is, you (rightly) think that Cross was a very good bordering on great coach who deserves a hell of a lot more respect and appreciation for what he did at UTA than this firing demonstrates. Meanwhile, you often seem to give Todd Freaking Dodge more credit for his accomplishments here than you do Johnny Jones. 

When you live every game with a program, you remember every frustrating loss or bad performance. Especially when you're looking for them. Like that awful loss on the stage at UTA (I was there, too!) or the two last second/last minute heartbreakers that kept us out of the NCAA Tournament in 2011 and 2012. 

When you follow from a distance, you remember the Memphis and Ohio State wins... But you don't notice when that guy takes his senior-heavy preseason conference favorite squad and loses by 25 to a sub .500 (both then and at the end of the year) Coastal Carolina team. Or when he loses by 20-25 or more to directional Louisianas, Arkansas Jrs., Georgia States, etc. You don't bias yourself to think he can't coach defense or execute a game plan, because you weren't watching when he gave up 104 points and lost by 23 to a winless Montana State team that finished the year 7-23. 

Your memory tells you that our guy "could never figure out" a team and a coach that he beat 7 out of 10 times and never lost to outside of Denver, but you don't have any memories of the time that Cross's team only managed 35 freaking points in Arlington against Joe Scott and that Denver version of the Princeton scheme. 

I don't want this to seem personal, because I feel like the only time this point of frustration actually did get a little heated and personal, you were actually super cool about sending me a nice message and making sure we wound up in a friendly place again. And, honestly, you're far from the most unreasonable and inconsistent person on the JJ vs. others evaluation. 

The comparison comes from seeing you and @untbowler (justifiably) look at this with bafflement and mockery in this thread, calling it a stupid decision. But when we had a coach with a nearly identical track record over a nearly identical period of time, the stuff you guys were saying at the same point in JJ's tenure was WILDLY different than your take on Scott Cross. And when you look at what was said this time last year when people were (foolishly, in my opinion) bringing up the hypothetical of re-hiring JJ here... A depressing number of people, including Bowler (but not you, I don't think... I don't have the stomach to look at old threads from the end of Benford days) talked about JJ's successes here like they were UTA's AD giving Scott Cross his termination papers. 

It sucks that the track record of a guy who did a lot of great things for us and hasn't been here in 6 years has to constantly get re-litigated. But, to me, it sucks worse when our own fan base mis-remembers or misrepresents what we had. So when that stuff keeps happening (like it did just a week ago), I think it merits pointing out how nearly identical the track record of Cross wound up relative to Jones, especially when a not-insignificant number of our fans here claimed one to be far superior, both 6 years ago and as recently as last year up to today. 

Anyway... I don't know and probably never will understand why some of our fans have to minimize our accomplishments and diminish the people that led us to them. And I remember, distinctly, how much you used to appreciate the guy (Basketball Jones, and a 30+ minute phone call where we talked through the rumors of SMU firing Doherty and hiring JJ away pre-2011). And it baffles me why in the years since then, you seem to only remember (or, at least, bring up) the most terrible moments and biggest disappointments of his career here. 

Scott Cross was a damn good coach for UTA, and he did a lot of special things there. It's a shame and an outrage that their administration apparently didn't appreciate him and his achievements. But, if you're comparing Scott's resume to the coach we had here and the criticism he took in his last 2-3 seasons... Either JJ deserves a hell of a lot more respect and appreciation from the people who criticized him then, or UTA's Athletics Director may be righter than either of us want to give him credit for. 

glad you still have your hard on for me, your right I was tough on JJ, because I wanted just a little more than get on a hot streak and win Conference Tournament. First NCAA appearance awesome, but then like many wanted more. JJ was very good and brought UNT to the brink but never finished and then LSU took him and now he is out of a job. Cross is the same, although I would hope UNT has bigger dreams and expectations than the Arlington Commuter School for Austin Rejects. 

[greenminer]

1 hour ago, untbowler said:

... and now he is out of a job....

