With the 2023-24 men’s basketball season around the corner, Troy University head coach Scott Cross announced three coaching changes made. The three include the promotion of Brandon Gilbert to Assistant Coach and the hiring of Larry Cordaro as Director of Operations and Kelvin Lewis as Director of Player Development.
Gilbert has been with Troy for the past three seasons after being hired by Cross in 2020 as the director of player personnel. He was instrumental in Troy’s recruiting process over the last three seasons, which helped boost the Trojans to back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since 2002-04. He also helped build the only Sun Belt team in the past two seasons with 20-plus wins overall and 10-plus wins in conference play.
“Coach Gilbert did a great job as director of player personnel,” Cross said. “He was an extremely successful high school coach winning two district championships and two coach of the year awards for two different schools before I hired him. I brought him on staff with the intention of moving him up when we had an opening. He is ready for this opportunity and will do an awesome job recruiting talented student-athletes to Troy while helping our current student-athletes reach their full potential both on and off the basketball court.”
Before his time at Troy, Gilbert was a two-time coach of the year as a member of Arlington Lamar and Killeen Shoemaker High School. While earning his personal accolades, he also led Arlington to the 2020 District 6A Championship. That followed his 2018 season with Killeen Shoemaker, when he got his first COTY award and a 2018 district title.
As the director of operations, Cordaro comes to Troy after eight seasons as the assistant coach for Southeastern Louisiana and nine as the LSU-Alexandria head coach. Cordaro became the head coach in LSUA’s inaugural season and immediately boosted it to a premiere program in the NAIA with a 224-50 record that included eight NAIA Tournament appearances and a national championship birth in 2018 – won a conference tournament title in 2015, 2017 and 2018. At home in “The Fort,” he amassed a 107-10 record.
“Coach Cordaro is one of the hardest working coaches in the country,” Cross said. “We are very excited to hire someone as talented, experienced and successful as him. 2017 he was named the NABC NAIA National Coach of the Year. Coach Cordaro has an overall head coaching record of 224-50, which might give Coach Dean Smith a run for his money. Coach Cordaro will keep our office organized and on task, but he will also make our players and team better with his basketball experience and knowledge.
A native of Ruston, La., where he earned his diploma from Ruston High School in 1998, Cordaro conducted his own basketball camps where he taught over 400 camp members. From there, he competed collegiately at Xavier and LSU, earning a Bachelor of Science in accounting in 2002 and a Master of Science in sport management in 2004. Next, he took his experience to coaching at LSU and UTA before heading to Southeastern Louisiana, where he helped coach nine All-Southland Conference, six All-Louisiana and four NABC All-District players and made six trips to the Southland Conference Tournament.
The Cross-Lewis connection comes full circle with his first coaching position. Cross recruited Lewis from North Crowley High School before he spent one season at Auburn and three at Houston. In his four seasons, he averaged 11 points, three rebounds, 1.1 steals and one assist while shooting 40.6 percent from the field, 37.1 percent from deep and 81.5 percent from the charity stripe. While being a member of the Cougars, the Fort Worth, Texas native was a Conference USA Player of the Year, All-CUSA First Team, All-Defense, All-CUSA Tournament Team and CUSA Tournament Most Valuable Player.
“Coach Lewis is a future star in our business,” Cross said. “He was a star at the University of Houston, where he was named Player of the Year in Conference USA. He just finished an outstanding professional career after playing in the G-League for two years before moving on to play overseas for the past 10-plus years in eight different countries. I recruited Kelvin out of high school. He was an “OKG” (Our Kind of Guy) then, and he is an “OKG” now. He was very talented, but he was also extremely high character. He will be an amazing resource for our players and will work very closely to help develop each player to his full potential.”
In his 17 years playing collegiate and professional basketball, Lewis competed in the G-League (1,004) and in Finland (1,152), Sweden (652) and Austria (1,305), where he scored 4,113 points – complied a total of 5,450 in his entire career. The professional journey for Lewis began in 2010 when he was drafted to the Texas Legends. He hoisted the championship trophy five times in his 17 years while finding individual success as the Iceland Scoring Champion and Finland Defensive Player of the Year. However, he hung up the professional shoes after four straight years with SKN St. Polten Basketball, averaging 13.3 points, 2.4 rebounds and 1.3 assists in his final season.
Troy University Basketball Staff Update
