ESPN article about lawsuit against Western Oregon University

[cwfenn]

https://www.espn.com/womens-college-...-abuse-lawsuit

Several former women’s basketball players have sued WO due to abuse they are claiming happened there.

[CWU Wildcat Nation]

Video obtained by ESPN shows the abusive tactics and behavior displayed by the coach! https://youtu.be/Xez7kGgEg-U?si=el7QSLXVbTtri93m

Throwing a toaster? Yikes!

[Goods]

Read this article, doesn't look good and we've talked about this on this board last year. Even if WOU thinks their coaches are innocent, the state of the program is low and this does nothing but keep it low, which is another thing coaches are graded on beyond wins/losses.

Only two ladies have stats from last year. They're freshman and xfer heavy.

[tsull]

Thanks for the link. Wow this is even worse than I thought. I thought the investigation might have closed the book on this. Now getting some details, holy cow. I don't know how we can rebound from this. We've already been bad for 25 years. It'll take another 10 years to get off the mat in women's hoops. So disappointed in the Western Oregon leadership from the president to the athletic director, how could they let this happen? We're supposed to be about safety for students. This is very disturbing.

At least the comedy clip from Saturday Night Live was funny, that was hilarious.

[tsull]

The Salem Statesman Journal newspaper has an even more in-depth article. You might get a paywall, unfortunately. But it's very extensive and abuse seems to be rampant by this coaching staff. Equally disappointing is that the leadership at the school let the players down. We're talking about an athletic director, a dean of students, a trustee. This is incredibly bad. All students are supposed to feel safe on campus. They let these students down. Heads need to roll after this.

[Goods]

This statement falls in line with your argument Tim:

Seven players on the hiring committee said three applicants were interviewed, and the players all gave the highest marks to a coach from a small college in Oregon.

Wouldn't you want a coach with established ties to Oregon and the PNW that your players also seemed to like? There was a reference that the applicant pool wasn't very impressive. This was the best of the pool? You're taking risks by hiring someone with zero credibility. Why don't you instead admit mistakes, burn it all down and take a new risk with an unproven, but local coach?

Also, this article pretty much proves multiple lies by the staff (didn't actually play bball at Chicago State, no proof of the supposed elbow to the chest by a player), along with forfeited games and continued mediocrity at best in the GNAC shows this program is in shambles. If I'm other coaches, I'm worried about the black eye this gives the entire athletic dept.

[SGAstumpJ]

Found the link to the Salem article mentioned earlier. I feel so sorry for the students involved, who appear to have been let down by the folks supposed to look out for them at multiple levels.

[CWU Wildcat Nation]

At least the comedy clip from Saturday Night Live was funny, that was hilarious.

Melissa McCarthy is absolute gold.

[CWU Wildcat Nation]

I'm just surprised they were able to recruit new players to make a team for this season. Those must've been players really desperate to play D2 basketball to play for a coach with that reputation and scandal.

[tsull]

This statement falls in line with your argument Tim:

Seven players on the hiring committee said three applicants were interviewed, and the players all gave the highest marks to a coach from a small college in Oregon.

Wouldn't you want a coach with established ties to Oregon and the PNW that your players also seemed to like? There was a reference that the applicant pool wasn't very impressive. This was the best of the pool? You're taking risks by hiring someone with zero credibility. Why don't you instead admit mistakes, burn it all down and take a new risk with an unproven, but local coach?

Also, this article pretty much proves multiple lies by the staff (didn't actually play bball at Chicago State, no proof of the supposed elbow to the chest by a player), along with forfeited games and continued mediocrity at best in the GNAC shows this program is in shambles. If I'm other coaches, I'm worried about the black eye this gives the entire athletic dept.

Ever since we've gone D2, we've ignored the state of Oregon in recruiting, with the exception of football and track and field. It's s shame. Some of these other coaches are so arrogant and the high school coaches across the state are not happy. But the worst is hiring this abusive coach from West Virginia, without doing a probper background check or even resume search.

Equally bad is the administration siding with the coach and her assistant and not caring for the safety of the players. It's just upsetting all the way around.

[tsull]

One of the best journalists on the West Coast, John Canzano, who now has his own blog which is quite lucrative, wrote about the Western Oregon women situation today. This one is not behind a pay wall like a lot of his stuff. I recommend reading it. It shows the difference between Western Oregon and the Southern Oregon women, have a positive coaching staff and are 19-0 this year.

