Spartans dealing with ‘a mess’
Turnover, depletion ravage San Jose State
In October 2013, in Colorado Springs for the Mountain West Conference preseason basketball media day event, reporters surrounded Craig Neal peppering the first time head coach with questions about championships, the Pit crowd and potential all-league players.
A couple hours later, San Jose State’s Dave Wojcik, the league’s other first-time head coach, had a much shorter media session.
Wojcik wasn’t asked much about his team, the program’s winning tradition or championship aspirations. In fact, he was probably hit with as many inquiries about the team’s new court design featuring large Spartans figures painted on the court as about the start-from-scratch overhaul he was undertaking.
Sixteen months later, Wojcik’s unenviable task of resurrecting a program at San Jose State, one of the toughest Division I jobs in the country, is still very much a work in progress.
These Spartans (2-18, 0-8 Mountain West), ruled ineligible for the league title due to poor APR scores, have yet to beat a Division I team. They’ve lost their eight league games by an average of 24.1 points and limp into today’s game against the Lobos (13-7, 5-3) with just six scholarship players and a pair
of walk-ons.
“I don’t know the situation over there, but we came in at the same time,” Neal said. “He was a really good assistant at Boise State and they just have had hard times. I’ve said it a thousand times; I took over a program that … had been established (over the past eight years) and he took over a mess. There’s a big difference in what he had to take over and what I took over.”
SJSU, a 23-point underdog today, is ranked 333 (of 351) in the NCAA’s official RPI rankings and 348 (of 351) Division I teams by the ratings site KenPom.com — a site that predicts the Spartans have only one game on their schedule with a greater than 5 percent probability of winning (16 percent chance of beating Nevada in San Jose on Feb. 7).
San Jose State did not respond this week to a Journal interview request, but Wojcik made it clear in an article posted on the team’s website after Wednesday’s 14-point home loss to Air Force that nobody is raising the white flag. “Our guys are not going to quit, or fold,” he said. “I won’t allow that.” So how did it get to this? Wojcik was hired by SJSU athletic director Gene Bleymaier, the longtime AD at Boise State. They decided, together, to tackle the mess with a long-term goal in mind. Less-than-stellar talent he inherited quickly left, be it voluntarily or not, leading to the APR issues. High school players were the primary recruiting targets, leading to fresh- men starting most during last season’s 7-24 campaign.
This season was supposed to be better, though the Spartans were again picked to finish last in the 11-team league. Then, disaster seemed to strike time and again, including:
Before the season began, it was determined senior guard Devante Wilson (injured) and Utah transfer guard Princeton Onwas would have to sit out;
Two players —Pepperdine transfer Jordan Baker and San Francisco transfer Frank Rodgers — were suspended two exhibition games and the season opener;
Sophomore starting point guard Jalen James, a La Lumiere School standout two years ago under current UNM assistant Alan Huss, and 6-foot-11 freshman center Leon Bahner have been lost for the season with ankle injuries;
Five players — Baker, Rodgers, Rashad Muhammad, Jaleel Williams and Matt Pollard — were suspended for an unspecified team violation in December, leading to the Rodgers and Baker dismissals and forcing the team to temporarily use two SJSU football players to fill out the roster;
While suspended, Pollard, a 7-foot center, announced he would seek a transfer.
The result? Today’s game will have two second-year head coaches sitting in very different spots in their still young head coaching careers.
“They only have eight players and they’ve had their issues,” Neal said. “You’ve got to respect their coach for taking a stand. ... It will be a team coming in here from San Jose who’s really hungry.”
TICKETS: As of 3 p.m. Friday, UNM associate athletic director for ticketing Mark Koson reported “just over 14,000 tickets” had been sold for today’s game.