SMU was a #1 seed in the NIT just last season and one of the top teams left out of the NCAA, just missing. Now they are #217 in NET ranking three spots ahead of ECU. With what they can pay with their well-organized top-notch NIL collective, it's likely Kendric Davis would have returned for unfinished business. Especially when you consider he transferred within the conference. Yet they fired...er force retired Tim Jankovich and torched that, and now they have this.
To make matters worse they paid Rob Lanier a reported 2 million dollars a year. He makes as much or more money as Mark Few, Hubert Davis, and a bunch of other coaches at P5 programs if you want to put that in perspective. He was barely over .500 in his career and was fired at one job for going 6-24 at Siena in year 4. Not year 1, year four. You should never be that bad if you can coach IMO. An Autobid 145-ranked team at Georgia State got him this level of job. I don't get it, who else was trying to hire and pay him like that? I never liked the idea when the name was floated for the ECU job as one of the top candidates in a search that seemed to consist of basically just Tennesse connections. Unfortunately, SMU is one of the best-funded programs in the AAC and ECU needs SMU to be good.
The only ray of sunshine is he did at least try to recruit some transfers. I think he's got the basic blueprint and philosophy correct of what nearly all coaches clearly believe is the path to success, I'm not sure how well he can execute it, but at least he's proven he will go sign 7 transfers. I feel like there is more hope if that is at least your starting point. He'll probably blow it up again and go sign 5 or more transfers this spring and at least bring some hope next season at least. We'll see what he ends up with. It's a pretty stark difference in recruiting for guys off the same coaching tree.
As for the game, there isn't much noteworthy that came from it other than LaCount getting benched and cutting the rotation to essentially 6 main players. If that sticks I believe it would be a positive. Unfortunately, I think this was something they see as a poor matchup with bigger scoring guards on the other side of the court than a permanent move. We'll see. There will be nowhere to hid LaCount with Tulane coming 2 games from now. Cook is 6 feet tall but he's 205lbs. That's the thing about size, you can be shorter but you need to be strong and built like a tank, or fast and athletic.
