The Maine Man

Lee leaves successful team on East Coast to help bring stability to Falcons program

By Sam Waller
Odessa American
July 28, 2005

The men’s basketball program at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin has made progress in its three seasons of existence, but the progress has also lead to coaching turnover.

Randy Lee was introduced Wednesday as the school’s third coach with an eye toward establishing stability for the program.

“I’m going to meet individually here in the next week with all of the returning players and their parents to let them know that I’m going to embrace them,” Lee said. “I understand what they’re going through emotionally and the challenges involved.

“I’m going to try to break down those barriers as early as possible. That’s going to be a big selling point to make sure I understand where they’re coming from and they get to know me as early as possible.”

Lee replaces Billy Mims, who was named head coach at Florida Tech on June 25 after guiding the Falcons to a 9-23 record in his only season with the school.

“(Lee) has very good experience in his past on the way to becoming a head coach,” UTPB athletic director Steve Aicinena said. “He worked at several Division I schools with some good coaches who highly recommended him. He has good basketball knowledge and I think he’s going to be somebody good to play for.”

Lee was selected from a field of about 80 applicants, Aicinena said.

Lee was the head coach at the University of Maine at Machias, an NAIA school, for the past two seasons, going 52-14.

In 200304, the Clippers won the Sunrise Conference Tournament championship and earned a berth in the NAIA National Tournament. That was followed up by a 29-4 mark last year as the Clippers set a school record for wins in a season and won the Sunrise Conference regular-season title. Early in Lee’s first season at Machias, he also took over the women’s program. Women’s coach Dean Preston was part a National Guard unit called up for duty in Iraq in November 2003. Under Lee, the Lady Clippers went 13-9 to finish out a 15-11 season, then went 22-4 last season.

Lee previously served as an assistant NCAA Division I programs at Maine, Towson (Baltimore, MD.), Delaware State, Centenary College (Shreveport, LA) and Miami (FL). He was also an assistant at Palm Beach Atlantic (FL) and with the Florida Sharks of the United States Basketball League.

Before becoming a head coach at UMM, Lee spent one season at Orono (Maine) High School, taking a program that had posted four straight losing seasons to the state quarterfinals.

In addition to his basketball background, Aicinena said Lee’s experience in other areas made him an attractive candidate.

“This job really has two duties and both of them are important,” Aicinena said. “Our university is more than athletics and part of his duties include serving as the Assistant Director of Intramurals. Student Life is important to us here.

“Randy is very experienced in that area, very student-orientated and very university-orientated.”

The Falcons lose only one senior from last year, and Lee said he isn’t worried about imposing a particular style of play on the returning players.

“I don’t have too many preconceived notions,” he said. “I know the style of play is going to be team-orientated. I want them to play hard, play extremely well on the defensive end and be unselfish offensively.

“But I know we have a challenging schedule ahead of us. The first five games of our schedule are extremely challenging with three Division I teams (UTEP, Texas State and UT-Arlington) and Houston Baptist.”

With the hiring last month of baseball coach Brian Reinke, UTPB has filled all its coaching openings before the start of the fall semester.

“We really tried to fill the position as rapidly as possible but still have a good pool of candidates to select from,” Aicinena said.

We start preseason volleyball and soccer practice on Aug. 8. It’s a relief to me to have all our positions filled and I’m real excited about the year for our whole athletic program.