Stanford has fired men’s basketball coach Jerod Haase, the school announced Thursday night, less than 10 minutes after the Cardinal’s season ended in the Pac-12 tournament.
Stanford lost to No. 22 Washington State 79-62 in the quarterfinals, bringing a close to a 14-18 (8-12 Pac-12) season.
“I have not won here to the level that I expect,” Haase said after the game in an emotional news conference. “Just like I hold my team accountable, I’m being held accountable, and I have no issue with that.”
Haase failed to reach the NCAA tournament in any of his eight seasons at the helm, finishing above .500 in the Pac-12 just once.
“While the on-court results fell short of our expectations, Coach Haase led our men’s basketball program with great integrity and made a deeply positive impact on many Cardinal student-athletes,” athletic director Bernard Muir said. “As we embark on the search for our next head coach, I wish Jerod and his family all the best in the future.”
Haase led Stanford to a 19-16 (11-7) record in his second year and had the Cardinal on the precipice of the NCAA tournament in 2020. But they lost their last three games and likely would have missed the field had the tournament not been canceled.
Stanford has struggled over the past three seasons, with Muir releasing a statement after the 2021-22 campaign that Haase would be back as coach but needed to show improvement. The Cardinal then had their worst campaign since Haase’s first year in charge, finishing 14-19 overall and 7-13 in the league.
This season, despite the addition of two top-50 recruits, they couldn’t generate momentum. Stanford scored 100 points and beat Arizona on New Year’s Eve, but a six-game losing streak in February and early March sealed Haase’s fate.
Haase finished his Stanford career with a record of 126-127.
“If the program was perfect right now, I’d still be the coach,” Haase said. “It’s not perfect. There need to be some advancements and improvements. … It is an inflection point because there’s so many big changes, big decisions that are going on right now. I believe Stanford is a place of great ingenuity, creativity and desire to lead. The truth is a lot of these are hard decisions, especially when you value the scholar-athlete, you value the experience, you value development of players. They’re not easy conversations, and [there are not] a lot of easy solutions.”
Prior to taking over in Palo Alto in 2016, Haase was the coach of UAB for four seasons. He led the Blazers to the NCAA tournament in 2015, where they beat Iowa State in the first round as a 14-seed before losing to UCLA. He also spent 13 seasons as an assistant coach under Roy Williams at Kansas — where he played his college ball — and North Carolina.
The school said a national search would begin immediately. Washington State’s Kyle Smith and Princeton‘s Mitch Henderson are expected to be primary candidates, sources told ESPN.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
