I corrected the problem. What I did wrong was assign and UV map a texture AFTER I had gone through the nCloth animation process.
What I did to fix the problem was to create a flagpole and flag out of polygons (in Rhino 4.0). I then UV mapped it in Ultimate Unwrap 3D. Next I applied the texture map. Once in Maya it was easy to create an animation. The texture now followes the animation of the nCloth.