Top Wichita State basketball assistant coach leaving Shockers for a MAC job back home
Wichita State men’s basketball associate head coach Lou Gudino turned in his resignation on Wednesday morning to join Ball State with the same title under recently hired Michael Lewis, Gudino confirmed to The Eagle.
It ends a four-season run with the Shockers for Gudino, who was hired by former coach Gregg Marshall in July 2018 and then promoted to associate head coach last summer when Brown had assumed full-time control. WSU posted a 76-42 record during the past four seasons, highlighted by the program’s first American Athletic Conference championship in 2021, as well as an NCAA Tournament appearance that season, as well as an NIT semifinal run to Madison Square Garden in 2019.
“It wasn’t an easy decision to leave and first off, I want people to know that Isaac Brown is a winner,” Gudino told The Eagle. “He’s won everywhere he’s been and he’s also a great human being and I’ve really enjoyed working for him.
“We were lucky enough to put a banner up there in Koch Arena and although this year didn’t go as we all planned, overall my four years there was a wonderful experience.”
Indiana is home territory for Gudino, who will now work in Muncie, which is less than three hours away from his hometown of Clinton. He also spent a full decade as an assistant coach at Indiana State in Terre Haute from 2007-17.
And now he will be working for another Indiana native in Lewis, who is from Jasper and a former Hoosiers player under Bob Knight from 1996-2000. In fact, it was when Lewis was a freshman at Indiana when Gudino was a first-year college coach and coached him during a summer clinic to form a connection.
When Lewis, who has been a Division I assistant since 2004 with stops at Stephen F. Austin, Eastern Illinois, Butler, Nebraska and most recently UCLA, finally landed a head coaching job back in his home state of Indiana, Gudino was prioritized with his knowledge of the state and deep recruiting ties back home.
“Coach Lewis and I have known each other since college and this was too good of an opportunity to turn down,” Gudino said. “He’s a superstar in this industry and he’s going to do great things.”
Gudino said he was grateful for the shot that Marshall gave him back in 2018 to coach at the highest level he has been at, as he has been a Division I assistant coach since 2005 with stops at Louisiana Tech, Indiana State and New Mexico State before WSU.
“Coach Marshall was nothing but great to me as a mentor and a friend,” Gudino said. “I think back to the second half of that first year (2018-19 season) and some people say it was his best coaching job, then we started out 15-1 the next season and that was a lot of fun. I’ll always remember those memories and the players we were able to coach.”
Gudino leaves behind an annual salary of $230,000 and the title of associate head coach at an AAC program for the same title at a MAC program that hasn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2000.
Brown already had found a replacement on Wednesday morning, as WSU is expected to hire veteran assistant coach Butch Pierre to join a staff that includes Tyson Waterman, who is now the longest-tenured assistant entering his fifth season at WSU, and Billy Kennedy, the former head coach who joined Brown’s staff in 2020. The rest of the staff is filled out by director of operations Dominic Okon, director of player development Nick Jones and video coordinator Jeff Chapman.
This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 9:04 AM.
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