Matt Doherty's tenure at SMU comes to a close

Former North Carolina and Notre Dame coach went 80-109 in six seasons

The writing was on the wall.

There had been rumors for weeks concerning the improbability of Matt Doherty returning for another season at the helm of the SMU basketball program and on Wednesday it became official.

Doherty, who had five years of head coaching experience at three institutions--Notre Dame, North Carolina, and Florida Atlantic, had just one winning season in the six years at the helm of the Mustangs' program. SMU also never finished above .500 in CUSA play.

After failing to win more than 14 games in his first four seasons, the Roy Williams-disciple led SMU to the CI.com Tourney title game in 2010-11 and a final mark of 20-15.

However, this season, the Mustangs were unable to capitalize on the momentum of a year ago and saw their record plummet to 13-19 overall and 4-12 in CUSA.

With the program entering the basketball beast that is the Big East Conference for the 2013-14 campaign, athletic director Steve Orsini decided he had no choice but to make a change.

There are plans to make more than $40 million worth of renovations on Moody Coliseum. SMU drew just 2,013 at home this past season--a figure that ranked ahead of only Rice and placed the Mustangs 11th of 12 in the league's attendance rankings.