KERRVILLE, TX --  Schreiner University announced late Friday afternoon that Jimmy Smith has agreed to become the new head coach of the men's basketball program.  Smith has been the assistant men's basketball coach at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor - a fellow member of the American Southwest Conference - for the past three years.  During that time, an already highly successful program saw its greatest success in its history.

Smith's hiring comes exactly one month after former SU head coach Drew Miller announced that he was resigning because his wife - who had earned a significant promotion within the U.S. military - was being transferred to the nation's capital for her new job.  Under Miller, the men's program moved to unprecedented success, on and off the court, and now the reigns transfer to Smith.

"I am extremely excited to be the new head coach at Schreiner University," said Smith upon his hiring. "I've always had a great amount of respect for Schreiner from a distance but through this process I have developed an even greater admiration for the University and the things that it represents. I have very high expectations for the players in my program and they will be student-athletes in the true sense of the word. We will have a heavy focus on academics and will utilize the tremendous support systems that the university offers to ensure academic success. Athletically, I am excited about the current players we have in the program. I look forward to adding some recruits to go with them to continue moving the program towards being a perennial championship contender. Schreiner offers students a very well rounded college experience. My vision is for our team to enjoy and be successful in all aspects of their college experience. The biggest victory will be to see them graduate and experience great success in the work force because of the education and experiences that they had here at Schreiner."

SU Director of Athletics Ron Macosko added, "When Drew announced that he was resigning to help his family, it was a very sad time for us.  He did such a great job in building this program in so many ways.  When the position opened, we had a tremendous response from the coaching fraternity and the search committee had a huge job on its hands - especially as we moved along in the process.  We really wanted to find a man who was going to continue to build a strong culture of excellence in all respects of our program.  Someone who understands NCAA D-III and embraces its values and philosophy.  Someone who is passionate about basketball but also about seeing his players succeed on the court as well as in life after SU.  We think we found the perfect man for the job in Jimmy Smith and couldn't be happier to welcome him, his wife Lori and young son Harrison into the Schreiner family."

Smith was a four-year letter-winner for head coach Ken DeWeese at UMHB.  He was also a three-time Academic All-ASC honoree and was named to the Verizon/CoSIDA Academic All-District VI First Team his senior year.  He graduated in 2004 with a degree in business administration and took an assistant coaching position on the men's basketball staff at NCAA Division I Sam Houston State while working on his master's degree.   At SHSU, he coached under Bob Marlin, who is now the head coach at Louisiana-Lafayette.  The Bearcats posted a record of 40-21 in those two seasons and went 22-10 in the Southland Conference over that span. He earned his MBA at SHSU in 2005. 

In July of 2006, Smith decided to put his degrees to work in the real world and was a regional and heathcare representative for pharmaceutical powerhouse Pfizer.  After three years of success at Pfizer, Smith made the decision to go back to his passion and his basketball coaching and teaching roots and returned to assist DeWeese at his alma mater.  During the past three seasons, UMHB has posted an .800 winning percentage, made three NCAA Tournament appearances, one American Southwest Conference Championship and two ASC West Division titles.  Last year, the Cru made it to the NCAA Sweet 16 and finished 24-1 in the regular season and 20-1 in ASC play, which are all school records. Each of the past two years, UMHB has been in the top five in the national rankings.  The program has also seen outstanding improvement in the academic success of its players.

Smith inherits a team that is coming off an NCAA-era high in 2011-12.  The Mountaineers went 13-13 overall and 11-10 in ASC play, both records for the program.  Still, the season came down to one game at the end of the regular season to decide if Schreiner would earn it's first trip to the ASC postseason tournament in history.  Freshman standout Travis Pflughaupt had broken his nose in practice the day before the game and freshman Stevan Guerrero - who played an important role in the improvement of the team as the year went along - was already lost for the season due to surgery on a ruptured tendon in his finger.  In that deciding game's first five minutes, star point guard Darren Smith went down with a serious knee injury in a winner-take-all contest with Concordia-TX.  Rather than accept a season-ending loss, the team rallied - led by senior Tyrie Prince who played his best game in his college career when it mattered most - and Schreiner went on to an improbable 90-78 win. 

The Mountaineer program was no less successful off the floor, earning a 2.99 team GPA in the fall semester with 16 team members earning academic distinction.  Schreiner loses seniors Prince, Kevin Carrell and Trent Noack to graduation, but the players who accounted for the overwhelming majority of the scoring and rebounding load this past year are eligible to return in 2012-13.

The Smith family will be moving to Kerrville during the summer and Smith is already on the road recruiting future players to his Mountaineer team.

-Courtesy Schreiner University Sports Information Department