UTEP head basketball coach Rodney Terry rumored as candidate for Texas assistant job

EL PASO, Texas -- Could Rodney Terry leave a head coaching job for an assistant role?

Sources have told ABC-7's Nate Ryan that the UTEP head men's basketball coach is indeed a candidate to join new University of Texas head coach Chris Beard's staff in Austin.

Beard was introduced as the next Longhorns coach on Friday morning.

It has already been announced that Chris Ogden will be leaving his post as head coach at UT-Arlington to join Beard as an assistant at Texas.

Terry and Ogden are great friends, as Ogden was an assistant for Rick Barnes at Texas where he overlapped with Terry, who was a Longhorns assistant from 2002 to 2011.

As Sports Illustrated college basketball insider Kevin Sweeney details, it might not be so crazy for Terry to leave his head coaching job for an assistant role.

"He has a decent job now. He hasn't failed at UTEP," says Sweeney.

Terry has compiled a record of 37-38 in three years at UTEP since coming over from Fresno State.

His best finish came in 2019-20, when he went 17-15. After starting 8-1 to open the 2019-20 season, the Miners lost 14 out of their last 23 games.

But Texas could offer a chance to start fresh in a familiar spot.

"He goes to Texas, they win big at Texas, and now he's a hot name for every job and he can restart," opines Sweeney.

"It's a way of, in one to two years, getting a clean slate on your resume in a way that you couldn't really do in any other way, other than turning around and winning big in a year randomly if things aren't moving in that direction," Sweeney added.

Terry's current contract with UTEP runs through the 2023-24 season, after he received a 1-year extension following the 2019-2020 campaign.