On March 16, the University announced it had terminated the contract of 13-year head men’s basketball coach Ernie Kent.
It was an emotional end to his run at the school, with his team in attendance to hear his final words as coach.
“When I think about Oregon, I think it’s very important for all of you to understand you may find a better basketball coach,” Kent said, fighting back tears, “but I don’t think you’ll find anybody that has the passion and love that I have for this University.”
The announcement came five days after Oregon’s second-round departure from the Pacific-10 Conference Tournament, though Kent and then-Oregon Director of Athletics Mike Bellotti had set the plan into motion several weeks prior.
Following the Ducks back-to-back home losses to Stanford and California, Bellotti met with Kent on Feb. 22 to discuss the remainder of his coaching career. Kent said he was given the option to resign at that point or to do so at the end of the regular season.
“This was not an easy decision for me,” Bellotti said. “But unfortunately, when I looked at the past five to six years, I did not see the improvement and consistency that I hoped for, and that we need to move forward as we open our new arena and seek to reenergize and expand our season ticket base.”
Bellotti said even if Oregon were not on the verge of opening a state-of-the-art arena next season, the program would still be searching for new coaching leadership. Kent’s current staff will stay on contract until June, but its fate will ultimately rest with the new head coach.
Bellotti also mentioned he would like to have the new coach on board by the beginning of the spring term and thinks that will be a reachable goal.
For Kent, however, the scene at McArthur Court on Tuesday afternoon was quite different. An emotional one, to say the least, as his family and dozens of reporters listened to Kent for what will almost certainly be the last time.
In his opening statement, Kent addressed the Feb. 22 meeting, saying Bellotti’s offer gave him an opportunity to show not only Bellotti, but his young team, the strength of his character by finishing the season to the best of his ability.
“As uncomfortable as it might be for myself, it was no longer about me,” Kent said. “It was about (the team) and helping them to get through the adversity in their lives, and showing them one last time how to handle themselves in a very tough moment.”
Oregon won four of its final six games, but it was too little too late for Kent.
During his 13 seasons at the helm, Kent accumulated a 235-173 record, reaching the NCAA Tournament five times since 2000. He headed two Elite Eight squads in 2002 and 2007 and was named the Pac-10 Coach of the Year during the ’02 campaign.
Kent’s association with the University began in 1973 when he played under Dick Harter as a member of the Kamikaze Kids, before his collegiate career was cut short by persisting knee injuries.
“For whatever reason, I will always be joined at the hip with the University of Oregon, and I can say nothing but good things about it,” he said. “I love this institution, I have a lot of pride in the institution, and this institution was built on the backs of a lot of great people.”
With only two seniors on this year’s squad, the question now lingering is which players will stay with the program now that the man who recruited them is no longer in the equation.
“It’s really hard right now to see Coach go,” freshman forward E.J. Singler said. “He was a great man. He was a great coach.”
Singler commented he and the rest of the team were unaware of what was going to happen at the end of the season, keeping solely focused on the next game at hand. Despite Kent’s departure, Singler said that he plans to stay with the program.
“He’s held himself really well. He’s coached us as hard as he could and he taught us a lot of good things,” Singler said.
In a day filled with the lowest of lows for some, senior-to-be LeKendric Longmire provided a different perspective on the basketball program as it begins yet another chapter.
“With the recent news you can’t help but to feel sorry for Coach and the situation that he’s currently in,” Longmire said. “But I’d also like to say that there’s a sense of hope and sense of change. We hate to see him go, but we have to be excited for the new guy that’s coming in.”
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