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Former Illinois guard Crandall Head said Wednesday he plans to visit SMU next week, but he is also still considering attending DePaul next year.

Head, a sophomore shooting guard, left Illinois after the school’s first semester in December. He did not enroll in junior college in the spring and will have to sit out all of next season wherever he transfers.

Head said his visit to SMU came about because of his relationship with former Illinois assistant Jerrance Howard, who was recently added to Larry Brown’s staff at SMU. Howard recruited Head at Illinois.

“Just talking to Jerrance, he’s telling me great things about the school, and I just want to see it for myself,” Head said. “We’ve been talking since I left school. He’s still like family to me. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s just a good person. I trust him and what he’s telling me about the school.”

Head said in January he planned to transfer to DePaul, but he’s since been contacted by other schools.

“DePaul is still an option,” Head said. “SMU just popped in. I’ve talked to a lot of schools, and I just want to check out my options and see what’s best for me.”

Head averaged 1.0 points, 0.6 rebounds, 1.0 assists and 9.2 minutes in nine games with Illinois last season.

He was a highly touted recruit for the Illini out of Rich South High School in Richton Park, Ill. He was ranked No. 79 in the Class of 2010 by ESPN Recruiting.

Head said he didn’t regret leaving Illinois, but he wishes he had stayed the entire year.

“I’m pretty happy with my decision with leaving,” Head said. “It probably wasn’t the time to leave in the middle of the school year. That’s probably my only regret.”

Head has continued to stay in touch with most of his former Illinois teammates, and he felt for Bruce Weber when he was fired from Illinois.

“I was little disappointed for him,” Head said of Weber. “It’s the way things work. They weren’t winning too many games.”

Scott Powers covers colleges for ESPNChicago.com.

SMU had three more players selected in the NFL draft Saturday.

Following in the footsteps of OG Josh LeRibeus, who was picked in the third round (71st overall) by the Washington Redskins on Friday, was defensive end/tight end Taylor Thompson (145th overall), Richard Crawford (213th overall) and Kelvin Beachum (248th overall).

Thompson, a fifth-round pick by the Tennessee Titans, had 22.5 tackles for loss and 18 sacks in his career at SMU and was a three-time All-Conference USA selection.

Crawford will join LeRibeus in Washington. Taken in the seventh round by the Redskins, Crawford picked off six passes and recorded 101 tackles in two seasons and was a first team All-Conference USA selection in 2011 as punt return specialist.

Beachum moves on to Pittsburg after starting four years at left tackle for SMU, where he earned first team all-conference honors his junior and senior seasons. Beachum will be reunited with former Mustangs teammate Emmanuel Sanders with the Steelers.

Horned Frogs duo drafted

TCU linebacker Tank Carder and defensive back/kick returner Greg McCoy received draft calls Saturday.

Carder, famous for his “immaculate deflection” in TCU’s Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin, was selected 147th overall in the fifth round by the Buffalo Bills and becomes the fifth TCU linebacker in as many season to join an NFL team.

Carder was a two-time All-American and a Mountain West Conference Defensive Player of the Year in his junior and senior seasons, amassing 70 tackles for the Horned Frogs his senior year.

McCoy will head to Chicago. Taken in the seventh round (280th overall) by the Bears, McCoy was an All-American return specialist his senior season, as well as the Mountain West special teams player of the year.

McCoy, who played at Dallas Woodrow Wilson, saved TCU’s Poinsettia Bowl victory by returning an interception 24 yards to set up the game-tying touchdown.

He returned two kicks for touchdowns in 2011 and his 30.6-yard return average his senior year ranked sixth nationally.

Cader and McCoy are Gary Patterson’s 30th and 31st players drafted in his tenure at TCU.

SMU introduced Larry Brown as its new basketball coach Monday. Read more here.

The Cowboys' Dallas Day kicks off today at Valley Ranch with several area players getting a chance to talk with team officials.

SMU guard Josh LeRibeus, a 6-3, 312 pounder and TCU defensive end Braylon Broughton, 6-4, 255, will visit the complex.

LeRibeus missed his junior season for academic reasons but played his senior season. Here's the scouting report on him from NFL.com. Our guys at Scouts Inc. have this report.

Broughton improved his stock among NFL teams with a strong effort at TCU's Pro Day. He ran a 4.5 40 and has the size and power to maybe get drafted in the middle-to-late rounds.

Broughton also visited the Detroit Lions.

SMU announced Monday it has hired veteran Bob Palcic as offensive line coach.

Palcic, who broke into coaching in the 1970s, spent the previous four seasons as UCLA's associate head coach for offense and offensive line coach.

Palcic has held multiple college and NFL coaching positions. Three players won the Outland Trophy while being coached by Palcic: Wisconsin's Joe Thomas and Gabe Carimi and UCLA's Jonathan Ogden.

