Ed Board would like to say thank you to someone who has done a great job in just one year: head basketball coach Matt Doherty.

Doherty came in a made SMU basketball exciting again. No, the record at the end of the season did not show that very well. But a strong non-conference record and several close conference games leaves a good outlook on years to come.

There is some talk about Doherty possibly taking a job somewhere else and not returning to the Mustangs next season.

Ed Board believes that this would be a very unlikely occurrence, especially when Doherty says he wants to take a SMU basketball team to the Final Four.

But you have to look at what Doherty did off the court, too.

The first thing Doherty did was get involved with the students. He made rounds to the fraternity houses and invited the sororities to practices with pizza. But Doherty also got the rest of the students excited by having a top name coach leading the Mustangs.

The hiring of Doherty was possibly the best SMU athletic news since the death penalty in 1986.

With the football team finally looking like they are back on track, Doherty is here to get the basketball team back on track. Most SMU students don’t know that the Mustangs were in the Final Four and have been to the NCAA Tournament 10 times.

The problem is that the last time SMU saw the tournament was in 1993 while the Mustangs were still in the Southwestern Conference.

Now, 14 years and four coaches later, SMU looks like it has the best chance to go back, and that is due to one man, Doherty.

Doherty not only has the ability to turn a player who averages 3.8 points a game one season into the team’s leading scorer with more than 17 points a game, a la Ike Ofoegbu, but he also has the ability to bring in a higher-quality player as well.

So when a coach can mold into a good player into a great player, there is no limit to what this team can do.

Doherty can pretty much stay at SMU as long as he chooses, and it is up to the SMU community to let him know that he is appreciated. That began with the groundbreaking of the Crum Basketball Center, the new scoreboard and talks of other renovations of Moody Coliseum.

So thank you coach Doherty, thank you for bringing excitement back into Moody Coliseum. We’ll be behind you and cheering in the Final Four.