Anthony Boone out for Bears; Teague’s search under way to find replacement

CONWAY, Ark. — It probably shouldn’t have been that surprising to see UCA athletic director Brad Teague’s announcement Saturday he was pulling the plug on Anthony Boone’s tenure at Central Arkansas. It wasn’t for being a bad guy.

“We could not have asked for a better person,” Teague said in a press release. “That made the decision to change our direction much more difficult. We needed to find a new leader to explore the possibilities of this program.”

The guess is those possibilities are why a change was made. Teague made it short, polite and honest. The bottom line is Boone didn’t win enough games and manage to knock a dent in recruiting some of the better players in the central Arkansas area. That’s a hotbed for high school basketball players in Arkansas and, for whatever reason, the Bears weren’t able to get enough of them.

Boone had taken over the program in the middle of the 2019-20 season, managed the Bears through the COVID issues that lasted a couple of years, but a 9-23 record this year probably didn’t offer a lot of hope for Teague to see a light at the the end of the tunnel that might not be an oncoming train.

Now the search is under way for a replacement.

“We will move quickly and efficiently to find our new head coach,” Teague said in the statement. “We will focus on coaching experience, character and recruiting success.”

The key phrase in that statement is the last one. There is a fairly good size of talent a coach should be able to put together a roster that can win games. The highlight of this past season for UCA was a 75-71 win over Little Rock back on Dec. 7. The Trojans may have the best shot of any school in the state for the NCAA Tournament.

Boone came to UCA as associate head coach for the 2014-15 season and moved up to head coach midway through the 2019-20 season. He was previously a graduate assistant coach at his alma mater Ole Miss, then an assistant coach for three seasons at Murray State (2000-03) and six seasons at Jackson State (2003-09) and for four seasons at Grand Canyon University (2009-13) He also was an assistant coach for the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA for one season before coming to UCA.

As a player for Ole Miss under coach Rob Evans, Boone led the Rebels to back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time in 60 years. He was a senior on the team that lost in the 1998 NCAA Tournament to Valparaiso on a memorable last-second shot.