[Goods]

That guy can write. And the article made me more frustrated with the reality in Monmouth.

While the men's team is terrible..........sorry, just looking at numbers..........and the women's team on paper have a few more wins, I still say WOU needs to burn it all down and start fresh, this might include holding admin accountable as well because if it continues to look like these are legit claims that failed to be fixed, not only is the program responsible, but ADs and execs need to be held accountable as well. If you burn it all down it'll take a few years at best, a decade-plus at worst, to build it back, but you can't build with coaches who are looking like passive aggressive @$$es supervised by AD/execs who let it happen.

[tsull]

That guy can write. And the article made me more frustrated with the reality in Monmouth.

While the men's team is terrible..........sorry, just looking at numbers..........and the women's team on paper have a few more wins, I still say WOU needs to burn it all down and start fresh, this might include holding admin accountable as well because if it continues to look like these are legit claims that failed to be fixed, not only is the program responsible, but ADs and execs need to be held accountable as well. If you burn it all down it'll take a few years at best, a decade-plus at worst, to build it back, but you can't build with coaches who are looking like passive aggressive @$$es supervised by AD/execs who let it happen.

This I totally agree with and yes our men's program is terrible and anyone on this board or elsewhere can say that. Like you said, the numbers don't lie. They have weak talent and are poorly coached.

There's a zillion things to say about the women's program, the first being how did she get her job back after lying on her resume and then having her team vote whether they should finish the season. Then after the girls, I mean young women, I mean victims of abuse, quit the team, they had their scholarships revoked. Talk about piling on.

It starts with the administration. The athletic director is a nice person and she tries hard but she's in over her skis in this job. It's rather obvious. Both basketball programs are in the toilet one for losing like crazy and the other one for losing and being sadistic towards their players. It's amazing those two women's coaches are still coaching for Western Oregon.

A lot of it comes down to arrogance. The men's coach refuses to recruit the state of Oregon it's well known by high school coaches. Instead he goes down to California to get guys who can win four games a year. The women's coaches are equally bad. Each team has two Oregonians on it and are losing like crazy, there's not a community feel to the program. It's so maddening, it's something they could fix but now it's going to take a long time. The fact that the president, the athletic director, a dean, and a board of trustee, would not act on the students pleas for help, goes back to this arrogance I'm talking about. Why are you arrogant? You're a tiny school in a tiny town that plays third or fourth fiddle to Oregon State Oregon and others. God, know who you are. This is the most frustrated I've probably ever been with Western Oregon.

You are right, they're going to have to burn it down. They're going to have to get an athletic director in there with some experience, maybe someone who's retired who will take it for a few years and rebuild the whole thing and hand it off to a really quality person. I don't trust them to hire the right athletic director either. While our current ad is an alum, it doesn't have to be an alumnus to take the job. But knowing how the school operates, they'll probably hire some clown from the east coast, who will stay six months and destroy things. They really don't have a clue right now on how to operate athletics. Yes, burn it down and start over.

[tsull]

Sometimes things are just made too difficult when they don't need to be. Universities often operate like this. I did a quick 10 minute Google search of Northwest small college women's basketball coaches in the NAIA and division 3. Now of course they're not going to get all of these coaches to apply, certainly the Southern Oregon women's Coach isn't leaving that job for Western Oregon, she is 22-0 right now. But there's some very good coaches in the Northwest. The Whitman coach is 18-2 she's probably not leaving, she's been there forever. Western Oregon is also not a good division 2 job so that needs to be taken into consideration.

But up the road, Linfield is having a very good year, I think second in the Northwest Conference Division 3 league. She's a good coach. Willamette University and Pacific University aren't having good years but they've done very well in the past with those two coaches, including Willamette going to the division 3 Nationals last year. Both of those coaches have outstanding bios. They might not want to leave for Western Oregon obviously. One coach who did apply for the job I've heard is in the NAIA league and quite successful I don't think I can leak the name. They were turned down for the current coach they have. The coach who wanted the job has deep Oregon roots and has been successful at two colleges.

It's just not that confusing. You don't need to go to West Virginia to get a sub 500 Coach who obviously doesn't know how to work with student athletes.