Larry Brown to Coach SMU

Last week, Larry Brown agreed to be the head coach of the SMU Mustangs for this next season. I found this deal to be surprising for a few reasons. For one, I'm just shocked that Brown is still coaching. The man is 71 years old, and his last job was in 2008, which led many people to believe that Brown would stay retired, or at least be waiting for a prime time coaching job. That brings me to my next point. Larry Brown is back in the NCAA. I never thought in a million years, outside of say Kentucky, that Larry Brown would coach college ball again. Brown says that his style has always been a college style and that he is comfortable coaching in the NCAA, but I just find it amazing that he would accept a deal that wasn't from an NBA team. His last coaching gig in college was with Kansas in 1988. Although Brown had great success with Kansas, winning a national championship, he also left amid a major recruiting scandal that led to the defending champion Jayhawks being banned from the 1989 NCAA Tournament. Clearly, time heals all wounds, as these recruiting scandals have not even been mentioned by any major news outlets, particularly ESPN, in regards to his latest hiring. The last part of this that interests me is how far SMU has climbed in the college basketball worly without even having major success. The Mustangs have not even made the NCAA Tournament since 1993, and haven't won an NCAA Tournament game since 1988, when Brown last coached in the NCAA. Last season alone, the Mustangs went 13-19, including going 4-12 in Conference USA play, including a downright embarrassing 47-28 loss to UAB. Despite all of this lack of success, in one season, SMU has joined the Big East, one of the top conferences in NCAA basketball, and landed a Hall of Fame caliber coach. It truly is staggering to me how quickly this program is turning around. Just goes to show what this drive for football can do. We'll see if all of this change involves in a turnaround for the SMU basketball program, or just lead to further debacle and embarrassment.