The Clif Carroll era in Belton came to an abrupt conclusion, but his impact on the program won’t be soon forgotten

BELTON — Shortly after Friday’s 97-89 win over LeTourneau in the American Southwest Conference Tournament semifinal round, Clif Carroll and Eli Beard sat side by side in a press conference, the star guard who had just put up a tournament-record 44 points and the head coach who had relentlessly recruited him through high school and a pair of junior college stops. 

“Playing for Coach Carroll, [he’s] the best coach I’ve ever played for,” Beard said. “He revamped my college career. I came here and didn’t have any confidence. He instilled confidence in me, and it’s been all go every since.” 

There was plenty left unsaid, as there was when Carroll spoke a minute later about what coaching in the ASC, standing on the sidelines where his mentors once walked, really meant. As had been reported days prior, the weekend was to be his last as the head coach at Mary Hardin-Baylor, a program he had taken to new heights in a relatively short five-year span. 

UMHB had never gone undefeated through conference play as a D-III institution. In Carroll’s first year, The Cru went 13-0. UMHB’s last NCAA Tournament appearance had come in 2013. Carroll took The Cru to the national quarterfinals in his second year leading the program. He took them back to the Sweet 16 a year later, the first time in program history UMHB went back-to-back seasons with multiple wins in the NCAA Tournament.

And with last Friday’s win over LeTourneau, The Cru punched its ticket to the ASC championship game for the first time in two consecutive seasons since a stretch in 2010 and 2011.  

“It’s not beyond me to understand where this puts us,” Carroll said. “There’s so much history in this league. You go back to Ken Deweese, Terry Butterfield, Craig Carse, Bert West, Gene Rushing, and Ron Holmes. To be walking the same sidelines and same situations as those guys is special to me. I appreciate everything all those guys ever did for me. So it’s an honor to be here, and get to play for this thing again.”

He also knew it would be the last time. After 10 years in the ASC, five spent at Sul Ross State and five more at UMHB, he was informed by the administration on Monday of the previous week, Feb. 18, that he would not return as The Cru’s head coach in 2025-26. 

Word spread quickly. Fellow coaches within the ASC heard about it by Tuesday, and Carroll shared the news with his team on that Monday evening. With one week left in the regular season—two home games against Howard Payne and Hardin-Simmons—along with the ASC Tournament, the Crusaders were guaranteed at least 12 more days with their head coach. An NCAA Tournament run could extend it—Carroll’s time at UMHB wouldn’t end before the season did—but ultimately, they faced the reality of being the final group Carroll would coach in Belton. 

A full week later, the following Monday at approximately the same time, Hoopsville broke the news to the public in a post on X/Twitter, noting that “multiple sources say UMHB is letting MBB coach Clif Carroll go,” adding that “exact reason(s)” behind the decision were not clear. 

And that was the burning question: Why. Why would a coach zeroing in on his 100th win in five years at a program be suddenly let go? Why was he informed before the regular season even wrapped up, yet allowed to finish out the year? 

Sources note that the answer is complex, attributed to multiple factors and not solely one instance. But the bottom line is that one factor, more than any other, brought about the decision that sent shockwaves through the D-III basketball community nationwide: Carroll’s use of strong language, particularly on the sidelines. 

At a Christian university like UMHB, a certain standard of conduct is expected from its coaches to uphold the image of the institution, making for more stringent guidelines than the majority of collegiate athletic departments. But within reason, colorful language and intensity in practice and game settings have often been tolerated, several sources noted, so long as it doesn’t become a distraction or demeaning to the student-athletes. 

But when an incident involving former head women’s basketball coach Mark Morefield surfaced in January 2023, that view changed to some degree. A video of Morefield using a considerable amount of profanity in a rant to his team at a November 2022 practice was posted to X/Twitter, garnering widespread publicity and 4.1 million views as opinions poured in. It was not the kind of attention the university wanted any part of. 

As a result, awareness of what coaches were saying in a practice setting, as well as on the sidelines, became more of a priority. Carroll, while never in the same manner or spoken in the same way as the incident involving Morefield, was put under more scrutiny for his use of language when communicating with his team, causing the situation to begin boiling. At that point, UMHB was coming off its second-straight trip to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, and the program’s success, sources note, helped avoid Carroll being placed on a similar hot seat. 

But it remained a point of contention with the administration nonetheless. Carroll, who had already toned down his frequency of profanity since coming to UMHB from SRSU, promised to work on his language and keep it in check. When visitors walked into practice for example, his assistants would often make sure to remind him of the audience present, and multiple former players noted that a change was seen in how much he used certain words as he adjusted to coaching in a Christ-centered environment from the public university ranks. 

