After losing head coach Lennie Acuff to the head coaching opening at Samford, Lipscomb didn’t waste time finding his replacement, tapping someone with familiarity with this program. The Bisons raid the D2 level once again, naming Trevecca head coach Kevin Carroll as their next leader, bringing a former Lipscomb assistant back to Nashville in the process.
The connections between Carroll and his predecessor are numerous, and began when Carroll played for Acuff at Berry College more than two decades ago. Carroll’s earliest coaching days came at the high school level, but his first collegiate job was under Acuff at Alabama-Huntsville. He’d later put in great work as an assistant at Air Force before beginning his head coaching career.
Carroll’s first stop came at Maryville St. Louis, where he shaped that D2 program into an eventual winner across his seven seasons in town. After a brief stop back in D1 on VMI’s staff, Carroll was again reunited with Acuff but this time at Lipscomb. Carroll joined Acuff’s first staff when he was initially hired by the Bisons in 2019 and would stay in Nashville for the next four years.
For the last two seasons Carroll has helmed Trevecca, a D2 school in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference, and his second head coaching position. He led that school to 35 wins in his two seasons and did pretty solid work. Now he’ll head right back to Lipscomb in hopes of continuing the recent success that he helped build for the Bisons.
When you look at it, Lipscomb really checked basically every box possible with this coaching search. They hired a brilliant basketball mind who can recruit at that level and someone with nearly a decade of head coaching experience. Carroll has put recent work in at Lipscomb and helped recruit dozens of players or recruiting targets of the school in recent years.
There’s no guarantee that Carroll will see success back at Lipscomb. After all it took a few years for Acuff to get on track after Casey Alexander left the program in fantastic shape. Regardless, the Bisons get a rising coach with previous work with this program and successfully fill their opening and should continue to contend for ASUN titles.