Nearly three months ago, the Oberlin men’s basketball team was forced to forfeit its season because of an ineligible player. Two weeks ago Mike Muska resigned as Oberlin athletic director. Now this year’s head basketball coach, Mike Cavey, whose contract is up, has declined to interview to return as basketball coach.
“My interview was scheduled for today,” Cavey said yesterday, “and I have backed out. I’m not coming back. It’s just time for me to move on.”
Cavey coached the team to a 9-16 record and a playoff berth, Oberlin’s best showing in years, before an administrative oversight forced the team to forfeit those nine wins. The player’s ineligibility was not revealed until the day after the team upset Ohio Wesleyan in the first round of the North Coast Athletic Conference tournament.
Since then, the men’s basketball team has been waiting for the dust to fully settle. The administration accepted the blame for the oversight and a committee was formed to investigate the error. “[President Nancy Dye] promised she would show us the results of the [committee’s] report as soon she knew anything,” 11 members of the team wrote in a letter to the Review (see page 7). “To this day, not one person on the team, or our coach has seen this report.”
“The administration is keeping really quiet,” junior Jon MacDonald, one of the letter writers, said. “That has led to a lot of blame being put on the basketball coach.”
Asked if he thought the administration was looking for scapegoats for the season’s end, Cavey responded, “All I’ll say is that the whole process didn’t help me, even though I was told that I was not to blame for anything that happened. I was told none of this would be blamed on me. Was it plain? In my opinion, yes.”

Both Cavey and MacDonald expressed frustration with a lack of communication from the administration, both regarding Muska’s departure and the situation with the basketball coach position.
“All we know,” MacDonald said of Oberlin’s recently departed athletic director, “is that one day Muska was told to leave his office by 4:30.”
Initially Muska’s resignation was to be effective as of June 30. But in a recent letter to the student body, the content of which was reflected on the college’s website, Dye stated that Muska resigned on May 1, leading to the naming of George Andrews (OC ’54), Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, as acting athletic director. No explanation for the change in dates has been given.
Cavey, meanwhile, spoke about the College’s failure to contact him regarding the position which he had held all year.
“The whole hiring process in my opinion was very, very shady,” he said. “I was not told of any of this. It took my assistant coach, Evan Gerking, to actually get any information regarding my position. They didn’t give me any information. As of this past Monday, I didn’t know anything about it. My understanding was that this whole process would take place a long time ago.”
Eventually, Cavey was given an interview time slot, but has chosen not to take advantage of it.

Cavey said that MacDonald and junior Justin Perkins were supposed to be included in the hiring process, but were eventually excluded. MacDonald said that they found out that there had been over 100 applicants, about 10 of whom he felt were qualified. Of those who were selected to interview, MacDonald said the College “chose some of the more qualified” candidates.
Qualification was another issue that the basketball players brought up in their letter, claiming that Cavey’s lack of a master’s degree was key to the administration’s lack of support for him.
“Was he willing to get his master’s?” MacDonald said. “I asked him straight up. He said, ‘Yeah, definitely.’”

Dye declined to comment on the hiring situation. Dean of Arts and Sciences Clayton Koppes, asked how the season’s end would affect the hiring process, said “I don’t think the forfeiture has affected the search adversely at all….I think the candidates realize that we will have a new, fully compliant eligibility system in place before next fall, and so they can coach with confidence that eligibility will not be an issue.”

Continuity, on the other hand, will be an issue. The Yeomen will be on their third coach in four years, and the recruiting process may be in jeopardy.

“I stopped recruiting quite a while ago,” Cavey said. “No kid is going to come somewhere where they don’t know who the coach is.”
Regardless of the factors involved in the personnel departure, it is clear that the dust surrounding the athletics department in general, and particularly the men’s basketball team, will not be fully settled until well into the 2002-2003 school year.
“Best of luck to the men’s basketball team next year,” Cavey said in closing. “They just got to keep working hard.”

Julie Johnson and Blake Rehberg conducted interviews for this report.