FORT WAYNE – After a 5-10 beginning to the NBA Development League season, Joey Meyer said the Mad Ants’ organization wanted to go a different direction.

That’s why on Friday morning, the team’s former coach was driving back to Fort Wayne to pick up and pack up his things, and the Ants remained in Canton, Ohio, to play that night.

It was “around midnight,” according to Meyer, that Ants president and general manager Jeff Potter called the 62-year-old coach to his Canton hotel room and told Meyer that he was being fired. Meyer signed a one-year contract extension in July.

Meyer’s replacement will be his 26-year-old assistant, Steve Gansey, who made his head coaching debut at any level Friday in a 114-93 loss at Canton.

Ron Howard paced four Ants in double-digit scoring with 23 points. Darnell Lazare scored 21, and Gilbert Brown and Walker Russell Jr. added 19 and 10. Tyrell Biggs scored 26 to lead the Charge, and Frank Hassell had a double-double with 22 points and 12 rebounds.

Gansey’s second game comes at 7:30 tonight at Memorial Coliseum against Canton.

Whether Gansey, a Cleveland native who began as a volunteer assistant in 2009, will get the job permanently remains to be seen.

“He’s the interim head coach right now, and he’ll have a chance to show that he should have this job,” Potter said in a telephone interview. “In the meantime, I’ll be doing kind of a soft search and see what’s out there. But right now, Steve’s going to get an opportunity to lead this team.”

“Soft search” meaning … “I’m not necessarily going hard for someone,” Potter said. “I will talk to some people. I will look at some résumés. If something comes up – a no-brainer – I will consider that, but right now this is Steve’s team.”

Gansey, the fourth coach in less than five seasons, inherits what is considered the best team in the franchise’s history.

Half of the roster, including newly acquired 6-foot-11 center Jarrid Famous, participated in NBA training camps in early December.

Because of the NBA lockout and the late start to the regular season, training camps were also delayed. The camps took several prospects from the D-League, including the Ants’ top four scorers.

Howard, a guard, was with Milwaukee; Lazare, a forward, was with Indiana; guard Cam Jones was with Miami and Russell Jr., a guard, was with Detroit.

“Everybody goes through that,” Meyer said. “Obviously our record doesn’t indicate it once we got them back together. We had a lot of changes like a lot of teams.

“Hopefully they will put it together. I think eventually their chemistry will come together and they’ll play better.”

Gansey hopes so.

“Coach Meyer did a fantastic job,” Gansey said by telephone. “I’m not going to come in here and switch up everything. There are some things that I want to tweak a little bit offensively and defensively. Offensively, I want to run more and do some different things to push the ball more and get it up the floor. Defensively, we’re going to tweak some things in terms of our schemes.”

Gansey is aware of the inexperience factor and the knock on his youth, all the while replacing the D-League’s all-time winningest coach, Gansey is confident.

“Coach Meyer’s one of the best,” Gansey said. “I had the privilege to be under him for 2 1/2 seasons, and I learned a lot from him, and I wasn’t done learning from him.

“Yeah, I’m young. I’m 26 years old. I’m not saying I’m an unbelievable coach and I’m going to change everything around. But I will tell you that there’s not going to be a younger, more hungry guy who wants to step up to the opportunity and give what this team really needs, which is a positive attitude and have a lot of confidence in our team.”

stwarden@jg.net