SMU’s upcoming transition to the Atlantic Coast Conference has been highly publicized during football season, but the move will also affect other sports.
The Mustangs’ men’s and women’s basketball programs will also leave the American Athletic Conference (AAC) and join one of the deepest basketball conferences in the nation.
The SMU women’s basketball team will enter its third season under head coach Toyelle Wilson, coming off back-to-back postseason appearances for the first time since 2014 and 2015 by making the Women’s National Invitation Tournament two years in a row. Now, the focus shifts to making the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2007-2008 season.
“Our expectations are to get to the postseason every year, and obviously, the next step is to the NCAA [Tournament] appearance,” said Wilson at the conference’s media day on Monday. “With the veterans that we have, the transfers that we got, and the freshmen that are coming on the team, we’re really excited about the opportunity to be successful.”
The inevitable move may overshadow the season, but the Mustangs are choosing to focus on the task at hand.
“We want to just leave our legacy in our final year of the AAC, and we’ll worry about the ACC later,” Wilson explained. “We just want to control what we can do for every game, every practice and let the chips lie where they are. Also, just to give us a little bit of confidence going into the ACC. We know it’s going to be a transition period, and we have a lot of work to do in the transfer portal this spring, but the momentum and confidence that we have going into ACC obviously relies on how we fall in the AAC.”
The past two years have brought incredible progress to the SMU women’s program, but Wilson knows it will not mean anything if the team does not continue to trend upward this season.
“The last season is the last season,” she said. “This is probably the hardest out-of-conference schedule that I’ve had since I’ve been here. … I mean that this is probably our hardest, but we have to prepare for the conference. We have to get better on the road and in conference, so I wanted to prepare our girls in the out-of-conference schedule and really be challenged early, especially with our youth, because no one cares about what you did last year. It’s about what you’re going to do this season.”
The men’s team is also focusing on the upcoming season rather than the move.
“We’re going to take it like this is all about this year and this team,” head coach Rob Lanier told the media. “… For me, it’s about this group and the family that we’re building right now and what we can try to accomplish together. That’s it. Now, whatever implications that might have if we get the job done, so be it, but that’s not for us to concern ourselves.”
The team went 10-22 last year, but head coach Rob Lanier is confident in his squad going into his second season with several players returning and a few notable transfer additions.
“I really feel like this is our second year that there is some carryover that we established a culture,” he said. “We brought 10 guys back that we wanted back because they really represent the way we want to build our program, and they were able to embrace the five newcomers and help them get a sense for the way we want to do our business.”
The team took an offseason trip to Spain to create chemistry before the season and went 3-0, enhancing its confidence entering the season.
“These guys really embraced every tour, every trip to a museum, and everything we did,” Lanier noted. “… I thought they really embraced the entire experience, and as a result of that, the chemistry and camaraderie that you want to build on a foreign trip. I feel like that took hold basketball-wise. I thought we made some strides, and nobody got hurt, so I thought it was overall successful.”
The SMU men’s basketball team will begin its season against Southwestern Assemblies of God on November 6, while the women will play California-Riverside that same day.
