Tim’s Tirade — UTEP’s Tim Floyd Gets Personal, Misses Point
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This post originally appeared on our sister site, 600espnelpaso.com. We have included the entire video of the press conference above in the interest of keeping all comments in their proper context.]
By the time most people read this, they will have either seen or heard about Tim Floyd's verbal lashing at me at a press conference earlier this afternoon at the Don Haskins Center. In front of a crowd of fellow media members and UTEP athletics officials, the UTEP men's basketball head coach called me "uninformed," and took issue with my recent on-air comments regarding the Miners program. Specifically, he was upset with the way I dealt with the growing number of players who have left the program after this past season. UTEP lost Lee Moore to the pros and Christian Romine, Brodricks Jones, and Josh McSwiggan transferred away.
Like a lot of fans, I wondered why so many Miner players were leaving the program. Are today's players having trouble relating to Coach Floyd? Or is it part of the big picture, which involves the large number of players that are leaving Division 1 programs around the country. After talking about the new group of Miners for 2016-17, Coach Floyd addressed my question by quoting various comments from many of his coaching peers around Division 1. He also handed out 17 pages of literature, detailing the list of transfers.
Among the highlights:
- 1,431 total transfers over the past two seasons
- 242 programs in the past two years with at least three transfers in one season
- 164 athletes have declared early for the NBA Draft (119 NCAA Players)
- Just 250 transfers 10 years ago
The transfer numbers are alarming and UTEP is caught in the middle of it. Unfortunately for Miner fans, Coach Floyd does not have the ability to always reload with instant impact players that can help the program immediately like other Division 1 schools. What UTEP failed to mention today is: "Why so many players have left their program?" Is it just a product of the national trend, or something more than that? There have been 51 Division 1 head coaching changes following the 2015-16 season ,but only four of these schools lost four or more players from last season. Five schools with new head coaches lost three players from 2015-16. That means most of the 581 transfers are coming from Division 1 programs that have not gone through a coaching transition.
Coach Floyd made things personal today and took aim at me for the way we have handled the roster merry-go-round at UTEP. Sadly, he believes that I am the root of the problem since Sportstalk has been "misinforming" the public all this time. Despite everything that was said about me earlier today, my stance on Tim Floyd and the UTEP men's basketball program has not changed. I endorsed him more than six years ago when he was hired and believed that he was the right man for the job. Many people have been patient with Coach Floyd and still see him as the man to turn around the program. They just need to accept the fact that each year, it gets tougher and tougher to keep players happy on a roster, and some will not stick around with hopes to get more playing time. That, coupled with playing in C-USA each year, has made advancing to the NCAA Tournament a long shot each year for Miner fans.