SMU parts ways with Rob Lanier after two seasons
SMU Basketball will have a new head coach as the program is parting ways with Rob Lanier after two seasons, sources confirmed to On3 on Thursday. A national search is underway for athletic director Rick Hart with the pressure on to hire the right leader for the Mustangs.
Lanier, who SMU hired away from Georgia State in March 2022, went 30-35 overall at SMU and 16-20 in American Athletic Conference play. Lanier had the Mustangs on a promising track at one point in the 2023-24 season, but the team cratered down the stretch, losing six of its last seven contests.
Year 1 of the Lanier era was a rebuild, going 10-22 overall and 5-3 in AAC play. He brought in a solid transfer haul to improve the roster, but it underachieved in the watered down AAC in Year 2.
SMU now steps up into the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2024. The program isn’t short on money with benefactor David B. Miller’s name on the court. Miller helped will SMU into the ACC and between salaries, NIL and other resources, the program is a sleeping giant, in a sense.
Larry Brown revitalized the program, showing its potential, but since then, it’s been sleepy with some top talent underperforming under two head coaches — Lanier and Tim Jankovich — while missing that juice that Brown had going on the Hilltop.
Lanier revamped the culture in a big way, instilling a defensive mindset at SMU, which was welcomed. Outside of that, he didn’t nearly take advantage of what SMU could be. He didn’t fully utilize all the tools at his disposal with NIL and an impressive recruiting base of high school prospects and transfer players from the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex.
SMU boasts an impressive pair of collectives — the Boulevard Collective and PonySportsDTX — which have millions in waiting to be utilized.
Moody Coliseum is one of the top environments in college basketball, when it’s humming, and a new coach will be trying to energize “Moody Magic.”
In Lanier’s three seasons at Georgia State, the Panthers went 53-30, winning the Sun Belt Tournament in 2022 and advancing to the NCAA Tournament. The Panthers also made the Sun Belt Tournament final in 2021.
In addition to being the head coach at Georgia State and Siena, he has been associate head coach or an assistant coach at Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Rutgers and his alma mater, St. Bonaventure.