??

[flyonthewall]

43 minutes ago, greenminer said:

??

I guess if he is calling coaching as an assistant at Nevada for about the same money he was making as a head coach here out of a job.  Then yeah, he's out of a job.

[oldguystudent]

5 hours ago, TheTastyGreek said:

 Meanwhile, you often seem to give Todd Freaking Dodge more credit for his accomplishments here than you do Johnny Jones.

So I can't comment on the Johnny Jones part of that assertion as I don't spend a LOT of time in the basketball forum.  

But as to the former name contained therein, I can say with great certainty that I don't recall Rick ever giving the man an iota of credit for anything -- ever. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by oldguystudent

[meangreenJW]

14 hours ago, untbowler said:

wow, 72 wins in 3 seasons and he is fired for not reaching expectations??? WTF!!! 

Sounds like AD is on a power trip. So if these are expectations then why has the AD not fired out coaches? Their Tennis team has underachieved the past few years? What a joke.

The AD is known as a clown. Wants to hire his buddy who's an assistant at Texas Tech which will be an epic fail. AD and President are both fools. It's a surefire bet this will crash and burn on them.

[Quoner]

I have a hard on... for a little more UTA tennis talk.

[FirefightnRick]

I've pointed out he had 4-5 recruits make it to the NFL...which is fact.

I never recall ever giving Dodge any credit for the 2013 bowl game..at all?  If I have I can't think what it was cause Dodge's defense was nothing like Mac's.  Plus, he prematurely wasted Thompson's freshman year., though it ended up not costing him due to his injury.

I pointed out the ridiculousness how he and McCarney couldn't find a way to get Olawale on the field...again fact.

I've given Dodge credit for the early excitement he brought, and his offensive moments.  But mostly criticism, and nothing compared to my appreciations for JJ.  In fact...I wore my '07 N.O. Regional T shirt last Wednesday at the game.

But still...North Texas didn't fire the man.

 

Rick

[meanrob]

Ahem....I'm trying to enjoy this fun, little BBall run we are having and you guys are bringing up Mac and Dodge. On the bball forum.

I'm about to go dysfunctional on y'all. 

 

 

 

[97and03]

2 hours ago, Quoner said:

I have a hard on... for a little more UTA tennis talk.

I used to be the academic advisor for several members of that team many years ago. I still have a beer mug the cute Czech girl brought me back from her trip home.

Ah memories. 

[dahbeed]

18 hours ago, TheTastyGreek said:

The comparison is, you (rightly) think that Cross was a very good bordering on great coach who deserves a hell of a lot more respect and appreciation for what he did at UTA than this firing demonstrates. Meanwhile, you often seem to give Todd Freaking Dodge more credit for his accomplishments here than you do Johnny Jones. 

When you live every game with a program, you remember every frustrating loss or bad performance. Especially when you're looking for them. Like that awful loss on the stage at UTA (I was there, too!) or the two last second/last minute heartbreakers that kept us out of the NCAA Tournament in 2011 and 2012. 

When you follow from a distance, you remember the Memphis and Ohio State wins... But you don't notice when that guy takes his senior-heavy preseason conference favorite squad and loses by 25 to a sub .500 (both then and at the end of the year) Coastal Carolina team. Or when he loses by 20-25 or more to directional Louisianas, Arkansas Jrs., Georgia States, etc. You don't bias yourself to think he can't coach defense or execute a game plan, because you weren't watching when he gave up 104 points and lost by 23 to a winless Montana State team that finished the year 7-23. 

Your memory tells you that our guy "could never figure out" a team and a coach that he beat 7 out of 10 times and never lost to outside of Denver, but you don't have any memories of the time that Cross's team only managed 35 freaking points in Arlington against Joe Scott and that Denver version of the Princeton scheme. 

