Billy Gillispie

Gillispie agreed to take the job only after he was sure that the predominantly football-focused school was actually committed to winning, becoming the first native Texan to be the head basketball coach at Texas A&M since J. B. Reid was hired in 1930.

Gillispie asked for a budget large enough to allow them to play confidence-building non-conference schedules, rarely venturing out of Reed Arena in the first two seasons.

Using the padded non-conference schedule to their advantage, the Aggies won the first eleven games of Gillispie's debut season before finishing the season 21–10, a fourteen-game improvement over the previous season.

Although the Aggies were picked to finish last in the Big 12 Conference, they finished 8–8 in conference play, winning games against the number 9 Texas Longhorns and number 25 Texas Tech Red Raiders on their way to becoming only the third college team to ever finish .500 in league play after being winless the previous season.

Billy Clyde Gillispie (born November 7, 1959), also known by his initials BCG and Billy Clyde, is an American college basketball and current men's basketball coach at Tarleton State.

Gillispie had previously been head coach at UTEP, Texas A&M, Kentucky, and Texas Tech.

After leading both UTEP and Texas A&M to postseason appearances one year after poor seasons, Gillispie became the only college basketball coach to be in charge of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) program with the biggest turnaround in two consecutive seasons.

Gillispie was known as an excellent recruiter who managed to put together four straight top-25 recruiting classes.

In his three seasons at Texas A&M, the Aggies achieved three consecutive 20-win seasons for the first time in the program's history.

Gillispie was born November 7, 1959, in Abilene, Texas, the middle child and only boy among five children of Clyde, a cattle truck driver, and Winifred Gillispie.

He grew up in Graford, Texas, a town of 494 people located about 65 miles west of Fort Worth.

As a child, Gillispie worked as a paperboy, delivering copies of The Fort Worth Press. At Graford High School, Gillispie played point guard for the basketball team and was a standout athlete in his graduating class of 20 students.

He attended Ranger College, playing basketball and baseball for them from 1978 to 1980, before transferring to Sam Houston State University to work as a student assistant for their basketball team under coach Bob Derryberry, a former classmate of Gillispie's father.

Derryberry moved to Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University–San Marcos) the following year, and Gillispie accompanied him, spending three years as a graduate assistant.

Gillispie received his degree in education from Southwest Texas State in 1983.

Gillispie spent the next few years building a coaching resume, spending two years as an assistant high school basketball coach before becoming a head coach at Copperas Cove High School in 1987.

From 1987 to 1993, Gillispie held three high school head coaching positions.

He was nominated for Texas Association of Basketball Coaches (TABC) high school coach of the year for his 1992–1993 season with Ellison High School in Killeen, Texas, which set school records for winning percentage and points scored and ended the season ranked 4th in the state.

After a year as an assistant coach at South Plains College, in 1994, Gillispie moved to Division I college basketball as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Baylor University under head coach Harry Miller.

Miller and Gillispie had coached against each other in the same high school district as late as two years earlier, with Miller at Temple High School.

The Baylor Bears' 1996 recruiting class was ranked as high as number six in the nation.

After three years at Baylor, Gillispie moved to the University of Tulsa to be an assistant coach under Bill Self.

Tulsa reached the elite 8 in the 2000 season.

When Self moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Gillispie followed, working as an assistant there for the next two years.

During those two seasons, Fighting Illini won back-to-back Big Ten Conference titles for the first time in 50 years, advancing to the Elite Eight in the 2001 NCAA Tournament and to the Sweet 16 in the 2002 NCAA Tournament.

With Gillispie's assistance, Illinois landed a top 10 recruiting class in 2002.

Through Gillispie's eight years as an assistant, he was a member of coaching staffs that won five conference championships in six years.

As part of Bill Self's staff, he was a member of the only coaching staff in NCAA history to lead two different schools to the Elite Eight in successive seasons.

Gillispie was hired as the head coach of the men's basketball team at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2002.

In his first season as a head coach, the UTEP Miners finished a dismal 6–24.

Despite the poor showing, Gillispie put his recruiting expertise to work so that his first recruiting class ranked in the top 25 in the country and included Filiberto Rivera, the 2003 National Junior College Player of the Year, and Omar Thomas, the all-time leading scorer in junior college basketball.

In the exhibition games preceding the 2003–04 season, Gillispie's UTEP Miners defeated the Harlem Globetrotters 89–88, after the Globetrotters had already defeated many college teams including the then-defending national champion, Syracuse Orange.

It was the first defeat the Harlem Globetrotters had suffered in 289 games.

Although the Miners were predicted to finish ninth in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) for the 2003–04 season, UTEP instead captured their first conference title in 12 years.

After two years at UTEP, Gillispie was approached to interview for the head coach position at Texas A&M University, vacant after the forced resignation of Melvin Watkins, whose team had gone 7–21 and failed to win a Big 12 Conference game in the 2003–04 season.

Athletic Director Bill Byrne needed to revitalize the program, which had only one winning season in the previous eleven years, and desired a new head coach with the ability to "recruit the heck out of Texas".

The team finished 24–8 and received a bid to the 2004 NCAA tournament.

The 18-win improvement was the best in Division I basketball that season, and one of the best in Division I history.

As a result of their success, the Miners built a huge home following, ranking first in the NCAA in increased attendance.

After his second season with the Miners, Gillispie was named Texas coach of the Year by the TABC and was a finalist for National Coach of the Year honors.