Assistant coaching After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1992, Googins became an assistant at
Indiana under head coach
Bob Morgan. He held the position from 1993 to 2000. During his tenure, Indiana appeared in the
1996 NCAA tournament. He then worked as an assistant at
Miami (OH) from 2001 to 2004, serving under head coach
Tracy Smith, who had been Googins's fellow assistant at Indiana for two seasons. When Miami assistant
Dan Simonds was tapped for the
Xavier job following the 2004 season, Googins went with him as an assistant coach. In
2008, Googins's third season, Xavier went 27–31 (19–8 A-10) and shared the A-10 regular season title with
Charlotte. Googins was named the
A-10 Coach of the Year. In that year's
A-10 tournament, the Musketeers made the championship game but lost to Charlotte, 4–3 in 11 innings. In 2011, left-handed
pitcher Ben Thomas became the first major-award winner of Googins's tenure when he was named A-10 Pitcher of the Year. In 2013,
Charles Leesman, who played for Xavier from 2006 to 2008, became Googins's first player to appear in
Major League Baseball when he debuted for the
Chicago White Sox. Xavier returned to the NCAA tournament in
2014, its first season in the new
Big East Conference. Xavier had an average regular season, going 8–10 in Big East play and qualifying as the last team into the
Big East tournament. While traveling to the tournament in Brooklyn, the team faced a flight delay, a flat tire on the bus to the hotel, and flooded hotel rooms. In the tournament itself, the fourth-seeded Musketeers dropped their opener to top-seeded
Creighton, then won three straight games to win the championship and the conference's automatic bid. Googins said to reporters of reaching his second NCAA tournament: "I'm going to enjoy it this time. You don't realize that it doesn't happen all of the time. You can't take it for granted but I was really uptight the last time. Not that it's going to be loosey-goosey but we're going to go down there and it's another weekend. We're going to be ready to play but I'm going to enjoy it. It is a great experience." At the
Nashville Regional, Xavier again went 1–2, losing games against
Vanderbilt and
Oregon but eliminating third-seeded
Clemson.
Cincinnati On May 31, 2023, Googins resigned in the wake of multiple assistants being fired for failing to report an NCAA violation related to sports gambling. ==Head coaching record==