LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. – Every single day in between his last day leading the NBA G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce in 2019 and his first as the new head coach of the Siena Saints, Nevada Smith spent time thinking about how he would approach his next head coaching gig.
Over those seven years, he spent six seasons with Shaka Smart between Texas and Marquette, soaking in the basketball coaching world from a different lens, and broadening his horizons. Smith was a Division III grinder, a film junkie who was ahead
of his time in terms of X’s and O’s, and that got him very far. But it’s not what got him to where he is right now. As Siena’s head coach, he’ll implement many of the strategies that made big names like Daryl Morey take notice, but also the ones that he picked up along the way from Smart.
“I was with Coach Smart for six years,” Smith told Mid-Major Madness. “(He helped me with) understanding how to build a roster, how to build a culture, how to keep that culture through a season, which is really hard to do, to make sure everyone stays aligned. It’s really easy to have a great culture in the summer. There are no games. Once those games start happening and not everyone’s playing 40 minutes, that’s when you really need to rely on the guys in that locker room to make sure that they own their role, buy into it, and really be a success in the role they have.”
He’s attempting to become another branch off of Smart’s expansive coaching tree, which includes Will Wade, Mike Rhoades, Mike Morrell, and new conference rival Donny Lind. Smith said that Smart allowed him to act as the head coach in certain areas of the Marquette program, which in turn prepared Smith for his next head coaching job.
Now that it’s here, he had to dive in. But a diverse basketball background that now includes professional, Division III, and Division I allows him to swim in the deep end right away.
“When you work at different levels and move as much as we have, you kind of just can adapt and adjust to any situation and be able to find a way to succeed,” Smith said. “It takes a little time to figure each job out, each situation out, but I think once you do that and you kind of know what you’re looking for, what you’re trying to do, how you’re trying to do it, I think that stuff kind of falls in line.”
His first task at Siena was putting together his staff and figuring out how to retain pieces from a roster that just won the MAAC Championship. He turned to a figure with experience in the conference, former Quinnipiac associate head coach Shaun Morris, along with former Loyola (MD) assistant Matt Blue, and former Air Force assistant Lawrence Rowley. They, along with returning special assistant Brian Beaury and naming Kaden LeCapitaine as the director of basketball operations, make up Smith’s first coaching staff with the Saints.
Siena was able to retain four players from last year’s team, but only one starter. However, that one starter is Brendan Coyle, who checks off multiple important boxes for Smith.
“He’s Mr. Siena,” Smith said. “He was the guy we needed to get back. We got him back. He just fits me. He fits how we’re going to play. I think he really complements every other guy on our roster. He’s a guy who can play with anyone and make them better. And he works really hard. So he’s a great guy to have back as a grad student to teach these younger guys and guys who haven’t been here about us and about Siena as a whole.”
From there, he was able to build around Coyle’s return, along with the pledges from Reid Ducharme, Isaiah Henderson, and Owen Schlager to come back. Smith’s style not only emphasizes the outside shot, but also elite point guard play, which made that position an important next step.
He addressed that by adding Division II national champion Pace Prosser from Gannon University, who has the potential to be a Player of the Year contender. Asked to describe Prosser in one word, Smith called him a monster.
“He’s going to be the guy with the ball for us, make decisions,” Smith said. “There’s nothing he can’t do out there. So it gives you a good guy to have the ball in his hands to make plays for everybody else. He’s just an all-around hoop guy. Like he’s just a junkie. He wants to be in the gym all day. Can guard anyone, can play any position on offense.”
The Saints didn’t emphasize the transfer portal, though. Only Prosser and VMI guard Tan Yildizoğlu are coming to Loudonville from other NCAA programs. Smart famously shunned the transfer portal at Marquette in favor of internal retention and development. Smith will prioritize internal development, but he acknowledges the importance of using the portal at the mid-major level and is prepared to build a roster by whatever means necessary.
Athletic wing Parrish Edmond was committed to play for Gerry McNamara with the Saints, and decided to recommit to play for Smith.
“With Parrish, we just had a lot of common people around it that we were able to lean on, talk to, get to know each other through,” Smith said. “Obviously, he’s a talented young man, both on the floor and off. He’s as good an athlete as you’re going to see in this league. And he’s young to the game. He’s really learning. He’s growing.”
Siena’s other previous ‘26 commits will not be joining the team. Highly-touted point guard Ryan Moesch followed McNamara to Syracuse, JUCO guard Christian Gilliland will play for Southern Illinois, and big man Bol Wieu Thet has yet to commit to a new school. Smith landed DMV native Trent Ebgiremolen as well.
That leaves the rester of the roster full of international players. The Saints have already added four, in Tim Ibukunoluwa, Andres Amon, Mana Martin, and Yannis Steger. Smith has a ton of contacts overseas, which allows him to gather intel on players that he could potentially bring over to play for him. It’s such a different scout than watching a high school player, but Smith has an eye on what to look for, and an ear for what to listen for.
“I think the want to be a great player is what we’re looking for,” he said. “Guys who want to grow. Guys who want to work. So that’s what we’re looking for. Guys that understand it’s a process that takes more than just the 40 minutes of the game, the (1 or 2) hours of practice. It just takes more than that. I think we have some really good guys coming in that want to be great – (Guys) that want to be here, that are excited to be here. And they’re looking forward to doing something special.”
With Amon, a seven-footer from Spain, the Saints added serious size that isn’t common in the MAAC.
“You don’t have many seven-footers running around the league,” Smith said. “And I think his combination of size, he moves really well, he catches, he’s from a basketball family. I think he’s just going to add an element to our team. And I think people are going to have to really figure out what they’re going to do with him.”
Smith is extremely familiar with the upstate New York landscape, especially in the Albany area. He lived in Saratoga Springs during the summers when he coached in the G League, and he’s excited to be back in the area.
But now, when he goes around, he’s not incognito. He’s a figurehead of the regional sports community as Siena’s head coach. Smith has gotten out in the community to fundraise the way that any head coach has to. He described his initial interactions with Saints donors.
“(There was an) energy coming off a season last year with the MAAC championship and NCAA Tournament game against Duke that everyone was talking about and excited about,” Smith said. “Just capitalizing on that, pushing that forward, trying to push the bar a little bit further. That’s what we’ve tried to do since we’ve been here for a little over two months now, just getting out in the community and meeting everyone. There’s a love for Siena. Just making sure that (donors and fans) feel like they’re a part of it, they can be here when they want to, information that they need. We’re a pretty open program, so I think that’s been the biggest thing is just capitalizing on the energy and the enthusiasm that everyone has right now.”
But it didn’t really impact his recruiting this offseason.
“We probably would have recruited similar, no matter what, from a standpoint of basketball philosophy and culture philosophy,” Smith said.
He’s well aware of what he’s in for. Siena hasn’t had a coach stay more than five seasons in over 30 years. They either win enough to move up, like Paul Hewitt, Fran McCaffery, and McNamara, or they don’t, and they get fired, like Mitch Buonaguro, Jimmy Patsos, and Carm Maciariello.
Smith says he’s spoken to some of the former Saints coaches.
“They’ve all been awesome,” Smith said. “They’ve been generous with their time. We’re in a different era, but there are still ways to do it here that can carry over from generation to generation, so they’ve been awesome about any little detail that they had, things that were successful when they were here, and things that they think can probably still be successful.”
As Marquette’s de facto offensive coordinator, Smith redesigned the Golden Eagles’ offense and helped lead to multiple very strong seasons.
Now, he takes that to Siena. But what does it look like?
“Chaotic,” Smith said. “We want everyone to think it’s chaotic. We know what we’re doing.”
