Sources: Brown out at Wichita St
5:16 PM ET Pete ThamelESPN Wichita State is set to fire coach Isaac Brown, sources informed ESPN.
School authorities
are preparing to meet with him today to formalize his departure.Wichita State went 17-15 this season after losing to Tulane on Friday in the AAC competition.
Brown went 48-34 over his three seasons there, reaching the NCAA tournament in his first season however not returning the previous two years.Wichita State has a brand-new athletic director, Kevin Saal, who concerned the school from basketball power Murray State in June of 2022. Saal took control of for Darron Boatwright, who drew criticism for an inability to construct the proper infrastructure for Wichita to compete in the NIL(name, image, likeness)era.Brown took over for previous coach Gregg Marshall, who resigned in November of 2020 amid accusations of spoken and physical abuse.
Marshall, who has virtually vanished from the basketball world given that his departure, reset the on-court expectations at Wichita State before his departure.Wichita State reached the 2013 Final 4 and had an unbeaten routine season in 2013-14. Marshall also oversaw the program’s leap from the Missouri Valley to the American Athletic Conference. Brown took over in a time of turmoil and struggled to live up to that quality of success.Brown, an assistant on Marshall’s staff prior to being promoted head coach, started his tenure with an appealing opening season in 2021-21. Wichita earned an NCAA competition bid, acquiring an No. 11 seed before losing to Drake in the First 4 of the NCAA tournament.But the outcomes were irregular after that, as Wichita lost to Alcorn State and San Francisco in nonconference play this season and completed 9-9 in league play. That began the heels of Wichita finishing 6-9 in conference play in 2021-22.
Wichita has established a credibility as a school with uncommonly strong fan and financial support, which could make the job appealing to an established coach.