Something is stirring from deep within the Big West Conference basketball cellar.
Cal State Northridge and UC Riverside, long-time doormats in the conference that the University of Hawaii calls home, are doing more than making noises about becoming competitive again in the Big West.
They are taking action — boldly, in CSUN’s case. The Matadors, who finished last (3-13) in the nine-team conference and went 6-24 overall this season, announced on Tuesday they have hired Mark Gottfried, who coached North Carolina State, Alabama and Murray State, as its head coach.
UCR, which finished eighth (4-12) and went 9-22 overall, is also expected to name a new coach shortly and has reportedly offered the job to David Patrick, the top assistant to Jamie Dixon at Texas Christian with considerable recruiting ties in Australia, multiple media outlets have reported.
With 11 NCAA Tournament appearances and a 401-241 (.625) career head coaching record, Gottfried is the coach with the most accomplished resume to move into the Big West in its nearly half century of existence.
Gottfried, a former UCLA assistant who had most recently been scouting for the Dallas Mavericks, was fired at NC State after going 15-17 in 2016-17. He was 123-86 at NC State, 210-131 at Alabama and 68-24 at Murray State.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Gottfried’s first-year base salary will be $400,000. That would be the most paid by CSUN and is expected to place Gottfried third behind Long Beach State’s Dan Monson and UC Irvine’s Russell Turner in the BWC.
With a low power rating, the Big West has suffered at NCAA Tournament selection time, receiving just one at-large bid in the past 13 years. This year the conference was ranked 22nd among 32 leagues in the Ratings Percentage Index, and the struggles of its bottom teams in nonconference games have contributed heavily to the drop.
So CSUN’s hiring of Gottfried drew praise from Big West Commissioner Dennis Farrell, who said, “I applaud CSUN for the commitment it is making. Certainly, it makes a statement about their intent to be competitive in the conference.”
Neither CSUN nor UCR has had a winning season in the past nine years. In five of the past seven seasons at least one of them has owned outright or shared last place in the Big West.
At CSUN that was supposed to have changed with the arrival of Reggie Theus, a former NBA star, five years ago. But Theus, who coached New Mexico State and the Sacramento Kings, went 53-105 (26-54 in the Big West) and did not manage a winning season. Theus and the athletic director who hired him, Brandon Martin, were fired last week.
CSUN two years ago was hit with sanctions by the NCAA, which alleged a former operations director committed academic fraud.
UCR, which was successful on the Division II level, has long struggled in the Big West. It fired its head coach, Dennis Cutts, on Dec. 30, just before the start of this conference season, and Justin Bell finished out the season as interim head coach.
“There is a need to elevate our men’s basketball program to a more consistent level, to more effectively compete with mid-major Division I programs,” athletic director Tamica Smith Jones said in making the change.
Michael Cooper and Henry Bibby were among those also interviewed for the Highlanders’ job, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported.
Where all this will take CSUN and UCR remains to be seen, but after languishing in the cellar, they can only go up.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
