BYU assistant basketball coach Terry Nashif announces he is leaving the program

BYU announced early this afternoon that assistant coach Terry Nashif will leave the basketball program to pursue “business opportunities.”

After playing for the BYU hoops team, Nashif was hired as director of operations in 2005 before being promoted to an assistant coach in 2007. For the past few years, Nashif’s main responsibility was calling and planning offensive plays.

Nashif’s departure comes at a time when BYU has seen a decline in offensive play. In 2016, BYU had its lowest ranked adjusted offensive efficiency since 2012, and often struggled in half court sets. BYU also struggled to develop any of its bench players (Payton Dastrup, Steven Beo, Colby Leifson, Braiden Shaw, etc) and saw a dip in production from Nick Emery after a stellar freshman season.

So, who will be BYU hire as an assistant coach? The program missed a big opportunity last season when they didn’t pursue former Portland Head Coach Eric Reveno, who is a friend of Rose and was often complimentary of the program. Reveno went east to Georgia Tech.

One possible candidate is former BYU big man Noah Hartsock, who was a graduate assistant under Rose and is currently having success as a high school coach at Centennial High School in Las Vegas. Hartsock would give BYU an assistant who could focus on the development of BYU’s bigs and bring recruiting connections from the Las Vegas area.

One other possibility is Heath Schroyer, who was a BYU assistant from 1997-2001. Since that time, Schroyer has been a Head Coach at Portland State, Wyoming, and UT Martin. He was recently let go as an assistant at North Carolina State when the school fired head coach Mark Gottfried. BYU may not have the money, however, to lure him back to Provo.

BYU had plenty of interest from dozens of people when they hired Quincy Lewis, and will likely have a fair amount of qualified suitors this time around.