NIU AD Sean Frazier: Getting a jump on men’s basketball coaching search a ‘secret weapon’ in hiring Rashon Burno

When NIU athletic director Sean Frazier made the decision to fire basketball coach Mark Montgomery in the middle of a pandemic-altered season, he said it was all about finding enough time to hire the right replacement.

After all, he said, he remembered his last hire in a major sport – having only seven days to bring onboard a new football coach. And he didn’t want a rushed process if he could avoid it.

And with Rashon Burno, Frazier said he found that guy.

“Oh yeah. I feel really good,” Frazier said Saturday regarding the hiring of Burno, the associate head coach at Arizona State. “We had a great pool, right? We had an outstanding pool of candidates. I guess I’m overwhelmed by that because it worked. We used a secret weapon to get ahead. Obviously, I don’t like to make changes mid-year, that’s not a hallmark of my leadership, but it was really refreshing not to have worry about hiring someone in seven days like I had done in the football hire.”

Frazier fired Montgomery on Jan. 3 after the Huskies started 1-7. In 2020, the Huskies won the MAC West under Montgomery but didn’t get a chance to play in the conference tournament due to the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Huskies went 2-9 under interim coach Lamar Chapman and finished the year 3-16.

Frazier said the decision wasn’t just about wins and losses. He said other factors went to the decision, including academic success, social development, and the overall respectability of the program in both the region and in the Chicago area.

“I just felt from my time, I’ve been here eight years, I had extended Monty a couple times in that process, we had time to work on all those particular areas,” Frazier said. “I just felt like from an overall program trajectory standpoint, we needed to get better there. And I did not see it at this particular point in time that, that was going to be the case with the current leadership. So I made the call working with our administration and that’s why we made the change.”

Frazier said he felt a lot of firings were coming in the college basketball world, so letting Montgomery go midseason gave the program a jump on finding his replacement.

He also said various rules would have kept the school for looking for a coach while Montgomery was still in charge. So Frazier made the change in the middle of the season.

“I’ve never made a change in midseason in my career,” Frazier said. “So part of it, it has a lot to do with the way we have to make sure we pay attention to all of our HR rules, all of our state rules, all of our hiring practices. I’m a seasoned veteran when it comes to NIU policy and procedures. I have to make sure that I have the time to be able to do that instead of being rushed.”

Frazier said the finalist pool was deep, and while he said he couldn’t go into details due to confidentiality it was a pool that included head coaches, assistant coaches and people with ties to the university.

In the end though, he said the best fit was Burno, who played at DePaul and coached at Marmion Academy in Aurora from 2007-2010.

“The cream rose to the top and the best guy got the job,” Frazier said. “Just watching him over weeks and months, it was clear his fit was dead on, it was spot on. And I want to thank Huskie nation because I heard their voices and they needed somebody that understood Illinois. That understood Chicagoland. That understood or backyard and had a passion to be at NIU. And Rashon, when you get to know him, talk to him, you’ll see what I’m talking about. He is legit.”

Burno was coaching for Arizona State on Saturday against Utah, and is expected in DeKalb on Monday for a virtual press conference.

Frazier said he doesn’t know if Burno will keep the current staff or bring in new assistants.

“Obviously I think the world of Chap and I think the world of the guys who picked up the slack after we made the change,” Frazier said. “But coach Burno will be in full control of the decision-making process on who he retains and who he hires in.”

Although he had to do something in firing a coach midseason, Frazier said the decision was the right one that resulted in getting the best new coach for the program.

“I just felt the timing to get ahead of the masses I predicted a lot jobs of were going to be available, I wanted to get ahead of that,” Frazier said. “I wanted the time to immerse myself in everything NIU basketball. The history and really understand that. Then go after and target the best people for our job. And we did that.”