Greg Young woke up on April 1, knowing that the day could be eventful. He knew that it was possible that Texas Tech coach Chris Beard might take the Texas job that day. And he knew if that happened, dominoes might start to fall.
The question was, would the dominoes fall enough for a 57-year-old Texas basketball coaching lifer to get his first chance as a Division I head coach? Young had been an assistant at UT-Arlington for 12 years. He’d been in coaching since 1986. And he knew that April 1 might just create enough havoc to change his life forever.
“I got up that morning and told my wife, ‘Hey look, this is the day that the dominoes could fall and it could be interesting,’” Young said Tuesday. “And she’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And I’m like, ‘Never mind.’ She just said, ‘Just make sure you get the trash to the curb.’”
His anticipation ended up being prescient. Just hours after Beard took the head coaching job at Texas, UTA head coach Chris Ogden told his staff and team that he’d be joining Beard’s staff. Ogden had been an assistant for Beard at Tech before taking the UTA job in 2018. By that evening, it was clear to Young that he’d be handed the keys to the program.
Young has been everything in coaching. He has been a head coach at three JUCO schools. He’s been a JUCO assistant, he’s been a high school assistant. He’s been a recruiting coordinator at Texas State, he’s been a D-I assistant. But it wasn’t until Monday that he was officially announced as the head coach for the Mavericks — fulfilling a lifelong goal that at one point had seemed out of reach.
“It was always a dream, no question about it,” Young said. “But it wasn’t a defining thing that I thought about every day. And if I hadn’t gotten the job, it wouldn’t have been a defining thing, either.”
The terms of the contract weren’t made available immediately. For Young, his hire means that UTA can keep the transition somewhat seamless. That wasn’t the case three years ago after the school fired Young’s former boss, Scott Cross, now the head coach at Troy.
Young said he was hurt by all of that, but eventually got Cross’ blessing to be an assistant for Ogden, then a 37-year-old first-time head coach.
So Young won’t have to start over, and he indicated there are some members of the staff he would like to stay at the school.
There will, however, be something of a shift in the style of play.
“We’re gonna play with speed and rhythm and pace and imagination, and it’s going to be a fun style of play,” Young said. “That’s how I’ve always played offense and that’s the way, you know, we played here when we were successful, you know, the last four or five years before [Ogden].
“And not that we weren’t successful offensively during [Ogden’s] tenure, but I’m gonna play sort of the way we played before that.”
Young has been the defensive coach at UTA during his time at the school. And the program was almost always successful defensively, being in the top 100 in KenPom’s defensive efficiency four of the last six years. That, he hopes, will stay the same.
The scheduling philosophy will likely not change much, either, given that Young has already been in charge of scheduling at UTA. The expectation is that the annual rivalry game with North Texas will return.
The Mavericks have only been to the NCAA Tournament one time, in 2008. They were a No. 16 seed. But Young doesn’t want to make any big promises about March heroics. He understands the realities of a one-bid conference.
That lone NCAA Tournament appearance came on the heels of a 7-9 conference regular season when UTA won the Southland Conference tournament. Meanwhile, in 2017, UTA won the Sun Belt regular-season title, but ended up in the NIT.
Young isn’t going to make any promises other than that his team will play hard and fight for that chance to return to the NCAA Tournament.
It’s been a good spring for Texas coaching lifers. And they all know each other. Young coached against North Texas head coach Grant McCasland in the Texas JUCO ranks. Young actually recruited Abilene Christian head coach Joe Golding. Both of those coaches guided their teams to upset wins in this year’s NCAA Tournament. Ogden is buddies with Beard, who is buddies with new Texas Tech head coach Mark Adams. And Young’s college roommate’s dad was Adams’ dad’s college roommate.
All of these coaches are now getting their chance, or have already gotten their chance and done something with it. Now it’s Young’s turn, and he knows he’s up for the moment.
“I knew that I was the right person for the job at this point in time of our program,” Young said. “I’d been here 12 years, had experienced some of the greatest successes in our program’s history. I just knew there was no better person at this point in time.”
Working his way up
Greg Young spent 35 years in coaching before being named UTA head coach this week. A breakdown of how many years he’s spent at different levels:
1 year: High School assistant
4 years: NAIA assistant
3 years: Division II assistant
6 years: Community College head coach
5 years: Division-I recruiting coordinator
4 years: JUCO head coach
4 years: Division I assistant
8 years: Division I associate head coach
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