Well, the day we were all waiting for is here.
Cleve’s gone.
Fresno State Director of Athletics Thomas Boeh announced last night that men’s basketball coach Steve Cleveland would be stepping down, his new position being “special assistant to the director of athletics” ”” whatever that means.
This is the treatment the man gets for doing his job?
Cleveland was brought to Fresno State for one reason ”” clean up a Fresno State men’s basketball program that was in shambles.
Preceding Cleveland was Ray Lopes, a former assistant coach at Oklahoma, who, with the rest of his staff, made 457 illegal telephone calls to prospective recruits to the school. The school was placed on four years of probation for the incident, and was not able to have its full complement of scholarships until only this year.
This was the situation when Cleveland was hired. “We’re gonna do this,” he said, “we’re gonna do it the right way.”
Under this rubric, Cleveland has been an astonishing success.
Fresno State has not had even a whiff of scandal in the program in the six years Cleveland has led the program.
In addition, the men’s basketball team has vastly improved where it ultimately matters: in the classroom. As The Collegian’s Vongni Yang is reporting today, for the 2004-05 season ”” Ray Lopes’ final year at Fresno State ”” the team’s Academic Progress Rate, a measurement for academic progress, was 725, the worst score in all of the NCAA since the APR was first used.
Since Cleveland has taken over, Fresno State’s APR has risen to 928. Graduation rates have drastically increased and, at one point, the team’s GPA improved from 2.23 to 2.86.
Granted, Cleveland has not had the greatest success on the court. He has had only two winning seasons in his six years at Fresno State, and his best finish in the Western Athletic Conference was third.
But Cleveland has never had a full slate of scholarships until this past year, and to say this season’s disappointing record was unexpected is simply dishonest.
Paul George left last year for the NBA Draft, and Mike Ladd and Brandon Sperling both transferred to Washington State and Humboldt State respectively, stripping the team of its best player, a starting guard and its sixth man.
He had a young team this year ”” the ‘Dogs had only one senior, Ned Golubovic. Greg Smith, who made the Second Team All-WAC team this past season, may not have left Fresno State if Cleveland had stayed.
Kevin Olekaibe, a freshman guard, averaged 12 points per game, Tim Steed, a junior guard, averaged 10.7 points per game en route to being named to the WAC All-Newcomer team and Steven Shepp, a junior point guard, averaged about 2.5 assists for every turnover, providing a nucleus for a team that could be above .500 next year for the first time since the 2006-07 season.
And Cleveland won’t be around to see if the team he brought here will fulfill its potential.
Simply put, Cleveland was given the shaft by Fresno State. He left a good job at Brigham Young University, where he reached three NCAA Tournaments, to come back to his hometown and take over a squad that was a laughingstock. He turned the ‘Dogs into a respectable program again, and this is how he is rewarded?
The ‘Dogs will probably have a better record next year, and many will likely say that it was time for Cleveland to go. And maybe those people are right.
But it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It should for you too.
Anonymous • Mar 18, 2011 at 6:42 pm
The bad taste in my mouth is this take on FS basketball that continues to linger after I have finished reading it. What is not “honest” is pointing out there has been no scandal in six years — a minimum requirement of all D-1 coaches, HS and CC coaches — as if this is something a coach puts on their resume when applying for a job. And despite the fact that FS officials continue to maintain their ultimate goal is the integrity of the program that was lacking during the last two coaching tenures before Cleveland, it does not take a braniac to see through this. No doubt they are committed to maintaining integrity and academic standards, as they should, but Cleveland was not winning, they were not making money, so he had to got.
And he did not “resign.” FS surely told him they wanted to go in another direction, but that firing him at a public school with two years left on his deal would look bad, considering they would have to still pay him while also paying a new coach. In the midst of budget cuts, the AD may have had much to answer for. So they gave Cleveland a pretty sweetheart deal: “We’ll give you all your money, you can be a quasi-cheerleader for the program — but you must lie and officially say that you are stepping down.”
As I stated before, BYU has — and will continue to — have more success with Cleveland gone.
Instead of highlighting the politics of FS and college athletics, which would have been insightful to readers and sports fans, this author assesses this program and this coach with sanguine statements — “astonishingly successful,” “Cleveland was given the shaft,” — that leaves both casual and sophisticated FS students and fans wondering if this guy thinks Joseph Smith is awesome too. And “Cleve’s gone.?” I thought only Matt James wrote lame lines aimed at being cute or something worse. You could join him as two sports writers in the valley with awful takes on College BB.
Anonymous • Mar 18, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Wow. Who wrote this? One of Steve Cleveland’s family members? Sorry but Cleveland HAD to go. Six years of work = 1 N.I.T. appearance. The author of this story fails to realize that first and foremost, Steve Cleveland was a BASKETBALL COACH. He simply was not doing a good job on the court so he absolutely deserved to get fired. He had a sub .500 coaching record after six seasons. Sorry you have to go. I agree Coach Cleveland did a great job cleaning up the program and increased there academic success, that should not entail him to keep his job. At the end of the day, the basketball coach needs to wins BASKETBALL games and get us into the NCAA Tournament. I’d understand the authors gripe if Cleveland was a professor at a University, but he is a basketball coach that was getting academic results from his players but hardly any success on the floor.
Anonymous • Mar 18, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Yeah maybe one of Cleveland’s relatives did write this lukrich! What kind of name is that anyway. Your an adult now, you can’t make up silly names and mix up your “there”s and “their”s. Maybe you should nut up and realize that there are a few more important things in the world than success on the court. Coach Cleveland cleaned up a team that no other coach could have. He created a new foundation that the team can now build on. Maybe you should go back to middle school lukrich and get a new foundation of your own that isn’t based on sitting on your couch, playing video games, watching sports, and eating cheese puffs.
Anonymous • Mar 26, 2011 at 9:27 pm
The name Lukrich is my middle name, who are you to talk? TheTalk? Really? This isn’t the World Wrestling Federation buddy, and if it was, be a little bit more original. I can’t even take your post seriously. Created a new foundation that the team can build on? Bro, in six years, he NEVER took us too an NCAA tournament, so if that’s what you call a foundation, you must be smoking some stuff. Yes, I’ll admit I do make some grammatical errors here and there however, if this article is “good enough” to get posted in a newspaper or online, my grammatical
errors are the least of your worries. Finally, I do agree 100% with your last comment. I do like to sit on my couch, play some video games, and watch a lot sports. Maybe you should watch some more basketball so you know the difference between a good NCAA coach and a bad one…. Just a thought….
Anonymous • Mar 18, 2011 at 2:37 pm
True. You can’t make chicken salad out of…