Fired New Mexico State coach Greg Haier gets new coaching job

Former New Mexico State basketball coach Greg Heiar has landed on his feet after being let go by NMSU amid just one disastrous season as the head of the program. According to college hoops insider Jeff Goodman, Heiar has been hired on as the head coach for Mineral Area College, a junior college program located in Park Hills, Missouri.

Here was that report from Goodman, who gave some background on Heiar before his time with New Mexico State:

“Mineral Area College has hired former New Mexico State coach Greg Heiar. Heiar was at New Mexico State last season throughout a complete mess and was fired after one year. He was also an assistant for Gregg Marshall at the time when Marshall punched Shaq Morris, and was on staff at LSU with Will Wade.”

Well, it seems that where Heiar has been, scandal follows. He’s been an assistant for a long time, but first ran into trouble back at Wichita State, where he worked under head coach Gregg Marshall during the apex of their mid-2010s run that included an undefeated regular season and a Final Four appearance. Marshall was eventually fired over allegations of verbal and physical abuse, with some of the stories going back to when Heiar was on staff.

After leaving the Shockers, Heiar linked up with Will Wade to join his inaugural staff, where he remained until the end of the 2020 season, after strong allegations of cheating and illegal recruiting activity have surfaced.

Then, in 2022, Heiar took his first Division I head coaching gig at New Mexico State, where he didn’t even make it to March before the program was shut down for the 2023 season and Heiar was fired over some pretty grotesque hazing violations.

Now, he’s landed another job, but at the JuCo level, where he spent the first decade of his coaching career. The job at Mineral Area College will actually be his third, since he was the head coach at Chipola Junior College in Florida from 2004-2009 and then made a one-year pit stop as the head coach at Northwest Florida State in 2022 before taking a big upgrade to be head coach of his first D1 program at NMSU.

Best of luck on another new beginning for a fairly maligned college basketball coaching figure. But hey, JuCo is where college sports athletes and coaches land to revive their careers, so this is likely his last shot. He absolutely can’t afford another scandal, that’s for sure.