The Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) men’s basketball program announced the new hiring of Assistant Coach Caleb Villarreal, a Mission native and former UTRGV Athletics staff last Thursday.
Coach Villarreal will be joining the Panthers after spending the previous four seasons as a Special Assistant to the Head Coach for UTRGV men’s basketball.
UTRGV Head Coach Lew Hill explains how much Coach Villarreal has helped men’s basketball in the last four years, not only within the program but in the community as well.
“He did a little bit of everything, besides coaching on the court because he’s not allowed to, but everything else he did. As far as the travel, getting us out in the community, his family helped us embrace the culture of the Valley,” Hill said. “Just taught us, he did marketing, he did everything. Anything around here he did it.”
Villarreal will be joining Head Coach Bryon Smith’s coaching staff at PVAMU where the Panthers have won back-to-back South Western Athletic Conference (SWAC) regular-season championships in 2019 and 2020, as well as going to the NCAA tournament in 2019.
Coach Smith said he is excited to bring Coach Villarreal and see him bring in new ideas to the program from his past coaching stints, as a manager, at Texas Tech and graduate assistant and video coordinator at Southern Mississippi University.
“I’m going to put pressure on Caleb to share as much information that he’s been able to compile in 5 or 6 years that he’s kind of been in this business to try to help me,” Smith said. “I want some new ideas, we’ve had some success at Prairie View and I think our system is pretty, just culture, is pretty established, pretty set, but you never get too old to learn so I felt that he could bring some new ideas a fresh perspective to our program.”
Some sadness was expressed by Coach Villarreal that he would be leaving the Rio Grande Valley where he is surrounded by family and has fostered many relationships with players, coaches and members of the UTRGV administration.
Coach Villarreal is excited for the next step in his coaching career and is ready to help the Panthers three-peat as SWAC regular-season champions.
“I wouldn’t’ve left the Valley and home if I didn’t think this was an opportunity for me to go further in my career but I knew it was a no-brainer and there was no hesitation on my part from what I heard from Coach Smith, how he does things and obviously the… you see it on the court,” he said. “Back to back championships and going to the NCAA tournament, what he’s done here at Prairie View I don’t think has ever been done before and the goal is to go for the three-peat, go for three times in a row winning the SWAC.”
Coach Villarreal added that he ultimately wants to represent and make the people of the Valley and Mission proud.
For Vaquero Radio, I’m Luis Rubio.
