Last week, USD’s basketball team parted ways with its leading scorer.

Now its coach is gone, too.

Several sources close to the program told the Union-Tribune that Steve Lavin was fired Wednesday with three games left in the regular season plus at least one in the West Coast Conference tournament. Players were being summoned to a meeting with athletic director Kimya Massey at 2 p.m.

The eventuality isn’t a surprise but the timing is, given that athletic directors typically wait until the end of the season to make a move.

This is a different era in college sports, however, and dismissing Lavin now gives Massey more time to install a replacement ahead of the impending transfer portal and an expected mass overhaul of the roster.

Lavin is in his fourth season of what is believed to be a six-year contract that pays him roughly $1 million per year. Massey is known to have considered firing Lavin after last season, but it proved too expensive with the massive contract that previous AD Bill McGillis gave him.

The coach best known for his seven seasons at UCLA had one winning record in his four years at USD, 18-15 in 2023-24. He finished ninth, fifth and 11th in the WCC, and the Toreros (11-17) are 10th this season at 5-10 following Sunday’s 92-79 home loss against USF.

Lavin reached the NCAA Tournament in eight of 11 seasons as a head coach at UCLA and St. John’s. He had no postseason appearances with USD, a job he took after seven years as a television analyst.

Lavin’s tenure at Alcala Park was marked by different approaches to roster construction. In his early years, he tried to collect veteran transfers with a single year of eligibility left. Then he went young with an influx of freshmen. This year, he had some NIL money and brought in transfers plus a pair of European pros.

None of it really worked, with an annual exodus of players after the season. The signs of things unravelling behind the scenes came last week, when leading scorer Ty-Laur Johnson was removed from the program amid what sources said were disciplinary issues.