End of an era a sad day for UO athletics
The Ernie Kent era at Oregon essentially ended Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles in the Ducks’ 90-74 loss to California in the Pac-10 Tournament. There might be an NIT berth, or not, but there’s no going back now. The Oregon men’s basketball coach was told last month by director of athletics Mike Bellotti that he won’t be returning for his 14th season. Expect the official word soon.
Personally, I think this is a sad day for Oregon basketball and for Oregon athletics. I concede that’s a minority viewpoint, considering that the last two seasons have been disappointing, record-wise, and I can understand the frustration of fans who want better.
Except, that under Kent, Oregon fans have enjoyed significantly better, and I don’t believe that the game has passed him by. He got caught with a young team — yes, his responsibility. After the Malik Hairston group left, perhaps Kent should have patched with JCs, but he took a longer view, investing in freshmen who didn’t develop quickly enough, and now he pays the price for that misjudgment.
Given another season, I think he would have fixed things, but that’s conjecture, and now we’ll never know.
Thirteen years ago, when Oregon was looking for a coach to replace Jerry Green, who had left for a huge contract at Tennessee, I wrote a column recommending that the Ducks hire Ernie Kent. Not that it was going to affect things, one way or another, but I took that seriously. It wasn’t particularly easy to write; I knew Bobby Braswell and Mark Turgeon, the other top candidates, much better than I did Kent at that time, and liked and respected them both, and yet it struck me that Kent was the perfect fit for Oregon.
As a former Kamikaze Kid and UO graduate, Kent loved Oregon, this was his dream job, something that Green could never quite convey. Kent had taken Saint Mary’s to the NCAA Tournament, and so had a head coaching record that neither Braswell nor Turgeon had. (Both are talented coaches who have gone on to winning careers as head coaches.) He had a vision for where he wanted to take the Ducks, and you knew he’d take one of Oregon’s biggest recruiting liabilities, aging Mac Court, and deal with that as positively as possible.
At the time, Oregon had been to the NCAA Tournament just once since 1961. I thought that Kent would make Oregon basketball better, and clearly he has.
Now, if you’d told me the ensuing years would bring a Pac-10 regular-season title — Oregon’s first conference title since 1945 — two Pac-10 tourney titles, two berths in the Elite Eight, three other NCAA Tournament appearances and two trips to the NIT semifinals; that Kent would become Oregon’s winningest men’s basketball coach, with 235 victories; that a new arena would be opening in December — well, I couldn’t have predicted that.
To me, those accomplishments define the Kent era, not the last couple of seasons, except in how Kent and his players handled the tough times. My view has always been that it’s tougher at Oregon, with its recruiting disadvantages, than most places, and that it’s naive to not expect a roller-coaster ride at times.
Along the way, Kent’s players have graduated at an outstanding rate compared with other men’s basketball programs, and with just a couple of exceptions have kept themselves out of the wrong kind of headlines, something you’d think Oregon would especially find laudable these days.
Speaking of which, what a difficult stretch for Bellotti, what with firing his basketball coach and having his two top football stars in court today. No wonder there’s speculation he’ll leave all this for a TV job, sooner than later.
(“Not that I know of,” Bellotti said Thursday, when asked about such prospects. “Nothing that I know of, and that’s the truth.”)
As the Ducks go in a different direction with the basketball program, they’d best step carefully. Can they find another coach with two Elite Eight appearances? With an equally strong history of graduating his athletes? Will the Ducks be sensitive to having just fired the first — and only — black head coach in school history?
So far, this has not been handled well. Maybe Bellotti had the most noble of intentions, informing Kent before the end of the season that he wouldn’t be retained, being honest about what the decision was going to be. But then the news leaked out last Saturday, and I suspect it wasn’t accidental or coincidental but Machiavellian; earlier this week, the athletic department had a major annual fundraiser, “Ducks in the Desert,” in Southern California, and you wonder if some at Oregon wanted the news of Kent’s imminent departure out there before that.
Kent’s been “on the hot seat” for several years; the year before the last Elite Eight season, and during it, and then again last year, when the Ducks went 8-23 overall and 2-16 in the Pac-10. They improved this season, doubling their wins to 16 and finishing 7-11 in the Pac-10. (Last-place teams in the Pac-10 rarely improve dramatically from one season to the next, so if Kent was expected to get to .500 in league this season, well, that was going to be difficult; then again, this was the weakest Pac-10 many of us can remember, and when the Ducks spent a lot of it in the cellar, Kent left himself vulnerable.)
Given all the background, you have to applaud the way Kent’s handled this publicly. He’ll coach somewhere else in the future; he’s not without his faults, but he’s got a clearer idea of who he is, and what coaching basketball means to him, and the kind of coach he wants to be, than when he came here.
Next season, the Ducks will have another coach. They’ll throw money out there, and probably have to throw a lot. (Interesting that the throw-open-the-checkbook, outside-the-box deal for women’s coach Paul Westhead, with the bizarre provision that he need only live in Eugene seven months in the year, produced the same Pac-10 record, 7-11, that just got Kent fired — and just two more wins than the league record that got Bev Smith fired a year ago.)
In changing coaches now, Oregon’s bought itself some time with the new arena opening. If next season’s team does well, the new guy gets the credit; if not, well, blame Ernie.
I don’t think I’ll be recommending another candidate this time. I’ll leave that to other columnists. I hope, given some of the names I’ve seen thrown out there, that Bellotti remembers that his first obligation is to Oregon’s student-athletes, not to provide the best schmoozer for the donors or the name that looks best on the marquee. That he remembers that these athletes are people, and not a product.
Meanwhile, Kent will move on. He won’t coach in the new arena, and he’ll be sad about that, but I don’t think he’ll feel sorry for himself. He should be proud of his run at Oregon, and realize that it was special, and program-changing.
Maybe, one day, Oregon will truly realize that, too.
Tags …