Wow, the stories and rumors surrounding men's basketball head coach Terry Dunn's Friday resignation are juicy. Nobody seems to be saying anything concrete about what really happened, but here's a rundown of some of the reports:
The tale begins earlier this season when the team's former co-captain Jarrett Mathis '09 quit the team after a public "shouting match" in Alumni Gym, the Valley News reported. Mathis later told the Valley News in an e-mail that Dunn "disrespected me as a captain and as a person, and said extremely hurtful things to me that made it difficult to stay on the team."
Mathis declined to be interviewed for this column.
On Friday, the members of the basketball team brought a signed document to the administration threatening to refuse to take the court in the team's game against Harvard this Saturday if Dunn was still the coach, FoxSports.com reported Friday evening.
Men's team captain Robby Pride '10 disputed this report in an interview, but declined to say whether there had been any communication between interim athletic director Bob Ceplikas and members of the team prior to Dunn's resignation.
"There's a lot of speculation going around with the Fox report which was not true at all saying that we revolted and boycotted and wouldn't play for him in the next game against Harvard," Pride said. "Which is just not true."
Dunn resigned on Friday afternoon, according to a release on DartmouthSports.com. Ceplikas told The Dartmouth that the resignation was for "personal reasons."
Adding some credibility to those statements is a recent press release from the University of Michigan that Dunn's twin brother, Jerry Dunn, an assistant coach for the Wolverines basketball team, took an indefinite leave of absence on Dec. 29 due to "family matters."
So what really happened? Was Dunn's departure a personal decision, the result of a worsening family emergency? Or was it the result of an old-fashioned mutiny, led by players dissatisfied with what the Valley News described as "his taskmaster style"?
We may never find out. FoxSports.com's sources will tell one story, and Ceplikas will tell another. Pride, aside from disputing the FoxSports.com report, declined to offer any new details on the matter.
Let me be clear about one thing if this is a family-emergency situation, I wish Dunn and his family all the best. That said, it certainly looks like there are other factors at play here. And if Dunn was fired, the College should come out and say so. It would show that Dartmouth is starting to get serious about replacing the coaches of under-performing teams.
It was widely rumored that Dunn was not well-liked by his players, even before this year. And as a fan of the men's basketball team, I didn't much like him either.
I advocated last month in my column that Dartmouth replace the coaches of under-performing teams like men's basketball. Yes, the team was in the Ivy League title hunt at one point last season, but that was largely a result of the stellar play of Ivy League Player of the Year Alex Barnett '09.
The fact of the matter now is that it doesn't matter whether Dunn was forced out his departure gives Dartmouth the Big Green a huge opportunity to turn around.
The Ivy League is in flux with the recent end of Penn and Princeton's dominance. Cornell has taken over the role of Ivy powerhouse, and in less than 10 years Big Red head coach Steve Donahue turned a 3-10 laughingstock into the first team to challenge No. 1 Kansas this season.
Dartmouth must find its own Steve Donahue an outstanding coach and recruiter someone who can motivate his players in a way that doesn't leave them complaining to the local paper about the length of practices.
Basketball is a revenue-generating sport for the College. Fans actually pay to see this team. The College owes it to those fans, current students, alumni and friends of the program to do whatever it takes to lift Dartmouth basketball from its current No. 336 out of 347 Sagrin rating the worst in the Ivy League.