SMU coach June Jones and Palcic have worked together before. Palcic was offensive line coach under Jones for the Atlanta Falcons in 1994-96.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Damier Pitts scored all 16 of his points in the second half to help Marshall defeat SMU, 74-56, Wednesday in the first round of the Conference USA tournament.

The sixth-seeded Thundering Herd (19-12) led 33-26 after DeAndre Kane scored 11 of his 18 points in the first half. But Marshall went scoreless for the first 4:29 of the second half as the 11th-seeded Mustangs (13-19) tied it.

A jumper by Pitts ended the drought, and Shaquille Johnson scored seven points during an 11-2 run that gave the Thundering Herd a 44-35 lead with 10:48 remaining.

Johnson added 15 points and Dennis Tinnon had 15 rebounds for Marshall, which will play third-seeded Tulsa in the quarterfinals Thursday.

Rodney Clinkscales led SMU with 17 points. Robert Nyakundi, whose 42.5-percent 3-point shooting led the conference, made just 2 of 10 -- and the Mustangs 6 of 24 -- from long range.

HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- Neil Watson scored 18 points, Maurice Bolden added 11 and Southern Mississippi beat SMU, 67-60, on Wednesday night.

Southern Miss (24-6, 11-4 Conference USA) led for the entire game, but struggled to put the lowly Mustangs away. Watson scored 13 of his 18 in the second half as the Golden Eagles pulled away in the final minutes.

Southern Miss shot 52.2 percent (24-of-46) from the field and enjoyed a huge 37-19 advantage on the glass. The Golden Eagles stayed one game behind Memphis for the C-USA lead.

SMU (12-18, 3-12) was led by Robert Nyakundi's 18 points while Jeremiah Samarrippas added 13. Nyakundi hit three 3-pointers in the second half to keep the Mustangs in the game, but they couldn't find a way to overcome poor defense and rebounding.

DALLAS -- London Giles scored 17 points Wednesday night to help SMU break a three-game losing streak with a 64-50 victory over Tulane.

Giles scored at least 10 for the 18th straight game for the Mustangs (12-16, 3-10 Conference USA). Leslee Smith grabbed 11 rebounds, and Jeremiah Samarrippas had seven assists.

Robert Nyakundi, leading the conference with 41.7 percent 3-point-shooting accuracy, improved on that by going 3 of 6 from long range for nine points.

Five-time Conference USA Freshman of the Week Ricky Tarrant's 21 points paced the Green Wave (15-12, 3-10), who dropped their fourth consecutive game. Josh Davis had 11 rebounds.

The Mustangs shot 53.5 percent (23 of 43) to the Green Wave's 28.9 percent (13 of 45). But Tulane made 22 of 31 free throws, while SMU was limited to 11 of 18.

SMU, which never trailed, split the season series after Tulane won 80-74 on Jan. 25.

SMU announced the signing of 20 recruits today, including quarterback Neal Burcham, who was a four-star recruit according to the ESPN rankings.

Interestingly, SMU also signed Prescott Line, the brother of SMU's Zach Line. SMU has nine ESPN three-star or higher signees, tied for the most in Conference USA (Marshall).

The list of signees:

Chauncey Briggs, OL, 6-5 330 West Bloomfield, Mich. (West Bloomfield)
Neal Burcham, QB, 6-3 185 Greenbrier, Ark. (Greenbrier)
Christian Chamagua, OL, 6-6 290 Manvel, Texas (Manvel)
Brian Cramer, DL, 6-4 230 Round Rock, Texas (Stony Point)
A.J. Justice, DB, 6-2 185 Houston, Texas (Stratford)
Collin LaGasse, WR/DB, 5-11 190 Austin, Texas (Lake Travis)
Ty Law, DB, 5-10 170 Orlando, Fla. (Lake Highland Prep)
Prescott Line, RB, 6-0 215 Oxford, Mich. (Oxford Area Senior)
Ajee Montes, DB, 5-11 180 La Puente, Calif. (Bishop Amat)
Seaver Myers, OL, 6-6 290 Friendswood, Texas (Friendswood)
Elie Nabushosi, DL, 6-4 240 Frisco, Texas (Heritage)
Damien Neroes, LB, 6-1 215 Garland, Texas (Garland)
Jarvis Pruitt, DL, 6-3 220 Houston, Texas (Stratford)
Shakiel Randolph, DB, 6-5 190 Waco, Texas (Midway)
Nick Reed, DL, 6-1 265 Texarkana, Texas (Pleasant Grove)
Sam Rice, OL, 6-4 270 Coppell, Texas (Coppell)
Lincoln Richard, LB, 6-3 215 Everman, Texas (Everman)
Horace Richardson, DB, 6-0 175 Everman, Texas (Everman)
Daijuan Stewart, WR, 5-10 175 Baldwin, La. (West Saint Mary)
Chase Walling, OL, 6-6 270 Dallas, Texas (Lake Highlands)

Karl Ravech and Jay Williams examine the state of SMU basketball under head coach Matt Doherty and some of the players who could make a difference for the program.

