A familiar face will return to the bench when the Southeastern Louisiana men’s basketball opens the 2017-18 season against Southern-New Orleans on Nov. 1.
Kyle Roane, who was on head coach Jay Ladner’s first two staffs in 2014-2015 and ’15-16, rejoins the program as an assistant coach, Ladner announced on Tuesday.
Roane spent the 2016-17 season as the Director of Basketball Operations at Southern Mississippi. His hiring is subject to approval by the Board of Supervisors for the University of Louisiana System.
“I can’t tell you how excited we are to have Kyle Roane coming back to our staff,” Ladner said. “He was one of our original staff members here and he brings a tremendous amount of experience. His ties in our recruiting area, Mississippi and Louisiana, are very, very strong and that was certainly a motivation for us to go hire him back. In my opinion, he is one of the top assistant coaches in the country. I think he is a star in his profession as an assistant and certainly a potential head coach for somebody down the line in the not-too-distant future.”
Roane helped recruit a number of players on the current Southeastern squad as an assistant under Ladner from 2014-16. He helped the Lions improve from 9-23 the first season to 12-21 the second, a mark that included a win over New Orleans in the opening round of the Southland Conference Tournament.
“One thing that has been really good for me in coming back to Southeastern is the familiarity and how comfortable I am with the staff coach Ladner has and the extended athletic staff and school community,” Roane said. “And probably as important as the familiarity of the staff is our players. That transition has been really good. It’s made for a very warm welcome and that’s an awesome feeling.”
Ladner said Roane will “have his hands in almost everything”, but will be heavily involved in recruiting, especially in Mississippi where his base of contacts are from. He will also be in charge of the Lions’ academic program.
“As an assistant coach, I do whatever roles come up at the time, whatever coach Ladner has in store,” Roane said. “Obviously, recruiting is an everyday job at the Division I level and that’s one thing that excites me to get back to Southeastern, to be able to recruit not only good players but good men, too, to our basketball team and to our university. And once they are here, academics is something I think is a big obligation and duty as us as coaches to prepare them for their future and their future outside of basketball. One great way to change a person’s life or even our society is through education. We’ll always emphasize that once they are on campus.”
Roane originally joined the Southeastern program following three seasons as the head boys’ basketball coach at Petal (Miss.) High School. Prior to that he spent one season as the head coach at his alma mater, Forrest County Agricultural High School, leading it to the first round of the south state tournament.
Before returning to Forrest County Agricultural, Roane was at Jacksonville State University, where the Mississippi native teamed up once again with head coach James Green after the pair enjoyed tremendous success in a seven-year stint together at Southern Miss. Roane came to Jacksonville State after serving the previous two seasons as the head coach at Jones County Junior College.
A native of Brooklyn, Miss., and a 1995 graduate of Southern Miss with a degree in coaching and sports administration, Roane got his coaching career started early, when he was named an assistant at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville, Miss. He would spend the first four years of his career at PRCC, helping the Wildcats to the 1995 Mississippi state title along the way.
In 1996, he joined Green as a member of his first staff at Southern Miss, where he served as an assistant for four seasons before being promoted to the Eagles’ Associate Head Coach in 2000, a position he would hold for three years. While in Hattiesburg, Roane helped guide the Eagles to a pair of 22-win seasons, the first of which came in 1997-98, when they posted a 22-11 record and advanced to the NIT to face Auburn.
Roane’s transition into the associate head coach’s role was a successful one, as the Eagles posted a 22-9 record and won Conference USA’s regular season title in his first season in the new role. Southern Miss went 11-5 in league play, earning their second NIT berth in four seasons, this time taking on Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss.
After his tenure at Southern Miss, Roane took the reins at Forrest County Agricultural High School in his hometown of Brooklyn. He spent two seasons as the Aggies’ head coach, taking them to back-to-back postseason appearances before going back to where his coaching career began at Pearl River CC.
In his second stint with the Wildcats, Roane helped them to the South State Championship and a runner-up finish in Regional XXIII. He then moved on to Jones County Junior College, where he was named the school’s head coach in 2006, the beginning of a two-year stay.
