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Message: [QUOTE="Plebe, post: 3353172, member: 6927"] The rapid rise and fall of Aston at Texas has been a baffling case study. You've done an excellent job of documenting the ascent. The early returns were virtually impossible to argue with. The Aston era basically topped out with the Elite 8 finish in 2016 and the road win at Baylor in 2017. But then the 2017 season closed with a whimper: a Big 12 tournament quarterfinal loss to a suddenly red-hot West Virginia team, a narrow escape over NC State in the 2nd round, and then a meek exit vs. Stanford in the Sweet 16. But the first time I said "Aston we have a problem" was the horrendous game at Tennessee in Dec. 2017 where she accomplished the near-impossible task of looking even more incompetent than Holly Warlick. That was in the senior year of Atkins and McCarty, and although Texas somewhat recovered to give UConn a very close game in Jan. 2018 and reach another Sweet 16, it was also when we started to notice major problems with what I'll call "player management": [LIST] [*]Joyner Holmes' suspension from school in fall 2017 and subsequent inefficacy [*]The departures of Jordan Hosey and Rellah Boothe after the 2018 season [*]The departure of Chasity Patterson in Dec. 2018 [*]The departures of Destiny Littleton and Sedona Prince after the 2019 season [/LIST] At this point there's little ambiguity to deal with. It's not like Holly's last year at Tennessee, where the recruiting never declined and player departures were relatively few. Higgs, Sutton and Holmes are in their final season, and there's no strong recruiting class to take their place (one recruit and one transfer ranked in the 50s by ESPN, a couple other lowly ranked or unranked). The fact that the AD hasn't yet renewed her contract already speaks volumes. Perhaps he wanted to see how this season went, or perhaps he'd already made up his mind. But barring a miraculous turnaround, the writing couldn't be more on the wall. The question on Texas fans' minds at this point is not whether she'll be gone but who will replace her. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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