Inside the three weeks that changed men's college basketball

Jeff Borzello, ESPN Staff WriterAug 26, 2024, 09:00 AM ET
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Basketball recruiting insider.
Joined ESPN in 2014.
Graduate of University of Delaware.

If you want to bury men’s college basketball news, the first day of the NCAA tournament is a pretty good day to do it.

So when the SMU Mustangs fired coach Rob Lanier after just two seasons — fresh off a 20-win campaign — the move may have raised some eyebrows in the industry, but it was quickly overwhelmed by 16 games of madness.

Within three weeks, however, it was clear that one move made an unquestionably bigger impact than anything that happened on the court that day.

SMU, a school that hasn’t made a Sweet 16 since man first walked on the moon, set off a seismic shift felt at every level of the sport.

Emboldened by their pending move to the ACC — announced a year earlier — the Mustangs aimed high for Lanier’s replacement, and landed the USC Trojans‘ Andy Enfield. The Trojans in turn hired Eric Musselman, who had taken the Arkansas Razorbacks to consecutive Elite Eights in 2021 and 2022.

All this set up the biggest move of them all: The Razorbacks, and their wealthy boosters, convinced John Calipari to leave the Kentucky Wildcats after 15 years, one national championship and five Final Fours (although none since 2015).

“As things unfolded and people started to point to SMU as starting that particular carousel, it was interesting,” SMU athletic director Rick Hart said. “It’s not like I relish it. But it was interesting to see the ripple effects our hire had across the college basketball landscape.”

“As a fan, it’s fascinating,” Enfield added. “To get Calipari out of Kentucky after 15 years? It’s fascinating.”

This is the story of how conference realignment, big donor money and one mega March Madness upset changed the face of men’s college basketball over three weeks this spring.

SMU: Where it all started

SMU’s move to the ACC was the most innocuous of the major realignment changes that became official this summer: Texas and Oklahoma‘s move from the Big 12 to the SEC; the collapse of the Pac-12; the Big Ten’s additions of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington; the Big 12 getting Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah; Stanford and http://Cal joining the Mustangs in going to the ACC. Comparatively, SMU — the only non-Power 5 program to jump up a level — didn’t quite stand out.

With its resources, facilities and location, the school has the infrastructure of a big-time athletics program — but it was still recovering from the effects of the “death penalty” given to the football program by the NCAA in 1987, and had been something of a nomad since the Southwest Conference dissolved in 1996. The Mustangs joined the WAC for eight years, then Conference USA for seven years and had been part of the American Athletic Conference for the past decade. But they were looking for a long-term home.

On the surface, a marriage between SMU and the ACC appeared as the league’s secondary quick-pivot response to the other power conferences expanding and the Pac-12’s ensuing demise.

Hart initiated the conversation with ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, laying out why the Mustangs were a good fit for the league despite being outside its traditional East Coast footprint. At the time, the conference was also in talks with Cal and Stanford, which would expand its territory to the Bay Area. Adding the Dallas market was no longer a non-starter.

“They have had prior success in all sports,” Phillips said. “It’s not a program where you’re wondering if they could compete at a high level. They’ve done that. Then you really start to dig in about assets and resources. The recruiting base is tremendous. The footprint in Dallas, Fort Worth. … Sometimes, you just need a chance. That’s what I got from them.”

It didn’t take long for the university to prove its financial worth to the ACC: SMU raised $100 million in one week after announcing its move to the conference in September 2023.

“You can’t replicate that level of enthusiasm and investment,” Hart said. “It’s still hard to believe. This whole thing has been filled with pinch-myself moments.”

The ACC welcomes Cal, SMU and Stanford to the league in 2024!

The school finally had some momentum. Last season, SMU football went unbeaten in AAC play and won the league championship game against a ranked Tulane team. Overall, the Mustangs had a program-record eight conference championship teams.

Rob Lanier’s men’s basketball program wasn’t far off the pace. After pummeling Memphis 106-79 on Feb. 18, the Mustangs were 19-7 overall and 10-3 in the AAC, just two games back of first-place South Florida.

