I first mentioned this move back on March 21st (NAIA DIRT) – it’s now been made official. Here’s the official release from Louisiana Lafayette on the hiring of Donald Reyes as an assistant coach:
The Louisiana men’s basketball team announced the addition of Donald Reyes to the men’s basketball staff, joining new head coach Quannas White‘s first staff.
Reyes comes to Louisiana after a three-year stint as the head coach at Loyola (N.O.) where he won 50 games with the Wolf Pack and was the first black head coach in program history.
In his first season at Loyola, Reyes was named the Southern States Athletic Conference Coach of the Year after leading the Wolf Pack to a 24-7 overall record, 16-4 in SSAC Play, and the SSAC Regular Season and Tournament Championships. The 24 wins were tied for the second-most in a season in program history. It was the third SSAC tournament title in program history, and the program’s second-straight regular season title.
The Wolf Pack again earned an SSAC Championship in Reyes’ second season as the seventh seed, becoming the first team to win four games in four days to capture the tournament title. It was the program’s third consecutive tournament title, and its fourth in the last six seasons.
Prior to that, Reyes spent 15 years coaching in the Division I ranks. He served as the Director of Basketball Operations at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in 2021-22, helping the Islanders reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years. Before that, he was an assistant coach at Bethune-Cookman, leading recruiting, scouting, player development, and basketball operations from 2019-21.
No stranger to coaching in Louisiana, Reyes spent seven seasons at Tulane. He worked as the Director of Player Development, Director of Basketball Operations, and the Assistant to the Head Coach from August 2012 to June 2019. His roles included coordinating skill workouts, assisting with travel, overseeing all aspects of the program’s budget, on-campus recruiting coordinator, academic liaison with student-athlete onboarding, and marketing and public appearance coordinator.
Reyes was an assistant coach at Frank Phillips College in Borger, Texas, before joining Sun Belt Conference member Arkansas State as a graduate assistant. There he edited game film and created scouting tapes and breakdowns of opponents, while also serving as an athletic compliance intern for the athletics department.
He attended LSU, where he was a student manager and film exchange coordinator for the men’s basketball program that had two NCAA Tournament appearances, including a Final Four run in 2006.
A native of the New Orleans area, Reyes graduated from John Ehret High School in Marrero before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with a minor in sports communication and business from LSU in 2009 and a master’s in sports administration from Arkansas State University in 2011.
