Men’s basketball coach Dickey Nutt and women’s basketball coach Ty Margenthaler are no longer employed at Southeast.
Nutt was effectively relieved of his duties Monday and Margenthaler resigned from his position last Friday, according to director of athletics Mark Alnutt.
The decision to let go of Nutt was based on the fact that he did not meet the expectations that he and Alnutt mutually agreed on.
Alnutt felt that it was time for a change and he had his end of the year meeting with Nutt two weeks ago where he told him his decision was going to be made after Spring Break.
At that meeting, the two talked about the expectations that were not made, but Alnutt also wanted to hear Nutt’s plans on how he was going to elevate the program for the future.
“You have that discussion with the coach but what the coaches’ vision was for next year and we have some really good student-athletes in place, a good nucleus in place of young people. But still at the end of the day I just was not sold in terms of do we have what it takes to climb the standings in the OVC or will we be where we have been the last few years.”
Prior to last season, the men’s basketball team had made it past the first round of the OVC Tournament but lost in the quarterfinals for four straight seasons.
This year the team made it to the conference tournament once again by securing the eighth and final seed, but lost in the first round.
“Obviously I commend Coach Nutt for the job that he has done inheriting the program that he inherited, and at least got to the point where we were a few years back. In terms of actually looking at it and looking at expectations, especially year six of a program, just more importantly from an OVC standpoint you go back to the two winning seasons that we’ve had the last two years, but from an OVC standpoint we just fell flat. Actually we’ve even regressed the last two years from what we did three years ago.”
Alnutt adds that Margenthaler’s position security was very similar to Nutt’s in the fact that he did not meet the mutually agreed upon expectations.
In the four years that Margenthaler has been the women’s basketball coach, the team never made it to the OVC Tournament.
“Again having the preseason meetings and the postseason meetings, you know we didn’t achieve that. The last two years we wanted to be in a position, we firmly believed that we could be in a position, to make the OVC Tournament.”
Prior to the beginning of the season, Margenthaler was said to have violated the athletic department’s policies and procedures and was suspended for the first two games of the season.
“I look at this as the fact that at that time it was a self-imposed discipline that we did and we felt that possibly would have been it, but it wasn’t the best start obviously to the season to be disciplined based on a potential major infractions case. So again that does have a little bit to bare on it, but I think at the end of the day when you put the NCAA stuff aside and just look at again where both of us expected to be this year and where we actually are was really the main concern.”
The women's basketball program has been investigated by the NCAA since August.
Alnutt says that hopefully there will be resolution or at least some direction on what the direction will be very soon.
Alnutt explains that the NCAA’s investigation played a big role in whether or not Margenthaler resigned or remained as the team’s coach through it.
“It’s a situation where unfortunately where we don’t want it to be a major infraction, but if it is it would have been a situation where that could’ve resulted in a termination. So for him to have the option to potentially be terminated or to be able to be in a position to resign, he chose to be able to resign.”
Alnutt went on to say that it was the best choice for Margenthaler to resign simply because they don’t know what the NCAA is going to come back with and how severe the penalties will be.
Assistant coach of men’s basketball Jamie Rosser and assistant coach of women’s basketball Heather Ezell are currently serving as their team’s acting coaches until a replacement is found for both.
The search for both coaches is just beginning and Alnutt will start looking for nearby candidates for the positions.
“What I’m looking for is obviously someone who is very familiar with this area, familiar with this region. When I say region, you take Cape Girardeau and just draw a six hour radius among there.”
Alnutt said that he expects there to be two new faces in Southeast’s basketball programs by the end of April.
Southeast Arrow Sports Editor Nick McNeal reported this story.