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Rachel Crader
Rachel Crader is the editor of semoball.com. She graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in May of 2009 before spending the summer covering the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

Highlights from Rachel's days in college include having a class down the hall from Chase Daniel and having NCAA wrestling champion Ben Askren hold the door open for her at Brady Commons, Mizzou's student center. She spent time covering Mizzou basketball, softball and baseball while working for the Columbia Missourian and is excited to return home to Southeast Missouri to cover local sports for semoball.com.

Rachel has covered three Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournaments for the Southeast Missourian and semoball.com, and she'll see you courtside again this year.
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COLUMN: Mark Alnutt makes statement with Southeast Missouri State basketball coaching moves

Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2015, at 12:14 AM
Southeast Missouri State athletic director Mark Alnutt stands with men's basketball coach Dickey Nutt before a game against Ball State during the 2012-2013 season.

Mark Alnutt was introduced as the Southeast Missouri State athletic director on April 19, 2012.

But when his time at Southeast is done -- whether he chooses to move on to another job, is fired or retires a Redhawk -- it will likely be March 23, 2015 that is remembered as the day he took over.

With two announcements in a matter of two hours, Alnutt made it known that women's basketball coach Ty Margenthaler and men's basketball coach Dickey Nutt will not return next season. He also made it known that just talking about winning will no longer be enough for the university's most visible programs.

The Southeast football team may well be on its way to prominence in the region and beyond, but it's been basketball that has kept fans flocking to campus for decades. The excitement surrounding both programs has waned in recent years as NCAA sanctions followed by endless losses by the women's team led to apathy, and NCAA sanctions followed by endless promises unfilled led to frustration with the men's team.

Both Margenthaler and Nutt took over programs facing daunting rebuilding projects. Margenthaler was never able to get the women's program out of the Ohio Valley Conference cellar in four years on the job, and another NCAA investigation into an assistant coach's callous breaking of fundamental recruiting rules made his resignation -- which can at best be called a mutual agreement because Alnutt was not open to him returning next season -- unsurprising, although the three weeks that passed between the end of the season and the announcement made me think he'd be allowed to finish the final year of his contract.

Nutt's termination, however, is much more divisive. Without question, Nutt deserves credit for bringing the Redhawks through the worst of its NCAA penalties, which included a reduced number of scholarships. He brought Southeast's program back to respectability but stalled there, settling for mediocrity over the past three seasons.

I've always thought much of the ire Nutt drew from fans had as much to do with his talk as it did his team's performance.

For example, at one point this season he claimed that his team was the most talented he ever coached. It seemed a preposterous statement for someone who'd seen his previous teams at Southeast, but it becomes maddening when you watch that talented team go 7-9 in the OVC and limp into the conference tournament.

Even after he was fired Monday, Nutt, who was understandably disappointed and perhaps a little angry, said a "silver lining" to the season he has called "disappointing" was that the Redhawks were up by at least 10 points with five minutes to go in 11 games this year but the leads slipped away many times. By his estimation, that makes the team "competitive" and signaled that it was close to turning a corner. By my estimation, it means that the team failed to close out games and failed to learn from the failures, but Nutt has a knack for trying to spin even the most obvious weakness as a positive.

He always took responsibility for the shortcomings but couldn't seem to correct them, which is the more important part of the equation.

He also admitted more than once, including on Monday, that his team had an attitude problem -- although he would never choose to term it that way. Some turned their nose at simple things like being told to sit in the first four rows of their classes and try as he might to preach the importance of "little things" like being a good teammate, the Redhawks bought in only sporadically.

Nutt is always generous with his time, he has run clean programs his entire career and I don't doubt his passion for his players and teams. Add in the perpetual promise of his teams, and the decision to show him the door is complicated, but I can't say I think it's wrong. For better or worse, the six years he was granted to take the Redhawks was a generous amount of time by Division I standards, no matter what state the program was in when he arrived. It's not that he didn't receive patience, it's that he used it all up.

The foundation for this move was set almost a year ago by Alnutt, who gave Nutt the new contract extension Nutt believed he needed to effectively recruit while also making it significantly less expensive to fire him.

"Honestly it wasn't an extension. It was a new three-year contract that had different terms in the agreement," Alnutt said. "With one year left on a contract, I wanted to be in a position to be able to help Coach Nutt. What you hear from a lot of coaches, and rightfully so, is that it's difficult to recruit when you have the last year on your contract."

On one hand, Alnutt could have let Nutt go after this season at no cost had he not given him a new deal. On the other hand, he both gave Nutt the support he said he needed and reduced the cost to fire him from $249,000 to $93,000.

"Yes, I would say so," Alnutt said when asked if the buyout was reduced with this move in mind. "Just to be honest with you. Looking at that situation, I knew this year was going to be a key year as he and I talked about. Again he mentioned that he felt that this team was going to be better than last year's team. So for me, in putting that together, if this situation did move forward -- and obviously it did -- just financially you're not paying what you were paying before if you would have given him the extension based on the original contract."

Alnutt has complete control of the hiring process for both replacements. The new basketball coaches will join third-year baseball coach Steve Bieser, second-year football coach Tom Matukewicz, first-year softball coach Mark Redburn and second-year tennis coach Leah Killen as Alnutt's hires.

"Every AD is going to say they have this short list," Alnutt said of job candidates. "There are some people out there in the industry that I've very familiar with that I know very well or either know of them through my counterparts or commissioners, but ... you still have to vet it out. You have to make sure that there's mutual interest, that it's a fit. You're still going through that process, but there's names on both sides that I want to look at."

The names he eventually settles on will complete the takeover that started Monday and go a long way toward writing Alnutt's legacy at Southeast.

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