But they would win just one game the rest of the season, finishing 20-11. It was a 10-win improvement on Lanier’s first season at the helm, but less than 24 hours after an NIT loss to Indiana State, he was fired on the first day of the 2024 NCAA tournament.

In his official statement about the firing, Hart cited the school’s investment in basketball, its NIL opportunities and its move to the ACC. He didn’t hide why he thought the program should be competing with the best.

“Decisions like that are pretty nuanced. In no way should that be viewed as an indictment on [Lanier’s] ability to coach at that level. But we lost a lot of momentum,” Hart told ESPN in July. “Late into the season, there was a lot of enthusiasm about making that transition [to the ACC] with that staff. But when you lose momentum and you’re going into a moment like this — it’s a factor in that way. You don’t want to go in there and stumble your way in. We feel we need to charge into the ACC with some momentum and energy in the community.”

Several high-profile names — Eric Musselman, Will Wade, Steve Lutz, Chris Jans — began buzzing through the rumor mill in the hours after the job opened.

But Hart had one target at the top of his list: USC’s Andy Enfield.

“We were only going to [fire Lanier] if we felt we could go get someone with the pedigree, the proven track record of success like Andy,” Hart said. “He’s done it, he’s done it consistently. At a school like SMU. At a level like the ACC. It’s not anything you have to project. … There’s no reason to believe he won’t do it here.”

It wasn’t going to be easy pulling Enfield out of Los Angeles, though. He had built the Trojans’ program into one of the most consistent in the Pac-12. USC struggled through an injury-riddled campaign in 2023-24 but had won 95 games the previous four years and even made it to the Elite Eight in 2021. Enfield signed several five-star recruits along the way, including the No. 1 prospect in the 2023 class, Isaiah Collier. And in 2022 he had agreed to a contract extension through the 2027-28 season.

Would Enfield really leave the Big Ten-bound Trojans for SMU?

The stats behind SMU hiring Andy Enfield

Take a look at some key numbers behind SMU hiring former USC men’s basketball coach Andy Enfield.

Hart flew out to Los Angeles to make his pitch to Enfield and his wife, Amanda. Before meeting with them, SMU brass wasn’t sure it could get Enfield. After dinner at Enfield’s home? “It felt real,” Hart said.

The deal would take several days to finalize, but Enfield was on board.

“There was a uniqueness about the situation going to the ACC, the opportunity to help lead a team into a power conference,” Enfield said. “You could just feel the excitement and passion and support.”

Enfield has also said he wouldn’t have made the move if the Mustangs were still in the AAC.

“I was not going to leave a program we had just built, to leave the power level and go to another level,” he said. “We saw it as an opportunity to be the first coaching staff — and recruit the first players — to go into the ACC in the history of the school.”

“It was an exclamation point on our move to the ACC,” Hart added. “A tangible, visible moment that said, things are different now. SMU is going to be able to operate at a different level and compete with anybody in the country.”

USC: The job that brought Musselman home

Eric Musselman had frequently been linked to other jobs since he led Arkansas to a pair of Elite Eights and a Sweet 16.

USC was different. The Trojans job offered a chance for Musselman and his family to return to the West Coast — he’d grown up in San Diego, and his wife, Danyelle, worked for several years in Los Angeles as a sports reporter and anchor.

When word got out about Enfield going to SMU, Musselman’s interest was piqued.

“It was definitely a job that I wanted and then it was definitely a job that our family wanted,” he said. “This is one that aligned with all of us.”

His interest also didn’t come as a surprise to Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek.

“I knew Eric would have an interest in that,” Yurachek said. “He had been very transparent with me about his desire to get back to a West Coast school if he ever had that opportunity.”

USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen did conduct a search, speaking to multiple candidates either directly or through intermediaries. But Musselman quickly became the top target.

The two sides spoke via Zoom — with Danyelle joining the call — and then Cohen flew out to Fayetteville to close the deal the Thursday before the Final Four.

“The more research that we as a family did, mainly on Jen, was so positive,” Musselman said. “I reached out to all kinds of people in different sports and just got incredible feedback. Her vision aligned with our vision. … Growing up in San Diego, the USC brand is so strong. I knew the academic piece, and then [we’re] in the L.A. market.”

It took just three days, but the Musselmans decided they were going home to Southern California.

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