New Mexico State University fired its men’s basketball coach in the wake of hazing allegations that the school’s chancellor said Wednesday have left him “disgusted and angry.”
Coach Greg Heiar was “terminated with cause,” NMSU chancellor Dan Arvizu told reporters in Las Cruces, just days after the school canceled the remainder of its men’s basketball season.
“It feels like a gut punch,” Arvizu said of disturbing allegations swirling around the Aggies men’s basketball program.
“As a parent, as an administrator, as a member of our community, my alma mater, I’m both disgusted and angry about what has occurred.”
The school brought a premature curtain on the 2022-23 men’s basketball campaign on Sunday when police disclosed they were investigating three players who might have attacked a teammate in allegations that include false imprisonment, harassment and criminal sexual contact.
These hazing allegations come on top of another troubling incident: Aggies forward Mike Peake was allegedly involved in a fatal shooting of a student from the rival University of New Mexico on Nov. 19 in Albuquerque.
The program’s sudden downfall comes just one year after the Aggies had been one of the darlings of March Madness, with a stunning upset of perennial power Connecticut.
That banner 2021-22 season earned then-Aggies coach Chris Jans a new, high-profile job at Mississippi State.
Schools often lean on “coaching trees,” hiring former colleagues and subordinates of other successful coaches and NMSU athletic director Mario Moccia defended procedures that ended in Heiar’s employment.
Heiar has long ties to Jans and current Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes, making him a suitable candidate for the job he held in Las Cruces for 11 months, according to Moccia. All three once served concurrently as assistant coaches at Wichita State.
“The vetting process is the same,” Moccia said. “You call the people you know and certainly the tree that coach Heiar came from yielded tremendous…
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