Travis Mays named women’s basketball head coach at SMU

By Steve Lansdale

DALLAS, Texas — Travis Mays and the University of Texas women’s basketball team were unhappy witnesses to an unstoppable force from the northeast, watching their season end with a loss to the University of Connecticut in the fourth round of the NCAA Tournament. Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma followed that win over the Longhorns by guiding his team to another national championship … and then making a call to Rick Hart, the athletic director at SMU, which was narrowing the search for a new women’s basketball head coach.

“You’re not going to make a hire based on any one recommendation,” Hart said, “but I will say this about Coach Auriemma: I’m imagining a lot of people want him to recommend them for jobs, and he didn’t call me with three names or five names or seven names — he called me about Travis.”

That phone call was part of the process that led SMU to hire the former UT star player and assistant coach

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