Time to take a look at recruiting needs for ...

SMU

Offensive line. This is an area that coach June Jones has worked at to create depth, but the Mustangs have to continue to build. They lose six seniors of the 2011 team -- including all five starters.

Defensive back. Of the eight players listed on the depth chart, four seniors are gone -- including starters Chris Banjo and Richard Crawford. The other four will be juniors or seniors.

Receiver. In the offense Jones likes to run, you can't have too many athletes or receivers. Cole Beasley and Terrance Wilkerson are gone, Darius Johnson will be a senior and Jeremy Johnson and Keenan Holman will be juniors. One of the Mustangs' top commitments is athlete Daijuan Stewart.

DALLAS -- SMU's move to the Big East in July 2013 has everything to do with setting the program up with the best chance to succeed at football.

That leaves the basketball program in an interesting situation. On one hand, it joins one of the elite basketball conferences in the nation that routinely puts multiple teams in the NCAA tournament.

On the other hand, SMU is historically a middle-of-the-pack Conference USA contender and might have bitten off more than it can chew in its first years in the conference.

That, however, doesn't concern head coach Matt Doherty, who sees an opportunity to pick up top recruits from Texas and the East Coast who will make the Mustangs a threat in the basketball-focused Big East.

The move will bring new faces to Dallas and send the Mustangs to new venues on the road, but Doherty said his team will not adapt to any type of Big East system, but rather will continue to implement the same foundations the team utilized in C-USA.

"I'd like to hope they can adjust to us," Doherty said. "We're not going to change much. We'll play our matchup zone and we'll play our offense, which is actually kind of like Georgetown, so I like to be different. I don't like to be like everyone else, but I think the neat thing about the Big East is they have different kinds of teams."

As far as recruiting goes, Doherty has a card up his sleeve that he thinks will be a hot selling point for East-Coast standouts, literally. SMU students enjoyed a walk to class Thursday in shorts and flip flops, which is a style that won't be seen in the Northeast for several more months.

"Get a recruit to come down here and it's 60. It's a beautiful place and I know how to pitch it," Doherty said.

DALLAS – After taking part in a celebration at SMU for its future membership, Big East commissioner John Marinatto said Thursday the conference’s expansion wouldn’t end with additions coming in 2013.

Marinatto reiterated the conference's wishes to expand to at least 12 football schools, but he would not discuss a timetable or potential schools to be pursued.

“We’re working very hard,” Marinatto said. “I made it a practice over the last year to never discuss institutions specifically by name, so I’m not at liberty to get into specifics, but yeah, we want to get to at least 12 and that’s been our goal. We’re very happy with where we are, but obviously we have a little bit more work to do.”

Marinatto included, for at least 2012, West Virginia in the roll call for the conference. In 2013, Boise State, San Diego State, Houston and Central Florida will join, along with SMU. Whenever West Virginia leaves for the Big 12, an issue that hasn't been resolved, the additions will leave a total of 10 football schools in the Big East.

Marinatto said he participated in the two meetings that concerned the future of the BCS after the national championship football game in New Orleans. He characterized the meetings as “brainstorming sessions” which yielded 50 or 60 ideas of what the future could hold for the BCS system.

There will be another meeting at the end of January and another in February to continue these discussions as part of four meetings scheduled before any new manifestation of the BCS is finalized.

Marinatto believes some changes will be made, but said they will add to the good the BCS has done to college football, in his opinion.

“I think everyone around the table agrees the BCS has helped college football in so many ways,” Marinatto said. “It has made college football relevant and it has given schools that may have not had the opportunity to play in some of the major bowls the opportunity to play in some of the major bowls, but there’s also another side to it, and that’s the discussion. How do we keep what has been put in place, that’s been so helpful to so many, and at the same time reduce some of the negatives that go along with it?”

Losing the conference’s BCS automatic-qualifying status was not a concern of the commissioner, citing the strength of the programs the conference added in this newest phase of realignment, if, of course, automatic qualifying bids remain part of the BCS framework.

The addition of new teams is also a bargaining chip in landing a major TV contract in September of 2012, which Marinatto believes will provide the stability that the conference has lacked over the past year.

“Most of the expansion initiative’s complete, but when that’s done, certainly the glue that will continue to hold us together will be that when we get to the market, we can deliver with the kind of TV agreement similar with what the other five major conferences have, and that’s something we anticipated,” Marinatto said.

The final step in the process once expansion has been finalized for the conference and a TV deal is in place is to discuss the matter of divisions in a conference that will span across the entire country. All teams that will be members of the conference will have a vote in any major decisions such as a TV deal or the formation of divisions.

