Controversy Continues in Utah State’s Firing of Coach : Basketball: Though school’s president made the decision in December, he didn’t take action for more than a month, on eve of UNLV game.

Trying to figure out the intricacies behind Kohn Smith’s impending departure as Utah State basketball coach is as hard as trying to find a white cow in a Cache Valley blizzard.

One of the few things the university administration, Smith’s supporters and Smith’s detractors can all agree on amid a swirl of misinformation and accusations is that Smith won’t be coaching the Aggies next season.

Last Friday, the day before Utah State played Nevada Las Vegas, Smith and newly appointed Athletic Director Chuck Bell jointly announced that Smith’s contract will not be renewed.

Newspaper accounts of the press conference quoted Smith saying he was asked by university officials to say he was resigning because of health reasons, family concerns or other interests. If that was the case, Smith didn’t cooperate.

“I am not resigning. My contract is not being renewed,” Smith said.

“I’m healthy as a bull,” he said. “My family supports me. And I don’t have any other interests.”

Bell handled the public announcement, but the decision wasn’t his. He had only been on the job 4 1/2 days. Smith’s ouster--he has a record of 59-72 in 4 1/2 seasons--came down to the wishes of the university’s president, George H. Emert, who didn’t attend the news conference but has admitted his mind was made up as early as December.

“(Emert) clearly is the one who made the decision,” said Emert spokesman Paul Norton, who is vice president for university relations and development. “It was based on the full term of (Smith’s tenure). It was based on the input (Emert) received from all of our constituencies, plus the performance record.”

Norton identified Utah State’s “constituencies” as “the students, alumni, faculty, community.”

That Smith will not be back as coach is not that unexpected in itself, particularly after former Aggie coach Rod Tueller, his mentor, resigned as athletic director last fall, reportedly because of differences with Emert, who was appointed in May.

Smith’s teams have gone 12-16, 14-16, 11-17 and 16-12, and the Aggies have a 6-11 record this season going into a game against Cal State Fullerton tonight in the Spectrum.

Smith, a former assistant to Indiana Coach Bob Knight, is well-respected among coaches, but he is neither particularly handsome nor particularly well-dressed, thereby lacking some of the qualities currently in vogue for coaches. Nor does he bite his tongue. Several years ago, he created a maelstrom when he questioned how UNLV players were able to drive sports cars.

The puzzle is why the announcement came now, at mid-season.

“It was really hard timing,” Smith said. “It was really so difficult for our team, right before our UNLV and New Mexico State games.

“We were emotionally and physically pretty drained coming off a two-week road trip.”

The sports editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, Dick Rosetta, responded to the news about Smith’s contract with a column that noted one possible catalyst for the move was an incident last month when Smith and a player “reportedly exchanged blows” in the hallway of a Santa Clara hotel.

The night after the story appeared, Nathan Wickizer, a 7-foot center, identified himself as the player involved, but said it was not true that the two came to blows. Jay Goodman, an Aggie guard, concurred.

“It was way overblown,” Goodman said. “There have been things in the past with Coach Smith, but they were all minor. There were no punches.”

Still, Goodman said, the incident might have been “a good excuse” for the administration. But Norton, Emert’s spokesman, called the incident “something between coach and player,” and Smith says Emert told him the incident was not the reason for the decision.

Once the word was out, Emert took more public heat than he was probably prepared for after a Salt Lake Tribune reporter contacted Knight for his reaction.

“It’s hard for me to understand how a guy who I’ve heard admit he knows little about basketball can fire a coach whose practices he’s never watched,” Knight said in the Tribune article, calling Smith “as good as any (coach) I’ve ever been around.”

“But perhaps (because Emert formerly worked at) Auburn, where the football and basketball programs have both been on (NCAA) probation recently, he could not understand or appreciate the integrity or character of people like Rod Tueller and Kohn Smith.

“I played golf with Emert in July,” Knight said. “And after spending two hours with him, I told Kohn and Rod Tueller that neither of them would last a year with this guy.”

Perhaps the least artful aspect of Emert’s handling of the situation is that he made the decision in December, kept it more or less to himself for more than a month, then went forward with it on the eve of the UNLV game.

The situation came to a head in a meeting Smith said he requested only after being told by Bell that Emert wanted to replace him with an assistant coach for the rest of the year. Norton said Emert agreed to Smith’s request to meet, but did not plan to tell him his contract would not be renewed.

“The president did not intend to inform him at that time, but as the meeting occurred, the president felt like it was important for him to level with him,” Norton said. “The president himself was going to wait.”

Left behind in the hubbub is a team and its lame-duck coach.

“I think the timing of it all caught us a little off guard,” Goodman said. “(But) I think we’re ready to put this behind us and go forward.”

On Wednesday, Frank Layden, the former Utah Jazz coach, was in Logan to speak to the Aggies.

“He said, ‘It’s an old cliche, but basketball is like life. You can’t give up. There are a lot of games left to play,’ ” Goodman said.

Goodman said Smith is pressing on.

“I think he has responded real well,” Goodman said. “It’s like a weight is off his shoulders. He’s been under a lot of pressure around town, with everybody talking about whether he was going to be fired or not be fired. He’s keeping us positive.”

Smith is coach for nine more regular-season games, and whatever postseason success the Aggies can manage.

“What we’re going to do is, I want the players to improve over the next two months,” Smith said. “We’re working like heck to help them improve. Our goal is to band together and do well. We want to take the high road. We’ve been dealt a tough hand. There are a lot of reasons for the kids to quit. I’m trying to keep that from happening.”