There will be one less place setting at the table during Wildcat Caravan meal meetings with fans this week: Abilene Christian University men’s basketball coach Grant McCasland, who resigned today to become the top assistant coach for the men’s basketball program at Baylor University.
Only four months after leaving Midwestern State University’s highly successful program – which he led to two straight NCAA Division II Elite Eight appearances – and moving to ACU, McCasland decided he couldn’t turn down an opportunity to coach at his alma mater in Waco, despite never coaching a game for the Wildcats.
Athletics director Jared Mosley (’91) moved quickly to name former ACU player Joseph Golding, an assistant coach at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, as the Wildcats’ newest new head basketball coach. The UALR Trojans won the Sun Belt Conference in 2010-11, and lost in overtime to UNC-Asheville in the first round of the NCAA Division I national tournament.
The Wildcat Caravan’s chief speaker this week in meetings with alumni in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas, will be head football coach Chris Thomsen (M.Ed. ’00), who now has twice as much time to tell fans about the prospects for his nationally ranked team, which has won two of the last three Lone Star Conference titles.
The Wildcats play another national title contender, the University of North Alabama, on Sept. 17 in the Lone Star Football Festival in Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.