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As hinted at on our Inside Ute Nation forum late Friday night and now being reported by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, Utah State basketball coach Craig Smith is making the move, 67 miles south to become the 18th Head Coach of the University of Utah.

Utah AD Mark Harlan wasted no time after former Ute players and current NBA assistants Alex Jensen and Johnnie Bryant withdrew their names from consideration. By doing so, he not only landed his preference of someone with college head coaching experience, but also a hot name on the market who initially appeared to be staying home.

Smith will immediately need to get to work by not only awakening a long-slumbering fanbase, he’ll have to convince star forward and team captain Timmy Allen to withdraw from the NCAA Transfer Portal—an expected move that happened Friday night. Additionally, sharpshooter Afonso Plummer has long been rumored to have his sights set on moving on to play pro ball internationally, but yet to make an announcement.

As of earlier this week, reports were that Smith had told his Aggie players that he was not looking to interview anywhere. He led the Aggies for the past three seasons to a 74-23 record. Smith-led teams have hit the 20-win mark for the past five straight seasons, including his last two at South Dakota.

After graduating from the University of North Dakota, Smith started his coaching career as an assistant at Mayville State University, an NAIA school in North Dakota, in 1996. After a few years working his way up the coaching ranks in the Dakotas, Smith earned his first Division I role as director of operations at Colorado State under Tim Miles in 2007. The next year, Smith was promoted to a full-time assistant coach. While Smith was at CSU, they saw steady progression, earning berths in the 2010 CBI, 2011 NIT, and 2012 NCAA tournament. Miles took the head coaching job at Nebraska in 2012, and Smith followed him there, where the Cornhuskers found their way to the 2014 NCAA tournament.

In 2014, Smith became the head coach at South Dakota, where his teams were 79-55 (.590) through 2018. In 2016-17, the Coyotes won the Summit League regular season title, qualified for the NIT, and Smith won the Summit League Coach of the Year after a 22-12 season. In his last season before taking the Utah State job, South Dakota finished the 2017-18 season 26-9 and finished 2nd in the conference.

Smith will now try to revive a once proud Utah program that has only two NCAA Tournament appearances since they joined Pac-12 in 2011 and four since Rick Majerus’ last season in 2004.