I don't want this to seem personal, because I feel like the only time this point of frustration actually did get a little heated and personal, you were actually super cool about sending me a nice message and making sure we wound up in a friendly place again. And, honestly, you're far from the most unreasonable and inconsistent person on the JJ vs. others evaluation. 

The comparison comes from seeing you and @untbowler (justifiably) look at this with bafflement and mockery in this thread, calling it a stupid decision. But when we had a coach with a nearly identical track record over a nearly identical period of time, the stuff you guys were saying at the same point in JJ's tenure was WILDLY different than your take on Scott Cross. And when you look at what was said this time last year when people were (foolishly, in my opinion) bringing up the hypothetical of re-hiring JJ here... A depressing number of people, including Bowler (but not you, I don't think... I don't have the stomach to look at old threads from the end of Benford days) talked about JJ's successes here like they were UTA's AD giving Scott Cross his termination papers. 

It sucks that the track record of a guy who did a lot of great things for us and hasn't been here in 6 years has to constantly get re-litigated. But, to me, it sucks worse when our own fan base mis-remembers or misrepresents what we had. So when that stuff keeps happening (like it did just a week ago), I think it merits pointing out how nearly identical the track record of Cross wound up relative to Jones, especially when a not-insignificant number of our fans here claimed one to be far superior, both 6 years ago and as recently as last year up to today. 

Anyway... I don't know and probably never will understand why some of our fans have to minimize our accomplishments and diminish the people that led us to them. And I remember, distinctly, how much you used to appreciate the guy (Basketball Jones, and a 30+ minute phone call where we talked through the rumors of SMU firing Doherty and hiring JJ away pre-2011). And it baffles me why in the years since then, you seem to only remember (or, at least, bring up) the most terrible moments and biggest disappointments of his career here. 

Scott Cross was a damn good coach for UTA, and he did a lot of special things there. It's a shame and an outrage that their administration apparently didn't appreciate him and his achievements. But, if you're comparing Scott's resume to the coach we had here and the criticism he took in his last 2-3 seasons... Either JJ deserves a hell of a lot more respect and appreciation from the people who criticized him then, or UTA's Athletics Director may be righter than either of us want to give him credit for. 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2018 by dahbeed

[Cerebus]

After reading the last few pages:

I mean I guess this could be asked of any Mean Green fan...

[VideoEagle]

23 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

After reading the last few pages:

I mean I guess this could be asked of any Mean Green fan...

And it's not even the off season in basketball yet!

[UTAmaverick]

SORRY if this goes long...

I appreciate all the support on this board for our coach.

I thought coach Cross did a great job over the years, ran a clean program and did well with a tiny budget (8th in Sun Belt) but the bottom line is we had a two-year window to make the NCAA tourney and didn't do it. In years past we Texas Hall to use an excuse for not recruting super-great players or losing games or whatever. But with the new arena and some good crowds and all our home games on ESPN3 and about half the road games available on TV as well, no excuses now.

After winning 27 games (including two games in the NIT last year), this season there was a LOT of hype from bloggers and basketball writers and a feeling of 'NCAA or nothing' which is tough in a 1-bid league. Truth is (and I was nervous before the season about how good we'd be) we had a much thinner bench compared to last year, and I'd even say our starting 5 was about 80% as good as last year. We depended on guard Erick Neal and forward Kevin Hervey to score 40 or 50 combined every night, and try to find another 20-30 points elsewhere which didn't happen often enough. The crisp ball movement and tight defense and rebounding we saw in 2016-17 just wasn't there anymore. On any team where you have a legitimate pro-potential star or two, you often run the offense through them and other players have trouble finding a rhythm and sorta stand around or pass up good shots and we saw that often this year. Why let the 4th or 5th guy hoist an awkward three when Hervey or Neal can score anytime they want?

