Mean Green Blog

I talked with Rick Villarreal today about UNT's search for a new women's basketball coach and tracked down some of the players who signed with the Mean Green in November. There will be a story in tomorrow's edition of the Denton Record-Chronicle, but here are the highlights.

Villarreal said he is in the process of forming a committee that would review the resumes of coaches who apply for the job and help select coaches for interviews.

A lot of names have been thrown out as possible candidates. Here are two more: Stephany Smith and Bill Brock. Smith built Middle Tennessee into a power in the Sun Belt before leaving for Alabama, where she struggled and was fired after three seasons. I don’t know if UNT would want a recycled Sun Belt coach, especially one who worked at Middle Tennessee, but you never know. Brock is in his second season as the associate head coach at Texas Tech. Before coaching the Lady Raiders, Brock spent six years at Baylor, including four as the associate head coach. He helped the Lady Bears win the 2005 national title.

Brock began his coaching career at Grayson County College in Denison and posted a 371-50 record. The Lady Vikings posted a 36-1 record in 2000 and finished third in the NJCAA national tournament. He was the national junior college coach of the year in 1996.

In the interest of full disclosure, I covered Grayson when Brock was finishing up his tenure there. He left because he realized he needed to work as an assistant at the Division I level to attain his goal of becoming a Division I head coach. There is no telling if UNT would consider a male head coach, especially considering the athletic department already has one male head coach of a female sports team in highly successful head soccer coach John Hedlund.

I also have no idea if Brock would be interested, but UNT would be hard pressed to land a coach with more skins on the wall at a national level.

While I was at it, I also tracked down Ryan Green and Mansa El and both UNT recruits said they plan to honor their commitments to UNT. Green is the gem of UNT’s early signees. The 6-2 forward was a first-team all-state selection by the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches and had plenty of other opportunities.

In one final note, a new name has emerged on the recruiting front for the UNT men’s basketball team, point guard Dominique Johnson of Arkansas-Fort Smith junior college.