Fred Hill's Tenure Over at Rutgers

Rutgers announced that men's basketball coach Fred Hill resigned Monday, but the embattled coach's fate was sealed a few weeks ago by an off-the-court incident.

"I would like to thank Freddie for his hard work and service to Rutgers," Scarlet Knights athletic director Tim Pernetti said. "We appreciate his efforts on the behalf of our student-athletes and wish him the very best in his future endeavors."

Hill's future at Rutgers was considered basically over following his conduct at a couple of Rutgers' baseball games on April 1 and 3. Sources told FanHouse that Hill will receive at least $800,000 – he was initially offered a $600,000 buyout last week, but he turned it down. Had Hill remained for the final three years of his contract, Hill would have received at least $1.8 million.

As poorly as Hill did in four seasons at Rutgers, it wasn't his 47-77 coaching record that led to Hill's dismissal. It was a profanity-laced verbal outburst on April Fool's Day at a Rutgers baseball game.

On April 1, Hill attended the Rutgers-Pittsburgh baseball game – his father Fred Hill Sr. is RU's coach. After the game, Hill was involved in a profanity-laced verbal outburst with Pittsburgh baseball coach Joe Jordano and Jordano's staff, MyCentralJersey.com reported.

On Monday, Pernetti would not comment about the baseball incident.

---

---

After the April 1 incident, Hill also was instructed by Pernetti not to attend any more games that weekend between Rutgers and Pittsburgh. However, Pernetti saw Hill at the April 3rd game, MyCentralJersey.com reported.

In four seasons at Rutgers, Hill's 47-77 record included a 13-57 Big East mark. In Hill's four seasons, the Scarlet Knights never finished higher than 14th in the 16-team Big East.


Share
Rutgers will be the fourth Big East school with a new coach in 2010-11. Three other league coaches were fired: DePaul's Jerry Wainwright, Seton Hall's Bobby Gonzalez and St. John's Norm Robert.

Because of media speculation that Hill would be fired after another poor season, Pernetti issued a statement on March 17 indicating Hill would return for a fifth season.

That all changed on April Fool's Day by Hill's foolish actions.

Hill is the fourth coach from a BCS conference in the past five months that has been fired "with cause" or resigned. South Florida football coach Jim Leavitt, Kansas football coach Mark Mangino and Texas Tech coach Mike Leach were all fired for mistreating players.

Pernetti said during the past few weeks he had not begun looking for a new coach, but would start "immediately." Darren Savino will serve as head coach on an interim basis until that individual is named.

"I was focused exclusively on our current situation and now that that's resolve, I will start immediately in moving forward," Pernetti said. "One thing that hasn't changed: for the first time in a long time, we're going to make an investment in men's basketball and in this program."

Sources indicated that former Ohio State and Boston College coach Jim O'Brien, and Fran Fraschilla are considered the leading candidates to replace Hill.

Contact FanHouse senior writer Brett McMurphy at brettmcmurphy@gmail.com or on Twitter @BrettmcmurphY