The Newark Star-Ledger has announced that Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez has been fired. Gonzalez is lucky number seven, as far as coaches being fired since the conference tournaments ended.
Gonzalez posted a 63-56 record at Seton Hall, and went 25-46 in the Big East — but the cited report states that it wasn’t his teams’ performance on the basketball court that got him fired. It was “a pattern of behavior not reflective of the image the school wants to present.”
There are three incidents that immediately come to mind in terms of this bad behavior. Everyone remembers the Keon Lawrence incident on the New Jersey Turnpike that started the season. Just last week, Gonzalez bounced forward Robert Mitchell from the team just before the Pirates found out who they were playing in the NIT because of some comments Mitchell made about Gonzalez to a local paper.
The final straw had to come last night in the Pirates’ NIT game against Texas Tech, when SHU’s Herb Pope twice rang TTU forward Darko Cohadarevic’s bell…
And so ends the Gonzalez era at Seton Hall.
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The Seton Hall fans, especially the student sections, were heckling the coach throughout the game. It had to be very demoralizing for the team to play under those circumstances. Coach Gonzalez was called for his seventh technical foul of the season half-way through the second half. With Mitchell's arrest for armed robbery earlier this afternoon, the pattern "...of behavior not reflective of the image the school wants to present.” continued.
Coach Gonzalez went 90 miles per hour, good or bad. Maybe everyone in the Athletic Department and University Administration was just tired.
There were no tears shed throughout the Big East coaching fraternity. One coach who requested anonymity because of the league's policy not to publicly criticize other coaches, had this to say about Gonzalez.
"There are 16 coaches in this league and 15 can play together nicely in the sandbox,'' said the coach. "One guy nobody wants to play with."
That says it all. Gonzalez embarrassed my school and I am SO happy he's gone!