Rumor mill

[MDJenkins]

Hart continues to disappoint. Cheap hire with little head coaching experience. Looks like Lil Ricky is more interested in a balanced budget so he doesn’t have to enact another re seating disaster. He continues to stumble and bumble his way through the job.

[Charleston Pony]

If Lanier is the guy, it's certainly not a "splash" hire but let's see what kind of staff and roster he can put together for next season and whether the program continues on an upward trajectory. In my mind, SMU has taken baby steps the last three seasons. A big challenge remains re: how to put more butts in seats to support whatever team SMU puts on the court next season. Restoring a big time atmosphere in Moody is job # 1

[mustangxc]

The spin machine is at full force. This is a disaster. SMU tickets should be $5-10 each at most.

Care to elaborate on this doomsday attitude? I admit I don't know much about him, but based on what I've read so far, I'm not sure how this is a disaster?

Recruiting is said to be his strength. He has landed 8 top 150 recruits in about 15 seasons at Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee. That is very underwhelming. Jankovich got us 2 in the last year alone and he was constantly dogged for his terrible recruiting. His strength was landing transfers. I'm not sure we have a plan.

https://247sports.com/Coach/Rob-Lanier- ... eRecruits/

If we were going to gamble, I would have preferred bringing back K.T. Turner or even Steve Lutz.

[Ikus]

Hart continues to disappoint. Cheap hire with little head coaching experience. Looks like Lil Ricky is more interested in a balanced budget so he doesn’t have to enact another re seating disaster. He continues to stumble and bumble his way through the job.

Not too interrupt a good rant, but the budget idea seems meaningless. Isn't the HC salary paid by donors?

[GHammond]

Lanier hasn’t coached in decades and is what, in his 70’s? I don’t see this. He was certainly a stud with the Pistons and Bucks and the whole size 22 shoe thing was cool, but HC? Weird hire IMHO.

[mustangxc]

You are thinking of his cousin, former NBA great Bob Lanier. This is Rob Lanier.

[GHammond]

Well….at least we are getting a coach from an SEC East program.

[DallasMustang11]

I don’t understand the doom and gloom here maybe someone can help me out. From what I’ve read he has a lot of experience at big time programs as an assistant. Also he just took Georgia state to the tourney. I hate to say it but we as a fan base seemed unrealistic. I saw someone asking if Mark Few might come here. I mean come on that would never happen. We needed a program builder. Maybe Lanier can be that?

[Charleston Pony]

The challenge that ANY coach has coming in to SMU is how to recruit against Top 25 programs or at least NCAA caliber teams (Memphis being the main competition going forward) and how to get SMU fans interested enough in the program to actually return to Moody. Let's face it...SMU caught lightning in a bottle with Larry Brown and that's not happening again any time soon, if ever. We do have a lot of fans who have very unrealistic expectations, especially for a program that hasn't won a game in the NCAA tournament in more than 30 years.

[mustangxc]

I don’t understand the doom and gloom here maybe someone can help me out. From what I’ve read he has a lot of experience at big time programs as an assistant. Also he just took Georgia state to the tourney. I hate to say it but we as a fan base seemed unrealistic. I saw someone asking if Mark Few might come here. I mean come on that would never happen. We needed a program builder. Maybe Lanier can be that?

His recruiting appears to be mediocre at best. 8 top 150 players in 150 years at Florida, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee is alarmingly poor. He hasn't shown to be an extraordinary bench coach. Winning the SBC tournament is more luck than coaching prowess. It's not like his teams won the regular season title. He succeeded Ron Hunter who was much better than him. Tulane managed to land Hunter. Tulane!!!! Tulsa got someone similar from Louisiana Tech and I guarantee we will be paying much more than Tulsa. Sorry, but this guys resume is not impressive at all. It may work out in the end, but give me back Jankovich! At least with him I knew we were going to the NIT with a slim chance of landing in the NCAA tournament.

Jankovich was a much better get coming from Illinois State and he was hired as an assistant!!! We are getting worse with each subsequent hire. Change for the sake of change is the stupidest thing we can do. I don't know why I expected better as we still have Hart as AD. Until he goes we will be stuck with mediocrity at best.

[redpony]

Don't know much about this guy but not impressed. There were a lot of good names mentioned and apparently passed on.
Not sure this is the guy who will rebuild and refill Moody to its past glory days of LB.
If this was totally a lil rickey hire then he should be gone soon, if a BMD hire then it speaks volumes as to their commitment to a top25 winning program.

[SoCal_Pony]

I’ll tell you my frustration with all this.

SMU is playing the ultimate game of Russian Roulette / Musical Chairs. 4 chairs were removed last year. ‘Maybe’, maybe there are only 2 chairs left. You win and you receive $45M annually and relevancy. Lose and you get $7M annually and obscurity. Put more succinctly, I think this P5 non P5 outcome will have over a half a billion dollar impact on our university, probably closer to a billion dollars.

So the stakes can’t be any higher.

SMU has had over a year to prepare for this moment. Their fan base was gut-punched, not by jank as much as their inept leadership. BMD’s supposedly involved now to fix things.

And this is what we get???? Snubbed by a ntsu hc so we take someone that was a hot prospect 20 years ago? This is going to bring back the winning, the fans, the Moody Magic????

I wish Lanier the very best but it is oh so difficult to care when our leaders don’t appear to.

[mustangxc]

Very well put SoCal. Our leadership is so stupid that Rice, Tulane, Tulsa, etc. could have hired this guy for $800,000 max and we will be paying him $2 million. If you are going to gamble like this, you might as well give K.T. Turner a chance. It would have been smarter to keep Jankovich for another 4-5 years. Clearly SMU has no commitment to championship basketball. If so, then why the re-seat? Hart is a moron and our BMDs are not very smart or not very committed.

[JasonB]

My initial reaction is "meh". I was expecting more of an LB or SD type hire - someone who is a well established head coach who happens to be a free agent.

But if you look at the Morris and Lashlee hires, you are taking top assistants from major programs. If you roll back Lanier before his Georgia State time, that is exactly what you have - Assistant head coach at a Tennessee program on the rise, and prior o that Texas and Florida when they were good. It tracks with that pattern, but with more actual head coaching experience than either RL or CM had at the time. So I should probably be more excited than I am.

I think we are going to see the fierce defense that we played under LB, and the crowd at Moody will appreciate that. The intensity the team will play with will get the crowd involved.

So, I am meh, but there is some good potential here. I'd like to see us hire an assistant that has an excellent offensive pedigree to help him out on that side of the ball.

[SoCal_Pony]

Very well put SoCal. Our leadership is so stupid that Rice, Tulane, Tulsa, etc. could have hired this guy for $800,000 max and we will be paying him $2 million. If you are going to gamble like this, you might as well give K.T. Turner a chance. It would have been smarter to keep Jankovich for another 4-5 years. Clearly SMU has no commitment to championship basketball. If so, then why the re-seat? Hart is a moron and our BMDs are not very smart or not very committed.

xc, please tell me that $2M is only a guess on your part, that would be insane to pay him that type of $$$. Lanier is currently making $600k.

And that is a good perspective that adds to my frustration. Lanier looks like a Rice Tulane or Tulsa hire at $800k-$1M max. Huge bump in pay and a better conference.