Steve Masiello to USF deal off after discrepancy found in background check

Steve Masiello was hired by South Florida and signed a deal to become the school’s next basketball coach, but the deal is now off after a discrepancy in the coach’s background was discovered when doing a check, The Tampa Tribune reports.

Masiello had signed a five-year deal believed to be worth more than $1 million per season, according to The Tribune, but the deal has been killed.

According to The Tribune, the search firm that USF paid $60,000 to find candidates to replace Stan Heath discovered the discrepancy while doing a background check.

There is no word yet on the nature of the discrepancy.

Another piece of information revealed by The Tribune is that the search firm was hired by the school the day team lost in the AAC tournament — two days before Heath was officially let go.

We will do our best to find out why the deal did not go through, as this sort of thing is definitely odd. We’ll also try to find out whether this was a move by Masiello’s side because he wanted out, or by USF because they found out something bad.

If this was initiated by USF, it makes you wonder about how they operate; don’t you normally do a background check before giving someone a contract offer? Maybe they wanted to work quickly to hire him before someone else did and just figured a background check would be a formality.

Masiello is a former Rick Pitino player at Kentucky and served on Pitino’s staff at Louisville. He has been at Manhattan the past three seasons and led the Jaspers to the NCAA Tournament this season.