That said, his intensity remained a primary aspect of his coaching style, with a knack for getting the most out of his players, and not coaching each in the exact same way. He connected with his players on a level where his hard coaching wasn’t taken as an attack, a number of alums have noted. Instead, it was often received with an understanding his often-intense style on the court was out of a place of care. Not surprisingly, those comments from former players sound similar to Carroll’s description of his mentor, Bobby Knight, whom he coached for as a student assistant at Texas Tech. 

“I felt like he set a standard and really held us to that,” Nathan Stolz, who was part of UMHB’s NCAA Tournament runs in 2022 and 2023, said of Carroll. “There was no unfair treatment towards one player or another. I came from a place where I had a coach that would yell at me to make me feel stupid and less than, but coming to UMHB and being under Coach Carroll, I was completely fine with him yelling at me. I knew it was to make me a better player. I knew it was out of love and he wanted to see the best come out of me.” 

“He’s a passionate coach for sure,” Josiah Johnson, who graduated as UMHB’s all-time leading scorer, added. “Every coach I’ve ever had has coached me up multiple times, so [his intensity] never bothered me none. He does it, in my eyes, out of motivation, knowing that you can be better if you’re not playing up to par. He’s an emotional guy, a passionate guy, but to me, it never felt personal. I felt like he was always trying to get us to play up to our potential.” 

That accountability was a centerpiece of his program at UMHB, and it extended as much to the classroom as it did the court. Carson Hammond, who famously sank a pair of free throws at the end of regulation in UMHB’s 2022 tournament win over Case Western Reserve in overtime, said that it was Carroll’s constant push for excellence from his players academically that led to him graduating from UMHB in the spring of 2022 with a 3.0 GPA. 

“He put an emphasis on wanting a Team GPA of 3.0,” Hammond, now an assistant at Western Texas College, recalled. “I thought that was impossible for me, because I had never really given my max effort in school. I did enough to get by. But because of him putting an emphasis on that, more so than just wins and losses and basketball, I ended up graduating with a 3.0, which I never thought I’d be able to do. But that’s because he cares about you more so than just what you can do on the court.” 

That statement rang true time and time again for the players who came through his program in recent years. Stolz talks about how Carroll helped him rekindle his passion for basketball itself after a rough start to his college career. Sam Reaves mentions how Carroll helped use his wide range of coaching connections to help Reaves earn an opportunity as a graduate assistant at Lubbock Christian, after playing for Carroll at SRSU and UMHB, and serving as an assistant coach during the 2023-24 season. Hammond says it was Carroll’s invaluable advice that helped direct him to the route of starting his coaching career at the junior college level, where he has been for the last three years. 

“He will have your back,” Johnson said. “He still texts and talks with me to this day. You saw all the former players that came [to Carroll’s final home game]. We didn’t come for no reason. It shows how much people care about him. He’ll always have his players’ back. There’s things he’s done for me now as a pro when I’m back in the summer to help me out with different things, and I know for sure he’s done the same for other guys. He’s a tough guy on the outside, but when you go talk to him, anything off the basketball court, he’s as soft as they get.” 

Knowing that about Carroll, and how bought in his current players were as a result, Johnson was taken aback when he came off an 11-hour flight from Denmark and learned of the decision made just a few days prior. He wasn’t the only one. 

Sources familiar with the situation indicate that the concerns from the administration over Carroll’s use of strong language and at times, intense sideline demeanor, never faded in recent years. But as The Cru posted back-to-back mediocre seasons in ASC play, going 10-6 in 2023-24 and 3-5 in 2024-25, it opened the door for those concerns to evolve into more serious discussions, especially as this past season progressed. 

“Winning solves a lot of issues,” one source familiar with the situation told True To The Cru. “If Carroll and them were in first and ranked right now, they wouldn’t be in this spot.” 

It remains unclear exactly how much of a factor the recent on-court struggles were to the decision to move on from Carroll. However, it does seem plausible that citing a “lack of performance” could potentially make the decision seem more justifiable, even if it wasn’t the driving force. After all, Carroll leaves UMHB at 99-34 overall; hardly a mark that indicates cause for concern. The Cru notably beat Illinois Wesleyan, who enters this week’s NCAA Tournament as the No. 9 overall seed, and St. Thomas (TX), the No. 14 overall seed, in non-conference games earlier this year, putting up a solid resume early on. 

The one specific instance that stands out in the string of events that led up to Carroll being told he would not return came just four days prior to Monday, Feb. 18, when UMHB faced LeTourneau in an ASC road game. With The Cru trailing the Yellowjackets 68-49 and 12:17 left in the second half, Carroll lost his cool, ending up in a yelling match with one of three officials working the game. He promptly received a technical foul, making his frustration with the officiating clear. When he continued emphatically making his point to the officials, unrelenting despite having already picked up one technical foul and taking steps onto the court to get closer to the crew, he was given a second, and ejected from the contest. Assistant coach Uriah Hunter served as acting head coach for the remainder of the contest. 

