In his first season leading Maverick men’s basketball in 2018-19, Chris Ogden guided his team—predicted to finish second-to-last in the Sun Belt Conference Preseason Poll—to a second-place finish in the regular-season standings and a berth in the Sun Belt Tournament Championship Game for the second straight year. At the conclusion of the season, Ogden was recognized as the Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year.
In addition to that honor, Ogden was named the 2018-19 National Association of Basketball Coaches District 24 Coach of the Year. He was also a finalist for the Hugh Durham Award (presented annually to the nation’s top mid-major coach) and the Joe B. Hall Award, given annually to the top first-year head coach in Division I.
The Mavericks, who returned a nation-low 3.2% of their scorers from 2017-18, played the seventh-hardest non-conference schedule in the nation to prepare them for the Sun Belt slate. UTA’s nine-spot improvement from preseason to final regular-season finish was tied for the best in the nation, and the Mavs return the vast majority of their roster for the 2019-20 season.
Krista Gerlich, also a 2019 Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year, has guided a resurgence for the Lady Mavericks since being named head coach in 2013. Gerlich, who recently began her seventh season at the helm of the UTA women’s basketball program, has accumulated more than 100 wins with the Lady Mavs.
The 2018-19 season was a special one for Gerlich and UTA as they concluded the year with 24 wins, which tied a program record for single-season victories.
The team also secured its first Sun Belt regular season championship, made its sixth postseason tournament appearance (WNIT), and won a postseason game for the first time in program history (excluding conference tournaments) with their WNIT first-round triumph over Stephen F. Austin State University.
