Fullerton Will Not Renew Sneed’s Contract : College basketball: Citing a need for ‘new leadership,’ school fires coach after he leads Titans to 55-59 record in four seasons.

John Sneed’s sometimes tumultuous four-year tenure as Cal State Fullerton basketball coach came to an end Monday when the school announced that his contract would not be renewed for next season.

Sneed, 43, guided the Titans to a 55-59 record and won only two of six Big West Conference tournament games. Fullerton Athletic Director Bill Shumard cited a need “for new leadership” and a belief that “someone else can take us to a higher level” as primary reasons for the change.

“Ninety-six universities received invitations to postseason play Sunday--that’s one-third of the Division I schools,” Shumard said. “Given where we’re located, the conference we play in, I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility to think we can finish in the upper division of the Big West, win 18-20 games and get to postseason play.

“Programs need goals, and the way this university is structured, men’s basketball has to be our most visible and most productive sport.”

Sneed, whose contract expires March 31, could not be reached for comment. The contracts of assistants Dan Dion and Mike Bokosky also won’t be renewed, but Bokosky is signed through June and will handle team matters during the transition.

Three coaches appear to top Fullerton’s list of candidates to replace Sneed--head coaches Pat Douglass of Cal State Bakersfield and Gary McKnight of Mater Dei High School, and UCLA assistant Brad Holland.

Douglass has led Bakersfield to five consecutive NCAA Division II tournament appearances, and three trips to the national quarterfinals. McKnight has guided Mater Dei to seven Southern Section championships in 10 years.

Holland, the former UCLA and Los Angeles Laker player, has never been a head coach but has been mentioned as a candidate at several Division I schools.

Utah assistant Donny Daniels, a former Titan player who spent a year as an assistant under Sneed at Fullerton, and Bokosky said they will apply for the job. Other possible candidates are UC Riverside’s John Masi and Ventura College’s Phil Mathews.

Shumard, who will form a search committee today and hopes to hire a new coach shortly after the Final Four (April 4-6), doesn’t expect a lot of Division I head coaches to apply.

“I see the state (university) system as a stepping-stone for high-quality, highly motivated people,” Shumard said. “We want to attract someone on the way up. Realistically, that person may not be here for a long time, but as he progresses, so will our program.”

In Shumard’s eyes, the program simply hasn’t made a lot of progress since Sneed, an eight-year Titan assistant, took over for George McQuarn, who resigned abruptly before the 1988-89 season.

With no returning starters on a team that was picked to finish ninth in the conference that season, Sneed led the Titans to a 16-13 record, including an exhilarating, last-second upset of Nevada Las Vegas and a fourth-place finish in the Big West his first year.

That earned Sneed a promotion from interim coach to permanent head coach, but Fullerton didn’t experience that kind of success in the next three seasons.

The 1989-90 team, led by future NBA player Cedric Ceballos, went 13-16; the 1990-91 team went 14-14, and this season’s team, which some considered talented enough to finish in the upper half of the conference, was an inconsistent 12-16, finishing sixth.

While attendance figures haven’t gone down drastically during Sneed’s tenure, Titan Gym crowds have sagged in the 1,700- to 1,800-per-game range, another concern of Shumard’s.

“Basketball has the strongest potential for revenue here,” Shumard said. “When the gate is down, perhaps the public lacks confidence in the product.”

Shumard said a postseason player revolt aimed at overthrowing Sneed last year didn’t factor in his decision, but it certainly didn’t help the coach. Several players criticized Sneed’s coaching tactics and disciplinary methods and asked then interim-athletic director Steve DiTolla to fire Sneed.

Sneed survived the mutiny and returned this season, but this year’s team lacked harmony, a problem that has plagued Sneed’s teams in the past.

Several players from the 1989-90 team said they were jealous that Ceballos and guard Mark Hill took most of the shots and scored most of the points. Late this season, Titan forward Bruce Bowen criticized his teammates for “not caring whether they win or lose,” and getting “jealous of others if they do well.”

“I think Sneed is a good coach--he just hasn’t had the right players,” Bowen said. “He gives you freedom, which is good for a coach, but some players try to take advantage of that. If he had the right players, I think he could go a long way.”

While Sneed has been criticized for his choppy game substitution patterns and a tendency to use more negative than positive reinforcement with players, he has always been considered a hard-working coach whose teams were usually well-prepared, if not always properly motivated.

“He’s very astute at the game,” said Daniels, an assistant under Sneed in 1988-89. “I was always impressed with his game adjustments, the subtle changes he’d make that helped you win.”

Added Shumard: “He has a tremendous knowledge of the game and is a strong tactician.”

Perhaps the Titans’ biggest problem during the past four seasons has been inconsistency in performance and effort. Fullerton would play great some nights, like it did in a loss at UCLA in December, and poorly on others.

Even during individual games, the Titans would play one good five-minute stretch and look terrible for the next five minutes.

This is a problem many teams have--basketball players are streaky by nature. But when a team doesn’t look like it’s playing hard--and the Titans didn’t always look as if they were this season--it reflects poorly on the coach.

“We were very inconsistent all year, mainly due to a lack of motivation,” Fullerton center Sean Williams said of this year’s team. “A head coach has to motivate you, and he didn’t motivate us, so guys would start doing their own thing.

“It’s not all on Sneed--it’s on us, too. But we let things snow-ball on us. When something negative happened, something else bad would happen.”

Sneed at Fullerton

Year W L 1988-89 16 13 1989-90 13 16 1990-91 14 14 1991-92 12 16 Totals 55 59