One source close to the program said that the incident was probably the final straw for the administration, which would agree with the timing of the decision, and letting Carroll know of his future before the season’s conclusion. It seems it pushed the boiling situation over the edge, considering the public nature of the tirade in an opposing conference member’s gym. One observer inside Solheim Arena that night said that it was “not a great look” from Carroll, though it remains unclear what exactly he told the first official to pick up a technical foul in the first place. Video review of the incident indicates some amount of minimal contact between Carroll and one official prior to him receiving the second technical foul, which led to the ejection. 

It should be noted that it was the first time Carroll was ejected from a game in what was at that point his 129th contest as UMHB’s head coach. Apparently, it was one too many. 

His intensity and passion is known around Division III coaching circles, and at times, it brought out that more amped-up side of him on the court. 

“We all knew it was coming from one place,” Reaves said. “And that was wanting to win.”

“I think the No. 1 thing is that I know Coach Carroll is not a bad guy,” Stolz added. “He might’ve had some colorful language here and there, but it was never derogatory or demeaning. It was more heat-of-the-moment stuff. If you’re being held to a standard and you’re not meeting that quota, then I understand it, especially from a Christian university that wants to be the part, but also look the part, because that’s important. But it was never something that was too over the top to me.”

Multiple sources share the same sentiment. It is understood that at a place like UMHB, the expectation of decorum, particularly on the bench, is to a more strict degree than your average institution. And nobody denies Carroll’s intensity. But Carroll’s strong language wasn’t seen as insulting or demeaning in the eyes of his players, an important piece of context within the discussion. 

And for as much Carroll expected from his team on the floor, every alum has a number of stories of Carroll’s character and care for his players showing through. It seems to be some of the things they remember most when looking back on their playing days at UMHB. 

“I remember in my last year, I had a choice to come back the next year, due to an extra year of Covid eligibility, or just end my career that way when we lost in the Elite Eight,” Hammond recalls. “I was like 50-50 the whole year. When we lost that game, everybody went to the locker room and was down, because we lost a game we felt like we should’ve won. And out of everything that Carroll could’ve said about the team, or how the season went, he started off by talking to me. He said, ‘Carson, you’re the first kid I signed at UMHB. Thank you for believing in me. If this is it, and you don’t come back, somebody has big shoes to fill.’ That was a cool moment for me. I was thinking, ‘We just lost in the Elite Eight. We were trying to win a national championship,’ and that being the first thing he said was special to me.’”

Carroll also had a light-hearted side to his coaching approach at times, something Kyle Wright notes when asked about memories of Carroll that still stand out. Wright spent four seasons on the roster, transferring in from Texas A&M-Texarkana in Carroll’s first season as head coach. 

“On our Senior Day shootaround, we started a tradition where everybody on the team wore a durag,” Wright remembers with a laugh. “To really see him in a durag and buy-in with all of us was pretty cool for me personally.” 

Wright, who graduated following the 2023-24 season, attributes the environment Carroll created at UMHB to his present success in a post-college, post-basketball workplace. 

“It was a standard of excellence, not in the sense that you tried to be perfect, but you had to bring it every day,” Wright says. “For me being in life now, it’s different challenges, but I feel better prepared to have those good habits that you need to be successful within any journey. That’s the first thing I took away from Coach Carroll. 

“And he was big on being together with culture, family, having a tight-knit group. The relationships I built at UMHB are some of the things I cherish the most.”

Carroll helped produce that culture by his team being more than just what was on the court. Multiple alums bring up the community service initiatives he involved them in as being beneficial to the growth of the team, and also to the student-athlete experience. It included things like “High-Five Fridays”, where The Cru would show up at local elementary schools on Friday mornings to connect with the students and give them a high five and some encouragement before the school day. His commitment to those kinds of community outreach projects only increased the attendance at games, as the local community became more invested—and felt more connected—to the UMHB men’s basketball program than perhaps ever before.

“It wasn’t only the effect he had on the players, but also the community,” Reaves said. “He was adamant on getting community service hours, whether that was through volunteering at the food bank in Temple or High-Five Fridays. It sounds cliche, but it unified the community. You look at the crowds in the few years before Carroll came, and they were nothing compared to what his crowds were at UMHB.”

