Lamont Smith will be joining the Washington Husky basketball team next season as an assistant coach to Lorenzo Romar. Doug Haller, who covers Arizona State University, was the first to break the news on his twitter feed.
ASU lost assistant Scott Pera last night to Penn. Today, assistant Lamont Smith informed Herb Sendek that he is leaving for Washington.
— Doug Haller (@DougHaller) August 23, 2012
This will be Romar’s second hire in the past couple weeks as he also pulled away D-II championship coach, Brad Jackson from Western Washington. The only known departure from the staff is Raphael Chillious who went closer to home to be an assistant at Villanova.
Smith was a graduate assistant at St. Louis for Romar but has spent his last few seasons coaching at Arizona State. He has also been the assistant coach at Santa Clara and St. Mary’s. He is known for his ability to help recruit and work with the big-men down-low. There is no word on what his specific role for UW will be yet.
This is another good hire for Romar who seems to have been spending his days recruiting coaches to continue to compete in the re-loaded Pac 12. Adding these two assistant coaches will help, especially since Romar had zero new recruits in 2012. These two coaches were his big recruits for the season.
Jackson can seriously help the offense and game-plans and Smith may be helping fill the void that Chillious left in recruiting.