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Message: [QUOTE="southie, post: 3354161, member: 2527"] Gail came to Texas in Spring 2007 when the Big 12 was pretty strong. Baylor had won a national title in 2005. Oklahoma still had the Paris twins. Gary Blair had A&M on the upswing no doubt as they went on to win a national title in 2011. And, Baylor won again in 2012. She brought along an assistant coach from Duke in Gale Valley; made sense. And, she hired Mickie DeMoss; seemed like a hiring coup. Her head-scratcher hire was Nebraska's Lakale Malone; while she did have Big 12 conference experience/familiarity, she had no recruiting ties to the state of Texas, and neither did the other hires. As it turned out, those coaching hires who didn't understand the recruiting landscape in the state of Texas resulted in sub-par recruiting. I recall Gail later saying that she didn't know how hard recruiting would be at Texas (compared to Duke). There were some hurt feelings as Texas assistant coaches, Travis Mays and Clarissa Davis, both Longhorn hoopster legends, were not retained; Davis had barely one season coaching at Texas under Conradt. Stringer hired Clarissa at Rutgers, but only lasted one year. Later we'd find out that Clarissa was bad-mouthing Texas and Gail to all the club and high school coaches; never had I been so ashamed of a former Longhorn player, especially one who had represented Texas so well in her collegiate career. Gail was good enough her first season a win a game at home against Mulkey's Bears, and won at OU. Even won a first round game in the NCAA tourney against Minnesota before getting throttled by UConn. Everyone was optimistic for the future with her at the helm. All that to say that the hiring of assistant coaches matters; and, it is also the area where I believe Coach Aston failed the most as she continued to hire coaches with less and less college coaching experience. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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