University of Texas at Dallas men’s head basketball coach Terry Butterfield is retiring after 23 seasons.
The team announced that Butterfield will officially retire in October, and the search for his replacement will begin immediately.
“When I arrived from the East Coast 23 years ago, I thought I would be at UT Dallas for three-to-five years,” Butterfield said in an official release on the team’s website “As I prepare to step away, I feel very thankful for the great ride I have had. I have watched this university explode into what it is today, and I am very proud to have been a small part of it. Most importantly, I want to thank the many young men who came to UTD to get a great education and represent our basketball program.”
“Watching them grow and mature over their college careers has been the greatest part of the whole thing,” he continued. “They are the heart and soul of our great basketball tradition and I am truly grateful to have been able to interact with such amazing student-athletes. I won’t miss the long bus rides or the late-night recruiting trips, but I will definitely miss the guys.”
UTD hired Butterfield to replace Ray Farrell, who had a 16-23 record in two seasons, in 2000 and led the Comets to their first winning season with a 13-12 record during the 2001-02 season, just the fourth year of the program’s existence. He went on to win 396 games in Dallas with nine regular season conference championships, four American Southwest Conference (ASC) Tournament championships, 20 consecutive ASC Tournament appearances, and seven NCAA Division III Tournament appearances.
“I knew I was going to a really good school that I thought had really good potential,” Butterfield told The Dallas Express. “It took a while to get really get moving in a positive direction, but once we sort of found our niche and the kind of kids we could recruit successfully, it turned into a really good thing.”
“It’s basically his,” former UTD athletic director Bill Pettit added to The Dallas Express. “He’s only the second coach in the history of the program. The institution celebrates its 25th year in athletics this fall, and he’s been here for 23 of them. So outside of that first year when it was just getting off the ground, this has been his program.”
He began his coaching career at his alma mater, Eckerd College, in 1982 and also coached at Stetson (his other alma mater), Wittenberg University, and North Carolina-Greensboro before becoming the head coach at Virginia Wesleyan University in 1989.
His UTD teams only had four losing seasons during his entire tenure.
The 2022-23 UTD team finished as the seventh-ranked team in NCAA Division III Region X with a 20-6 record. The season ended with back-to-back losses to East Texas Baptist.
The team and the university’s athletic department expressed their gratitude to the coach on Twitter.
“Our program has had the honor of being led by Coach Butterfield for 23 incredible years,” the team wrote. “He retires with 553 career wins (396 at UTD), 4 ASC tournament titles, and 9 regular season ASC titles!! We wish Coach the best in retirement!”
“Twenty-three seasons, 4 conference championships, 9-time ASC Coach of the Year, and over 500 coaching wins,” the athletic department added. “It’s a bittersweet moment for UTD athletics. Thank you TB: wishing you the best in retirement.”
Butterfield retires with the 33rd-most wins in Division III basketball history.
“I hope I left things in a good way with a very solid foundation,” he reflected to The Dallas Express. “…I gave it my all, and I feel good that we did everything we could to leave things in a good way, and I think there’s a ton to build on. The university is an unbelievable place.”
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