So with a championship season upon us and a ton of seniors on the roster, we had about 4-5 freshman players redshirt, and a couple of DI transfers had to sit out this season as well...so next year's roster will have a total of two returning scholarship players that played this year (neither of which started very many games), about 7 or 8 guys who didn't play this year, and a couple of incoming HS and juco recruits. To make matters worse, David Azore, a HS scoring phenom from Houston area, probably could have made a case for freshman/newcomer of the year in our league (maybe I'm being optimistic, but he was supposed to be VERY good) and he got injured for the season in our preseason game at Oklahoma and didn't play a minute for us this year while he sat out due to his injury. He probably would have been our sixth man this year, a guy that can drive and shoot from outside.

So...17-18 ends with 21 or 22 wins, an inconsistent team that failed to win the hyped mid-major games at Northern Iowa and vs. Florida Gulf Coast (lost by 20 in Arlington), and no big marquee wins this year (we did beat BYU first game of season and lost at Alabama by 1 point, but there were no big Texas/Ohio State/St. Marys/Memphis-level wins like in the last 2 years). And once we started conference play without the big wins and it was clear this wasn't gonna be a 28-30 win team, there seemed to be a little less buzz at the arena and all the writers that were writing about us and all the mid-major polls and RPI numbers that showed how amazing we were quickly seemed to disappear by mid-December. It was wierd. The season that shoulda been awesome, wasn't. Not that 22 wins is bad. But it wasn't 28 or 29.

I'll admit, I only went to about half the games this year. Did we get spoiled from last year's team?

So...the season ends and the AD has seen a ton of wins, but not any NCAA appearances and with a couple of 6-10 win seasons looming while we rebuild, and the next window for meaningful March games on national TV is realistically 2-3 years away at best. If you're the AD do you wait that long for your next NCAA appearance, or was this the time to make the change if you're going to? Not an easy call and I can't imagine the pressure of being a coach or an athletic director. No matter how much money these guys make, no thanks.

I've been laid off several times in my career, and telling your family that you're out of a job is not easy. I can't imagine how painful that discussion was for our coach and the AD. How do let a very popular coach go and not expect for it to get a lot of coverage?

Coach Cross will get a great job soon and make a ton of money and probably do quite well as his career progresses. As a fan it will be tough not seeing him on the bench but it'll be interesting to see who they bring in next year and see how the rebuilding process goes. I will renew my seats and support my school as I always have. Just as UNT has rebuilt and shown a ton of progress the last year or two with Coach M, hopefully we can show the same promise that the Mean Green have now.

Edited March 31, 2018 by UTAmaverick

[Hunter Green]

On 3/27/2018 at 11:52 AM, Harry said:

I disagree.  These UT System schools are placed on a very strict budget and you have to follow their demands, ie orange in the uniforms, enrollment requirements, etc. etc. 

My sources have indicated that UTSA's athletics budget is at the bottom of C-USA and UTEP is not far behind.

Being tied to the UT system certainly has it's advantages but I do not think budget is one of those.  UT puts the bulk of their ample resources into the flagship.

For all of the boneheaded decisions our administration has made over the years,  the one thing I am grateful for is the fact we have maintained our autonomy.  Can you imagine if we were bought out by UT or A&M and had to incorporate burnt orange into our green?  Believe it or not,  we had an AD who was Texas who tried to do just that (Craig Helwig).  This was the logo he tried to sell everyone on:

You just had to do it eh, Harry? YUK!

[southsideguy]

per Ft worth paper:

Cross's attorney, Joey McCutchen of the law firm McCutchen & Sexton, said Cross will be paid $400,000 of the $762,000 left on the remaining two years of his contract. The settlement amount will not be reduced if he is hired by another school.

The new guy better win or he and the AD will be looking for a new job.  Cross will be coaching next year some where.  I dont know how you fire that guy with his record.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/college/article208089564.html#storylink=cpy

[Duck_Mav]

Scott Cross' problem this year, in addition to the thin bench, was that he had no replacement for Jorge Bilbao.  For the previous 3-4 years, the Spaniard was the heart of the team.

You guys had a great team this year - almost beat UT Arlington.  Maybe next year, but I kind of doubt it.  :0)