DALLAS – In front of alumni, students, faculty and coaches at the Hughes-Trigg Student Center on Thursday, school president R. Gerald Turner announced that SMU has officially reached a level of national prominence that the university hasn’t seen since the days of the Southwest Conference.

At the celebration event for alumni and students, Turner announced that SMU will officially become a member of the Big East conference in all sports on July 1, 2013.

In attendance at the event, alongside Turner, was Big East commissioner John Marinatto, who personally accepted SMU into the Big East fold. Marinatto was greeted with an SMU football helmet, presented by the student body president.

The prize of this Mustangs victory, on the surface, is the chance to sit at the big boys' table in football with a BCS automatic qualifying bid opportunity through a Big East championship.

However, the treasure in SMU’s big move east is the financial gains the university will see in conference TV revenues and bowl payouts. That money will help resurrect aspects of the Mustangs' athletic department that had been downsized or eliminated due to budget cuts and financial problems faced as a mid-major school in Conference USA.

With a fatter pocketbook, SMU will make it a top priority to reestablish a marketing department within athletics to hopefully raise attendance at home events, athletic director Steve Orsini said.

Since the days of the football team's death penalty, SMU has managed to get by with little or no marketing effort that was specific to athletics. The Big East transition will not only allow SMU to make a national presence in college athletics, it will allow the school to be much more visible in its hometown.

Orsini said SMU is already beginning the planning phases of establishing a marketing department so it will be fully functional by July 2013, when the school will begin receiving its raised allowance.

“Even though it’s about 18 months until our first official day in the Big East, now is the time to start planning it because it will take a redesign, so to speak, a reallocation of our resources, plus just allocation of extra resources that we never had before," Orsini said. "Surely marketing, to meet our number one objective, which is increasing the attendance of every athletic event we have.”

SMU hopes the marketing push will add to the football attendance rise that has occurred with June Jones at the helm.

SMU averaged 23,515 at 2010 home football games, 2,167 more than the previous year. That increase was 30^th in the nation, according to the NCAA. That still doesn’t explain a half-empty stadium for most contests at Ford Stadium.

“We haven’t really sat down, but right now in the priority of things, but marketing, increasing attendance - that would be priority one,” Orsini said. “I think by marketing ourselves more, by having more success, we’ll generate even more resources, more sponsorship sales, more fundraising, more ticket sales, etc.”

Once SMU can scratch off the top item on its to-do list, it then has several options for which it can use the remainder of its Big East payout, if the school decides to put the money back into athletics.

One possibility that Orsini mentioned is the creation of new sports programs. He said baseball, softball, lacrosse and men’s track could be in the debate.

SMU’s tradition in baseball spans back to the second year of the university in 1916. SMU fans could watch Dallas’ boys of summer at Reverchon Park, a few miles away from campus, headed by several big names, including Dallas coaching legend Steve Adair. The team was disbanded in 1980 for financial reasons.

SMU never had a lacrosse program, but it might be a good fit now.

“Lacrosse, as you know, is growing here, and the Big East represents the footprint of the best lacrosse in America,” Orsini said. “Those are all things we’ll discuss and see at the presidential level here.”

Lacrosse is big on the East Coast but in its infancy in Texas. It's not recognized as a varsity sport by the UIL, but high schools have formed club teams that compete throughout the state. Squads from Coppell and Dallas St. Mark's, schools just miles from SMU’s campus, have been nationally ranked.

Looking at the big picture, SMU’s move to the Big East represents movement toward a point where the school shares equal emphasis and success in both academics and athletics, Orsini said.

“I think we’re getting close to that balance now,” Orsini said. “We want both. We want excellence in academics and athletics. We’re here now, but we aren’t winning. Now we want to win. This is an example of winning because now we’re at the highest level, the field of competition for me as an administrator is level again.”

Jason Phillips, who had been Houston's offensive coordinator, is joining SMU's coaching staff.

"His receivers and the offenses that he has been a part of in his coaching career have been some of the best in the country and I'm excited to have him join our staff," SMU coach June Jones said in a release. "He knows our offense from having played in it and I look forward to his input into what we do, along with what he brings to us from the offenses that he has been associated with in his coaching career. He has recruited Texas for close to 10 years, so he will have an impact there as well."

Phillips, who also served as Houston's wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator, was drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1989 when Jones was an assistant coach. Phillips played six NFL seasons, including another stint under Jones when he was offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons.

With Phillips calling plays, Houston's prolific offense led the nation last year with 599 yards per game, the second highest average in Division I FBS history.

In the last four seasons under Phillips, Houston receivers posted individual 1,000 seasons seven times. Phillips' guidance helped quarterback Case Keenum become the NCAA career leader in passing yards, touchdowns and completions.