No. 17 SMU winning without Brown; NCAA bid in sight
DALLAS — Larry Brown can’t imagine that any coach is doing a better job this season than Tim Jankovich is with short-handed SMU.
“Oh, it’s remarkable,” Brown said.
While it has taken a while for most people to notice, the 17th-ranked Mustangs (25-4) are doing quite well after the sudden and somewhat unexpected departure last summer of Brown, the Hall of Fame coach who two years ago took SMU to its first NCAA Tournament since 1993. He left after a contract dispute.
“Just a good group of guys and I think now that they’ve been through a lot, and they’ve been together through so much, it has really resulted in what you’re seeing on the court,” SMU athletic director Rick Hart said.
The Mustangs, one of the nation’s top defensive teams, allowing 59 points a game, have won 21 of their 22 games since November and led the American Athletic Conference after their 69-61 win at UConn on Saturday.
“I don’t want to say they’ve exceeded expectations because we always think big,” said Jankovich, who then went on to describe his team as “pretty amazing.”
If not for NCAA sanctions that included a one-year postseason ban, SMU would have been back in the NCAA Tournament last year after winning 25 games in the senior season for two-time American Athletic Conference player of the year Nic Moore and AAC top sixth man Markus Kennedy.
With those key seniors and Brown gone, SMU is limited this season because of the NCAA penalties — down at times to only six available scholarship players. But those sanctions, related to a September 2015 ruling against Brown involving a case of academic fraud, won’t keep the Mustangs out of another NCAA Tournament.
“We just looked at this season as an opportunity to, not necessarily get back on the map, but just to get what we owe ourselves,” sophomore guard Jarrey Foster said. “We owe ourselves a lot, just how much we’ve been through.”
The Mustangs were 20-4 before finally breaking into the AP Top 25 for the first time this season on Feb. 6.
They then avenged a January road loss with a home win over Cincinnati, and moved up again in the poll after consecutive victories in games they trailed by double digits before halftime.
Jankovich was SMU’s associate head coach the past four seasons. He was also head coach-in-waiting, a title he didn’t particularly like, but a necessity to leave a head coaching job at Illinois State for a spot on Brown’s staff.