Don Maestri may have only announced his retirement a few days ago but he is already planning on how to spend his extra time.

“I’ve got some time now to do some project that I’ve been thinking about, some charitable work,” Maestri said. “I’ll be involved with some Habitat for Humanity and some stuff around the church. As a coach, you don’t have as much free time as you’d like to do some of those things.”

Maestri, who announced his retirement after Saturday’s overtime loss to Arkansas State in the Sun Belt Championships, has led the Troy men’s basketball for the past 31 seasons.

With 904 games under his belt, the legendary coach has plenty of fond memories on the Trojan bench.

“Obviously, the most recent is beating the first SEC school (Mississippi State) to come to Troy and winning the first game in the new arena on the same night. That provided a lot of excitement for our fans and players,” Maestri said.

Maestri said he didn’t make up his mind about retiring until just before the conference tournament.

“Sometimes you just realize that change is necessary,” he said.

“I didn’t want to announce it until after the last game. I didn’t want the players to feel that the decision was being made because of them, they did a lot for me and Troy University. They lost a lot of tough games this season, I wanted them to celebrate the good things that happened to them.”