With two seasons behind him, and practice for a third officially scheduled to begin tonight, Bob Marlin’s run as head coach of the UL Ragin’ Cajuns basketball team perhaps is about to get longer.

According to a university spokesman, talks are under way to lengthen Marlin’s current contract.

"We are currently in the process of negotiating an extension with Coach Marlin," UL SID Brian McCann said Thursday. "Things are going well, and we expect them to be finalized in the near future."

Marlin left Sam Houston State, which he took to the NCAA Tournament two times in his 12 seasons with the Texas program, and signed a five-year deal to replace the fired Robert Lee as coach of the Cajuns in late March of 2010.

Neither Marlin, UL athletic director Scott Farmer nor university president Joseph Savoie commented on the negotiations.

But acknowledgement of the ongoing extension talks is the first the school has made since the conclusion of a 2011-12 season in which the Cajuns finished 16-16, lost to Rice in the postseason CollegeInsider.com Tournament and experienced the departure of several key players with eligibility remaining.

Now, Marlin is looking ahead to a ’12-13 season in which he’ll have more true freshmen — five — than he does returnees who played for the Cajuns last season.

"You do that every year," Marlin said when asked this week if he planned to start this season with a clean slate.

"I mean, it doesn’t matter if you’d gone to the NCAA Tournament. "» You put it behind you. You remember what happened, but you always look ahead and to what’s next."

Marlin said the Cajuns — who return only promising point guard Elfrid Payton, experienced perimeter players Bryant Mbamalu and Alan-Michael Thompson, and sparingly used walk-on guard Donovan Williams — are "moving forward."

"We’re looking out the windshield instead of the rearview mirror," said Marlin, who coached Pensacola (Fla.) Junior College to the 1993 NJCAA national championship.

"We’re focusing on the positive things going forward," he added. "We’re focusing on the guys that are here — that want to be a part of our university and a part of our team."

Besides leading scorer Josh Brown and fellow seniors Darshawn McClellan, Scottie Farrington and David Perez, the Cajuns lost five would-be returnees.

Starting junior point guard Raymone Andrews, starting junior center Kadeem Coleby, popular sophomore power forward J.J. Thomas, highly regarded freshman big man Kentwan Smith and reserve junior guard Darnell Jackson all are gone from a team that fell to North Texas in the opening round of last season’s Sun Belt Conference Tournament.

Two of the five transferred to other NCAA Division I programs, with Thomas — who along with Andrews was suspended for disciplinary reasons the week of the Sun Belt tourney — going to Cal State-Northridge and Coleby to Wichita State.

All that leaves Marlin with a youthful club expected to be led from the point by Payton and down low by redshirt-freshman big man Shawn Long, a transfer from Mississippi State who did not play last season.

Thompson is a senior juco transfer who played mostly off the bench last season, while Mbamalu has started 43 of the 60 games he’s played for UL the last two seasons.

"We would like for it to come together before the start of (Sun Belt) play," said Marlin, whose Cajuns play an exhibition home game Nov. 6 vs. Loyola-New Orleans and open the non-conference portion of their season Nov. 11 at the Cajundome vs. Oakland (Mich.) University of The Summit League.

"The bottom line is to try to improve each and every day "» and, at the end of the season, you want to playing your best basketball in March to be able to give yourself a chance to win the (conference tournament)."