ELItorial: Where is our new men's hoops coach?

By David Goldenberg

Thank God Brown's in the Ivy League," a friend of mine said near the start of the men's basketball season in November. I agreed, because even though I assumed Yale was in for a rough season, especially after Captain Charlie Petit, DC '99, broke his foot, I knew there was no way we could lose to the lowly Bears, a team that hadn't had a winning Ivy campaign in 13 years.

So you can imagine how my shock slowly turned to disgust when, on Fri., Jan. 22, the Bulldogs fell to Brown for the second time this season, bringing Yale's record to an illustrious 2-12 (0-4 Ivy). One of those two victories was against Division III Swarthmore. The two losses to Brown put the Elis firmly in the cellar of the Ivy League and accounted for fully half of the Bears' season win total.

After the second loss to Brown, Yale Athletic Director Tom Beckett must have known that head coach Dick Kuchen would have to go when the end of the season thankfully arrived. After eight seasons without a league winning record, the Bulldogs were ranked dead last in the Ratings Percentage Index for Division I schools, and Kuchen was on pace to lead the Bulldogs to a new school record for losses. Keeping Kuchen after this season would have sent a message to the Ivy League and to any prospective student-athletes that Yale no longer cared about winning basketball games.

So why, more than two months since that dark moment, doesn't the athletic department even have a list of possible candidates for the vacant position? And why did it take nearly two weeks after the season's last day for Kuchen to step down officially? I realize that he has been a valuable asset to the department for over a decade and should be allowed to resign his post with dignity and grace, but he shouldn't be allowed to do so in a manner that will hurt the team for years to come.

By allowing Kuchen to wait so long before resigning, Yale has managed to put itself at a major disadvantage in terms of landing prized recruits for next year. With acceptance letters going out within the week, prospective college basketball players who are now deciding between several Ivy League schools are going to begin to realize that not only is Yale basketball coming off one of its worst seasons, it doesn't seem to have any kind of game plan to impove the team.

Granted, Yale did manage to snag three recruits via early decision last fall, and the athletic department is continuing to send out the team's assistant coaches on various recruiting trips, but that does not excuse the long delay in terms of the head coaching job. In a recent interview with the Yale Daily News, Beck-ett explained, "We do not have a timetable. We are going to take whatever time we need to find the right person for the job."

What sort of message does Beckett think this complacent inaction sends to a student who is trying to decide between colleges? Beckett has shown very good judgment in the past in finding and hiring coaches for other sports, but his perfectionist attitude can hurt Yale as well as help it. He must start interviewing coaching candidates soon and do so with a stronger sense of urgency.

The Bulldogs are currently the only Ivy team without a head coach. Even Brown, which like Yale finished at 4-22 and saw its own coach resign near the end of the season, has already found a replacement in Glenn Miller. Miller coached his former squad at Connecticut College to an undefeated regular season in Division III and the semifinals of the national tournament.

It is a little sad to think that Yale should need to look to Brown for any type of athletic guidance, especially in men's basketball. But the only way the team is going to get out of its current slump is by getting good recruits to matriculate to Yale, and the only way Yale is going to get good recruits is if the team has a head coach. If Beckett and the rest of the athletic department don't find one before recruits begin deciding to go elsewhere, Yale can resign itself to the bottom of the standings for next season--and more losses to Brown.

Photo of Dick Kuchen by Julia Tiernan.

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