Siena will hire Marquette assistant Nevada Smith to replace Gerry McNamara as its men’s basketball coach, CBS Sports reported Wednesday.
Smith, 44, has been on staff at Marquette since the 2021-22 season and spent the first two years as special assistant to head coach Shaka Smart. He then moved to the bench as an assistant coach.
Smith worked with Smart at Texas in 2020-21 when the latter was the head coach of the Longhorns.
Before that, Smith was a head coach for five seasons in the NBA G League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers (2013-15) and Sioux Falls Skyforce (2016-19) and compiled a 135-116 record.
The Siena job marks a return to upstate New York for Smith, whose previous jobs include stops as head coach at SUNY Canton and assistant coach at Ithaca. He also was the head coach at Division III Keystone College in his native Pennsylvania from 2011-13.
As a player, Smith led the nation in 3-point field goals as a junior in 2000-01 at Division III Bethany College in West Virginia.
Siena has proved to be a steppingstone to power conferences for successful coaches. In his only season at Siena, McNamara led the Saints to the NCAA Tournament, where they almost pulled off a massive upset of No. 1 overall seed Duke last month. He was introduced Monday as the head coach at his alma mater, Syracuse.
Paul Hewitt (1997-2000) went from Siena to Georgia Tech, where he took the Yellow Jackets to the Final Four in 2004. Louis Orr succeeded Hewitt and spent one season at Siena before being hired by Seton Hall. Fran McCaffery (2005-10) parlayed his stop in the Albany area to a long career at Iowa.
Siena was 23-12 under McNamara.
