Former Appalachian State men's basketball coach Houston Fancher made his first public appearance as a member of the Tennessee men's basketball staff at the Hoops for Hope charity event Saturday.
Fancher, 43, has accepted the position of UT's graduate manager after resigning from the Mountaineers following last season's 13-18 season. In nine seasons he was 137-136.
Former UT coach Buzz Peterson, who coached at Appalachian State earlier in his career, assumed the Mountaineers' head coaching position.
Fancher launched his coaching career as an assistant to Maryville College coach Randy Lambert after graduating from Middle Tennessee State University in 1988.
Fancher, a Newport native, was coach at North Greenville 1992-95 before coaching beside Peterson as an assistant with the Mountaineers 1996-2000.
Fancher took over at Appalachian State when Peterson left the program to take the head coaching job at Tulsa in 2000 before coming to UT.
Mountaineers won consecutive Southern Conference regular-season championships prior to last season under Fancher.
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Comments » 12
behuman13 writes:
Why is there a "Vol" in your name??
Bigger_Al writes:
In Bruce we Trust!
middlegavol writes:
This might be a recruiting move. Fancher has some good contacts in the AAU crowd.
VOLDoll writes:
I sure hope you are right. We need a point guard in the worst way. Thanks for the heads up.
reidtownriverrat writes:
stop knocking Bruce he is the winningest active SEC coach and the 4th winningest active D-1 coach with a record of 415-121 thats .774. Mears recoed was 399-135 thats .747. I would rather watch his style of b-ball than Oneils.
Ironcity writes:
I think Morristown is a bitter old man who use to enjoy watching the Vols struggle through the 90's and then after Green left. Probably use to make cracks to his buddies at the bingo parlor. Then one day all of a sudden his buddies started making cracks at him and for four years they have harassed him nonstop.
So in an effort to attempt to get the upper hand with his buddies he tries to make a lame brain argument that focuses solely on the post season. Its likely that in the next couple of years he will scream about UT never winning an NC. Then after we do that he will come up with the lame brain idea that we should have had multiple titles.
The reality is that a loser like Morristown is on the losing side of an argument and he doesn't know how to get out of it without looking like the fool he is.
CoverOrange writes:
Care to explain why? He was a losing coach at Appy St and his new job is grad manager. How is he going to have much effect one way or another? Get beyond the "Bruce is a loser coach" opinion which we've heard many times and enlighten us with a new "opinion".
SIMPLYTHETRUTH writes:
Get real! If he has such great contacts then why did he get fired??? Either he couldn't coach or he couldn't recruit or both! This is an absolute waste of resources and just another suit in the parade that fills the TN bench! This guy took an App St program that was as good as it's ever been and ran it back into the ground. Pearl just keeps adding worthless bodies to an already inflated staff!
VOLDoll writes:
Little boy or girl, why did you get everyone excited by saying you were not going to post anymore? And then the first thing you do after you eat your pop tarts is post. Come on, don't tease us. Please!
Why not go outside and try and make some friends?
VOLDoll writes:
lol! It was great, your mom is a great dancer.
And your dad, damn he looks great in drag.
They are so proud of you for accepting the fact that he loves men as well.
johnlg00#206211 writes:
It IS getting harder to tell who is who among the "suits" on the sideline without a photo lineup in the game-time brochure. Therefore, I won't try to say who should have the following responsibilities, but I would like to have SOMEONE in charge of the following:
1) Installing a zone press. I won't go into detail on here about how I think it should be run, but there are lots of excellent books out there on the subject. The main advantages of it are that it can be used by guys with long arms who might not be able to keep up step-for-step with the quicker PGs and it doesn't so much require stealing the ball as cause the PG to get antsy in the backcourt and feel he has to make the long pass to get it over the line.
2) Free-throw shooting. There should be ONE guy who has a sound philosophy of proper form and mental preparation to drill everybody in improving their FT %-age, especially under every type of mental and physical pressure they can think of.
3) Set plays in the half-court. We used to have a couple of good out-of-bounds plays that seemed to get us three or four easy buckets a game, but I haven't seen as much of that in the last couple of years. Worse yet, I RARELY saw what I would call a good offensive play in the standard half-court attack, with sharp, decisive cuts; strong, steady screens; and quick, accurate passes leading to a high-percentage shot. It mostly just looked like we passed the ball around the perimeter until somebody made an individual move that nobody else seemed to expect, so the guy was constantly driving into a crowd and either turning it over or throwing up a wild heave. That must change!
4) Substitution patterns. All too often it seemed that substitutions were made according to a too-rigid minute count that took no notice of how particular combinations were working--or not--on the court at a particular time. It is good to have a general idea of how many minutes each player should play, but there must be enough flexibility to allow for changes according to how things are actually going on the court at a given time. This is of course WAY more art than science, and MUCH easier to state than to execute.
Sorry this went on so long, but it's Sunday afternoon, I didn't have anything else pressing or exciting to do, and I just wanted to get a few things off my chest. I don't blame anybody who doesn't want to slog through all this, but I would hope some people will at least acknowledge my points and direct their comments, pro or con, to my ideas rather than merely complain about the length.
Have a good Sunday, everybody!
VOLKING writes:
You are wrong. There, settles that.
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