Strothers Quits Basketball Job at Chapman

Lindsay Strothers, whose fourth season as the Chapman University women’s basketball coach was his most frustrating, will not return for a fifth, he said Tuesday.

Strothers is resigning to help start a sports camp business in Portland, Ore., but said he likely would have remained at Chapman if not for the university’s decision last year to move from NCAA Division II to Division III and stop offering athletic scholarships.

“I’d probably still be here,” Strothers said. “But I would have had four Division I players this year and we would not have had a difficult season. It’s kind of hard to walk away from winning.”

The Panthers won only two of 25 games and were winless in 12 California Collegiate Athletic Assn. games this past season. In four seasons under Strothers, the Panthers were 43-64 and the Panthers made two conference tournament appearances.

Chapman will play next season as a Division III independent as it applies to join the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and Strothers said it is a good time for a change.

“It’s like the perfect time for someone to come in and start and for me to go start something else,” he said.

Strothers, who played college basketball at Pacific University near Portland and coached girls’ basketball at Portland St. Mary’s Academy, has returned to Portland every summer since moving to Southern California to work at various basketball camps.

He said he has often been offered positions with camps and this time didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. Strothers said he will be starting a company with Tom McKenna, a former girls’ basketball coach at Portland Grant High, and former NBA player Kermit Washington.

Strothers was an assistant with the Southern California College women’s team for a season, before coming to Chapman in a similar position in 1988. At the beginning of that season, he was named interim men’s basketball coach after Kevin Wilson was fired. A day later, men’s assistant Rich Prospero was named interim coach and Strothers remained an assistant for both teams until he was hired as head women’s coach in 1989.

Strothers, who often sang the national anthem before Chapman games, will remain at the university until May 31 and continue to recruit players until a new coach is hired.