Abilene Christian head coach Grant McCasland has been named a Baylor men’s basketball assistant following the resignation of Mark Morefield.

Baylor coach Scott Drew said Morefield resigned to pursue other basketball opportunities. Morefield came to Baylor as a member of Drew’s staff in 2003 from Valparaiso.

Grant McCasland cuts down the net after his Midwestern State team won the Division II South Central Regional last year.
Midwestern State Athletics photo

Last October, FOXSports. com reported that the NCAA was investigating the Baylor men’s basketball program after Morefield reportedly violated NCAA rules by sending dozens of text messages to Hanner Perea’s AAU and high school basketball coaches last July.

Perea is a Colombia native who is entering his senior year at La Lumiere High School in La Porte, Ind. Perea, who will be a 2012 graduate, has verbally committed to Indiana.

Baylor self-reported the text message violations involving Morefield to the NCAA. Morefield was unavailable for comment Monday.

McCasland, a 1998 Baylor graduate, will return to his alma mater. He was a guard under former Baylor coach Harry Miller for four seasons and was selected to join the academic all-Big 12 team.

McCasland was named head coach at Abilene Christian on March 30 after leading Midwestern State in Wichita Falls to a 56-12 record and consecutive NCAA Division II Elite Eight appearances in two seasons. But the pull of returning to Baylor was too difficult to pass up.

Coming back to Waco

“It was a gut-wrenching decision,” McCasland said. “But when I looked at what Coach Drew has done here and the kind of person he is, this is just an unbelievable opportunity for me. Everyone (at Abilene Christian) understood that coming back to the place I played and coming into the kind of environment Coach Drew has cultivated was too much to pass up.”

Before his tenure at Midwestern State, McCasland spent five seasons as head coach at Midland College where he compiled a 143-32 record.

The Chaps went 29-8 and won the 2006-07 NJCAA national title before going 33-4 and losing in the 2008-09 national championship game.

“We are extremely excited about Coach McCasland returning to his alma mater,” Drew said. “He has the reputation as an exceptionally hard working coach who has won a national championship and helped take programs to previously unprecedented heights.”

McCasland began his coaching career as the director of basketball operations on former Texas Tech coach James Dickey’s staff from 1999-2001 before serving two seasons as the assistant coach at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colo.

jwerner@wacotrib.com

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