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Looks like Coach D is welcomed back to UNCG this afternoon. Takes over a pretty good team. Maybe working at a lower level again will let the work ethic shine through and mask the other deficiencies.

Dement expected to return to UNCG
4-8-05
By Bill Hass Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO — UNCG has scheduled a news conference at 1:30 p.m. today and is expected to name Mike Dement as the men’s basketball coach.

It will be the second stint for Dement at UNCG. He was the Spartans’ head coach their first four years in Division I before he left for SMU.

Dement will replace Fran McCaffery, who accepted the head coaching job at Siena last week.

Athletics director Nelson Bobb, while not confirming Thursday night that Dement would be named, said UNCG had found its coach.

“We wanted to make certain that we do the very best we can for the current set of student-athletes,” Bobb said, “and I think we’ve done that. This hire will link the past to the present with a very strong commitment to the future.”

Dement was out of coaching this season. He had one year left on his contract at SMU when he was fired with three games remaining in the 2004 season. In nine years under Dement, the Mustangs never made the NCAA tournament.

A native of Louisburg, Dement coached high school basketball for several seasons in the state before he started his college coaching career. He was an assistant under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke in 1982-83, spent two years as an assistant at Cornell and one as an assistant at East Carolina.

Cornell hired Dement as its head coach in 1986-87. He went 67-67 in five years there, winning one Ivy League title and that league’s automatic NCAA berth.

Bobb hired Dement for the 1991-92 season and the Spartans went 7-21 in their inaugural Division I season. They improved the next three years, going 10-17, 15-12 and 23-6. Dement then left for SMU and his former assistant, Randy Peele, guided UNCG to its first NCAA berth in 1995-96.

Dement will inherit a team with two starters and several key backups returning from an 18-12 record.

Freshman forward Kyle Hines was the Southern Conference rookie of the year and sophomore guard Ricky Hickman was one of the top scorers.

If this is true, it is good news for Dement. I wish him well.

Yup, they made it official this afternoon. Good luck to Coach Dement, glad to see him back as a D1 coach, and at a place he's familar with.

Good luck to a good man. Best of luck, Coach Dement.

So True! Mike was a good man-best of luck

It will be interesting to see if he gets them to the NCAA tournament before Tubbs gets SMU there.

.Dement did a good job at SMU. He will do a good job no matter where he goes. He will build a better team at UNCG than we will have at Smu in the near future becasue he wont have to put up with the BS. Many didn't like his zone but we saw a lot of zone from the top teams this year and it will become even more important in the next few years. He ran a clean program and held his athletes to a high academic standard compare to most coaches. I wish him sucess in all his endeavors. He served Mustang basketball well.

PonySnob wrote:It will be interesting to see if he gets them to the NCAA tournament before Tubbs gets SMU there.

yep, that will be interesting. Even so, its hard to compare two different situations and I do believe Tubbs will put together a better and more complete team at SMU than what Dement did or would have if he stayed.

Hoop- I think it is way too early to tell. At this point in Dement's stay I was ecstatic with what I was seeing in a transformation of Shumate ball. If Tubbs can do better, it will be because of recruiting but nothing has been proven yet. This past season was very disapponting from a w-l perspective. Now Reay is leaving because he doesn't like Tubbs according to some. Although I don't think Reay is a great loss, it may reflect something else. I do know that Reay was one of the few who didn't quit on Dement and has always given great effort. Maybe Tubbs wants the schollie back and is running him off. I'm not as excited as I was when Dement had a year under his belt. I hope that my excitement level changes next year but I am not very optimistic about SMU basketball for at least the next 2 years.

i dont blame you for not being excited about last year or the next two for that matter. I think we are all alot more jaded now than when Dement took over. Reasons are its been that much longer since we Danced, and the heart ripping out disappointments of Dements early 2000s teams. And I think its close to irrefutable that the reason we are not positioned well for next year is not because of Tubbs but because of Dements extremely mediocre recruiting in his final two classes and the failure to ever get a real banger or a defensive presence in the program for whatever reason. If Tubbs signs Brian Morris next week, he is on the way to changing the complexion of this program in the right direction. Not to start the Bamba Fall debate again, but I think he will be an asset defensively pretty early on too, no later than his sophomore year.

We all have run out of patience, but we are where we are.

I think it was so obvious that Shu wan't a coach that we were all more easily excited. Dement is a good coach so it isn't as obvious this time-especially with the disappointment this year. And pleeeease- no BF debate(:. Maybe Stal won't notice that you mentioned his name. You are usually pretty perceptive re b'ball so I hope that is the case this time. I just wish I felt the same but after watching Copeland mess up this program for what seems to be forever, I am jaded and I was born in the Show-Me state.

PonySnob wrote:It will be interesting to see if he gets them to the NCAA tournament before Tubbs gets SMU there.

Is pessimism like yours tiring?