Lanier 2nd chance dance
Takes Georgia State to NCAAs, 20 years after guiding Saints there
When Siena fired Rob Lanier in 2005, he didn’t think he would get another chance to be a college basketball head coach. “No,” he said. “No. Never. No.” His four-year tenure at Siena started well enough with an improbable run to the 2002 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title in his first season, followed by a National Invitation Tournament appearance in his second. But then the Saints bottomed out with records of 14-16 and 6-24, leading to his dismissal.
He figured he’d squandered his only opportunity with Siena, a desirable mid-major job.
“Because who does that?” Lanier said. “Who gets another shot? Who, with my profile, gets that second shot? When you think of examples of guys who maybe failed at the high-major level (they) get a mid-major job. But guys who strike out on the mid-major level, they rarely get another shot. I didn’t see a path there and I wasn’t going to set myself up that way. If I was going to be an assistant, I needed to accept that very well could be the case and I needed to be a great assistant for whoever was going to give me that opportunity.”
He served as an assistant at Virginia, Florida, Texas and Tennessee, where he reinforced his reputation as an excellent recruiter and gained more coaching experience. Finally, Georgia State gave him that second chance to be a head coach in 2019 and Lanier is making the most of it.
Lanier guided the Panthers (18-10) to the Sun Belt Conference championship with an 80-71 victory over Louisiana in the final on Monday night in Pensacola, Fla. Georgia State will find out its seeding, opponent and destination when the NCAA Tournament selection show is televised at 6 p.m. Sunday on CBS-6.
It’s been 20 years since Lanier led No. 7 seed Siena to four victories in four days at MVP Arena (then Pepsi Arena) to capture the MAAC title. The only team in the field with a losing record, Siena (17-19) beat Alcorn State 81-77 in an opening-round game in Dayton, Ohio, before losing to eventual national champion Maryland 85-70 in the first round in Washington, D.C.
Then he was 33 years old. Now he’s 53 and said he’s enjoying this trip to the Big Dance from a different, less self-centered perspective. He said he’s happy for his players and coaches on his staff who have never been to the tournament. Lanier has worked on the bench as a head coach or assistant for a dozen teams that have advanced to the NCAAs. Georgia State assistant Cliff Warren was on Paul Hewitt’s staff at Siena that won the 1999 MAAC title.
“When I was younger, I was really looking at it through a different lens,” Lanier said. “I definitely look at it more in terms of the impact it has on other people than I do what it’s doing for me and my career and what I want to accomplish and all that stuff. I definitely have a much better appreciation for the accomplishment now.”
Unlike Lanier’s underdog Siena team in 2002, Georgia State was picked to win the Sun Belt in the preseason and went into the tournament as the No. 3 seed. The Panthers are on a 10-game winning streak.
When he won the Sun Belt title, Lanier heard from several of his former Siena players, including Prosper Karangwa, now the Philadelphia 76ers vice president of player personnel.
“How about that?” Karangwa said. “It’s like super exciting. You build relationships with your coaches and stay in constant contact with them. I knew he always wanted to have another chance at running his own program. To have the success he’s having this year, it’s always great to see.”
Lanier said he started to think he could be a head coach again with the encouragement of Billy Donovan, on whose staff Lanier served at Florida from 2007 to 2011. He said Donovan made him a better coach just with attention to scouting. Then Lanier worked for Rick Barnes at Texas and Tennessee.
“I was a better candidate than I was a leader (at Siena) and I learned a lot more about leadership since then since I’ve been around some great ones,” Lanier said. “I learned that it wasn’t about me and that the best leaders are more focused and concerned about other people. When I was a young coach, I was more concerned about my career and my aspirations and what I wanted things to look like for me. I probably would have had more room for error in another job but Siena’s a big-time job in a lot of ways.”
Lanier has a couple of vivid memories from that 2002 title run — moonwalking on the court at his players’ request after the championship win over Niagara and not giving a pregame pep talk before the final because he felt his team didn’t need one.
He’s enjoying success all over again with his wife, Dayo, and two children: son Emory, a sophomore guard at Davidson, and daughter Kai, a freshman at Charlotte.
“In terms of my journey, 32 years in Division I, that (Siena) was a really important part of my growth as a coach,” he said. “The reality was it took me a while to move on because I failed, so that hurts. It took me a while to get past that.”