Andy Enfield hired by SMU to take the Mustangs into basketball-rich ACC

Andy Enfield will lead SMU into the basketball-rich Atlantic Coast Conference after being named coach of the Mustangs on Monday.

Enfield was at Southern California the past 11 seasons, after he had taken No. 15 seed Florida Gulf Coast to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2013.

“Coach Enfield is enthusiastic about joining the Mustang family and the ACC,” SMU athletic director Rick Hart said. “He has a strong track record of building winning teams on the court and in the classroom and pursuing championships with integrity. We believe he is a game changer for SMU men’s basketball.”

SMU hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2017, which was only its third appearance since last winning a tourney game in 1988.

Enfield was 220-147 with five NCAA tourney appearances at USC. The Trojans were 15-18 this season with Bronny James as a freshman, ending a run of four consecutive years winning more than 20 games.

“I am so excited to join the SMU family,” Enfield said in a statement. “It is an incredible time for the university as we enter the ACC. The investments SMU has made in athletics, the support and alignment from leadership … as well as the passion of the SMU fan base and community made this an incredibly attractive opportunity. We will make Mustang fans and the city of Dallas proud and cannot wait to get started.”

Enfield will be formally introduced Tuesday on the SMU campus.

The ACC will have 18 basketball teams with SMU officially joining the league this summer along with Cal and Stanford from the Pac-12.

Three ACC teams made the NCAA Elite Eight this season. That included North Carolina State beating Duke in the South Region final Sunday at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, which is just over five miles from SMU’s campus.

Rob Lanier was fired after two seasons as SMU’s coach on March 21, a day after the Mustangs lost 101-92 at Indiana State in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. They finished 20-13, doubling their win total from last year, but were 30-35 overall under Lanier with a 16-20 record in American Athletic Conference games. Lanier has since been hired as coach at Rice.

USC is moving from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten this summer. The Trojans got as far as the Elite Eight in 2021, but that basketball team plays in the shadow of the school’s higher-profile national champion football program.

Enfield first captured national attention in 2013 as the coach at Florida Gulf Coast, guiding the school into the Sweet 16 with wins over Georgetown and San Diego State by playing a high-flying, up-tempo offense that often ended with thunderous dunks. That “Dunk City” run ended in North Texas with a loss to Florida in a South Region semifinal played at AT&T Stadium.

He parlayed that success into the higher-profile job at USC, where he developed Evan Mobley, Onyeka Okongwu and Isaiah Mobley into NBA draft picks.

The 54-year-old coach began his career as an assistant with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics. He was also an assistant coach at Florida State for five seasons from 2006-11, a time when the Seminoles made the NCAA Tournament three years in a row.

Reporting by The Associated Press.

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