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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Done Deal: UGA to Hire Fox

After numerous false starts, it looks as if Georgia finally has its next head basketball coach.

Georgia has hired Nevada’s Mark Fox to replace Dennis Felton, who was fired in January after nearly six years with the team. An official announcement will be made Friday at 11 a.m., according to a release by Georgia’s athletics department.

Fox has been the head coach of the Nevada Wolfpack for the past five seasons, where he has amassed a 123-43 record, including three trips to the NCAA tournament.

Fox has won at least 20 games in each of his five seasons at Nevada, a feat that has not been accomplished at Georgia since the 2001-02 season.

Prior to taking over at Nevada, he served as an assistant with Kansas State, Washington and worked under current LSU coach Trent Johnson with the Wolfpack.

The school began the search for its next head coach just days after Felton was fired, hiring the Parker Executive Search Firm to lead the search – the same group that identified Johnson for the LSU job a year ago.

The hiring of Fox comes after several high-profile misses, including a reported offer of more than $2 million to Mike Anderson earlier this week. Anderson chose to remain at his current position at Missouri, however, after negotiating a new contract there.

Fox will have his work cut out for him next season, as Georgia returns just one senior – Albert Jackson – and lost two other regular contributors to transfers last month.

MARK FOX BIO

Born: 1/13/1969
College: Garden City (Kansas) Community College, Eastern New Mexico
Coaching career: Assistant at Washington (1991-93), Kansas State (1994-2000) and Nevada (2000-2004). Head coach at Nevada (2004-2009).
Career record: 123-43.
NCAA Tournament appearances: 2005 (lost in second round); 2006 (lost in first round), 2007 (lost in second round).

3 comments:

Tommy said...

What a terrible hire. We actually hired a firm to find this guy? His teams haven't even gone to the friggin' NIT the past two years. They've lost in the first round of the CBI what ever the hell that is. He has racked up huge win numbers with players that Trent Johnson recruited while he was at Nevada. This is a joke of a hire. We would have been better off keeping the dead guy that replaced Felton this past season.

atlstew said...

give me a break tommy. The guys numbers are prtty good and it seems like he can coach. Who would you have hired?

Mark said...

David: At the press conference tomorrow can you ask Coach Fox if he has plans to hire an assistant with Georgia or Southeast ties for recruiting purposes? Given Fox has zero ties to the South, I would imagine getting a guy clued in to the Atlanta AAU circuit would be critical.

Thanks.