Coaching legend Larry Brown returns from suspension at Las Vegas Classic

The locker room door had swung open and Larry Brown walked through it, a free man.

The 75-year-old Hall of Fame coach had just witnessed SMU's 105-72 rout of Hampton last Thursday at Moody Coliseum in the second round of the Continental Tire Las Vegas Classic. And with the win, Brown's nine-game suspension by the NCAA had concluded. His players gave him a hero's welcome and Brown was pleasantly surprised by the reception.

"I didn't realize 33 days could go by so slowly," Brown said Monday before he and the Mustangs boarded a plane to Las Vegas to play in today's Classic semifinals at 5 p.m. against Kent State at the Orleans Arena. "But when you watched the way they played, it helped make the time go a lot quicker."

SMU was found to have committed several violations and in the NCAA's new world order, the head coach bears responsibility and does the penance. The Mustangs were barred from postseason play and Brown was not allowed to coach the first nine games.

He makes his return to the sidelines tonight with a team that has gone 9-0 and has played well under associate head coach Tim Jankovich.

"I told them I don't want to (mess) them up," Brown said of his message to the team. "I've got to get up to speed and understand what we're doing."

For Brown, a 2002 inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame who has coached 10 NBA and ABA teams and three college programs (UCLA, Kansas and SMU), that shouldn't be a problem.

"This is what I do every single day," he said of coaching and teaching. "It's like getting on a bike. When you're my age and you've done this as long as I've done it, it's not that hard.

"We're getting into the real challenge of our schedule and my biggest thing is I don't want to disrupt what's going on."

Brown said he tried to turn the negative of his suspension into a positive by spending time with his family, particularly his grandchildren. But he said he missed his basketball family at SMU.

"I was just counting the days," he said.

Brown said it's important that he and the program move forward, starting today in the Classic semis against 7-2 Kent State (10-1 Colorado faces 8-3 Penn State in the other semi at 7:30 p.m.). Talking about the NCAA sanctions doesn't help change what happened.

"We've got to move on," he said. "We can get into whether it's fair or not later. I'll have more to say on that at the appropriate time. But focusing on what we're not allowed to do doesn't do any good. We don't talk about it and we just move on. There's nothing we can do about it other than go out and be the best team we can be."

— Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him: @stevecarprj