Legendary basketball coach, Larry Brown, was welcomed to the hilltop with a grand spectacle that included overhead planes. (Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus)

SMU’s new men’s basketball coach Larry Brown was introduced today with more than 200 people in attendance in front of Moody Coliseum. The Hall of Fame coach comes to SMU as the only coach to win both an NBA Championship and a NCAA title.

“I just think being a college coach, you’re really a teacher and that’s something I really love to do,” Brown said about coming back to college coaching.

Brown believes in what SMU has to offer with the new renovations, the campus, being in Dallas and the fertile recruiting grounds of Texas. Head football coach June Jones and Brown became texting buddies over the last month, which Brown is still picking up how to do. Brown wants to get right into recruiting the Texas area, which SMU has neglected in previous years.

“Just walking around this campus, if we can get a kid here, I can’t imagine him wanting to go anywhere else,” Brown said about recruiting players to SMU.

Brown’s contract is rumored to be a five-year deal at $1.75 million a year, but terms were not officially released. Brown said after the introduction that two, maybe three of his assistants have signed their deals to be Mustangs.

He feels SMU is the best combination of academics, a great city and great university that he envisioned coaching when he began his career.

“I never realized at 71, that this opportunity would present itself,” Brown said.

Former SMU coach Matt Doherty, current Kansas coach Bill Self, ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla and current members of the board of trustees were in attendance. SMU athletic director Steve Orsini said the process was very deliberate, but in the end SMU got who they wanted.

“It took us 71 days to get June Jones. I’ve refined the process down to 37 days and I feel we got the June Jones of basketball,” Orsini said. “We never were rejected. We made one offer and we got one acceptance.”

Brown is eager to get to work and spoke to his players this morning with Doherty in the room about how his coach left his sophomore year in college and how tough it was. Coach Brown plans to run an up tempo style of game with an in your face man-to-man defense. The coaching staff is expected to be announced later this week Orsini said and we will have more on that when it is announced. 

(Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus)