Tuesday night, Tim Floyd responded to reports of an interview with USC, and while no definitive answer was given as to his future plans, he will seemingly remain the head coach at UTEP.
Rumors had been spiraling around since the morning of the game against Memphis as ESPN LA posted a story that stated how Floyd had a meeting with the school regarding its head coaching job.
Needless to say, assuming Floyd is staying, this is great to hear for a UTEP team who is just a few good pieces away from a CUSA title. Here were some Floyd's quotes from the post game conference:
"I’ve been called on a few jobs since I’ve been here at UTEP, and the immediate response and answer was; Not interested. In this particular case, the relationships that I had at that school, and the way we left the school was not comfortable for me, and my family, and our former players, and our coaches. We chose to take a high road when we left. We’re coaching here because we had no NCAA violations…When they called, I felt like I owed it our former players, and our former coaches, and our current coaches, and guys that might be on this team that want to coach one day, to go speak to them. Because, the obvious answer is that they did their homework, and they weren’t going to hire somebody that broke any NCAA rules. They did not offer me a job, nor was I looking for a job. We had a great three hour conversation, and that’s all I want to say"
The big news is that Floyd stays and possibly # 25 recruit from the graduating class of 2013 Isaac Hamilton will stay as well. No word on how this might have changed Isaac’s mind, but one thing is for certain… Floyd is on the right track to bring this team back to NCAA tournament status.
UTEP already had one major coaching change earlier in the year when former football coach Mike Price retired and Sean Kugler was named his successor. Stay tuned to Miner Rush for any and all developments to this story as well as all things Miner sports.