Reaves saw Carroll’s commitment to his players through challenging circumstances firsthand as he made the transition into college basketball. In the summer of 2019, he suffered an Ischemic stroke while playing pickup basketball, ending up in a Bryan hospital as he was unable to move any muscle on the right side of his body. Already committed to Sul Ross State at that point and heading into his freshman year, Reaves worked back to health through intense therapy, re-learning how to properly walk, talk, and write, and overcome the effects of the stroke. Yet upon arrival at SRSU, Carroll made sure Reaves felt valued, even as he took a medical redshirt. And when Carroll took the UMHB job, Reaves followed him, again finding that Carroll’s care for his players was just a part of who he was, whether they were starting or barely seeing the floor at all.

“I was the only one who came with him from Sul Ross, and in my years here, my playing time got less and less,” Reaves commented. “But I was okay with that, because he made sure I knew I had a role within the team. He knows how to make people feel valued.”

Stolz experienced that upon arrival as well. Coming from a previous NAIA program where he struggled through two years, he had fallen out of love with the sport. That changed once he got to Belton, and similar to Beard, he credits Carroll as being a main reason why his college career concluded the way it did. Stolz became a reliable forward for The Cru, playing in 58 games with 23 starts, and averaging 6.2 points per game through two seasons.

“I was in a pretty dark place at the last university I was playing for, and I knew I had some game left to give to basketball,” Stolz recalls. “Coach Carroll was one of the first coaches to reach out to me. I got in front of him, and he showed me what a real coach that wants to win and supports you really looks like. It took off from there.”

Stolz’s situation wasn’t necessarily unique. During his time at UMHB, Carroll seemingly had a knack for building up transfers who had been cast aside or hit points of adversity at their previous stops, creating a stable environment to gain confidence, contribute, and ultimately, graduate. 

“He brought in a ton of guys that wanted to win, and some who had maybe struggled for one reason or another at their previous stop,” Stolz added. “One thing he always used to say is ‘Never mess with a wounded dog.’ I felt like he brought in a bunch of wounded dogs and put them together. It created a brotherhood and a group that wanted to win for each other.” 

That group of transfers included Johnson, who left UMHB with 2,559 career points as the American Southwest Conference’s all-time leading scorer. He had played sparingly in one year at Division II Southern Nazarene, barely seeing the floor in 13 games. That all changed once he arrived in Belton, where he averaged 29.3 points per game as a sophomore. Johnson took to Carroll’s coaching style well, even putting more effort into his defensive skill set at Carroll’s continued urging. 

“He’s going to make you tough, he’s going to challenge you,” Johnson said. “But that’s what all really good players want. He’s not going to let you underachieve knowing that you’re not reaching your potential. That’s what I love about him. As long as you’re playing hard and giving your effort, everything else will take care of itself.

“Of course you want to be a smart player, and he’ll help you with that. But his main focal point is to get you to play hard. That’s why I feel like he’s a really good “floor-raiser” of a team. Even a team that’s not overly talented, he’ll get the most out of them, because he can really build a culture. He’s a great coach for that reason.”

In the process of instilling that level of toughness and effort in his players, Carroll produced a number of coaches during his stint in Belton. Reaves is currently on staff at LCU, Wright is a basketball director at Point Guard College (PGC), an organization focused on skill development, Trace Richey is the head boys basketball coach at Cross Plains High School, Kobe Richardson spent time as a graduate assistant at UTEP and now coaches at the high school level, Hammond remains on staff at WTC, and Stolz is now a strength & conditioning and basketball skills coach in the Brazos Valley region. 

That doesn’t even include the list of former assistant coaches who have moved up through the ranks after coaching under Carroll. Jeremie Hart, now SMU’s Recruiting Coordinator, spent two seasons on the UMHB staff from 2020-2022. Giles Gilliam, at UMHB in 2020-21, is a current graduate assistant at Texas. DeAndre Miller, who was at UMHB for three seasons, is Lamar’s Director of Basketball Operations, and Alex Nixon is the assistant coach at nearby Temple College after four years with The Cru.

“I’m one of the countless ex-players that he’s helped set up a job for,” Reaves said. “He’s creating his own coaching tree. That’s the kind of person he fosters. I think he’s creating so many coaches because he’s having such a great impact as a coach in all of our lives. We’re saying, ‘Maybe I can coach, and maybe I can be as good as Coach Carroll.’”

That is as high a complement as any, spoken from a genuine and honest perspective. Carroll’s time in Belton may have been shorter than most expected, but those close to the program maintain that his impact was immense. 

“Coach Carroll cared about people very, very strongly,” Stolz said. “He cared about the community, and anywhere that he was and ends up being, he’s going to do that same thing. It never felt forced. He helped us understand the why behind doing things like community service and helping others. We had people in the stands because of it. The community loved us and supported us. Ultimately, it made the college experience more fun. And he facilitated that.”