Cutting It Too Close at Cal State

The season is here, which means Shaun Scott has to provide the same painful explanation to every classmate who, not knowing what happened to him and his teammates, innocently asks him how the Cal State Los Angeles basketball team will fare.

“I basically tell them that we all got cut,” Scott said. “The entire team got cut.”

Well, two-thirds of it at least. Eight in all. And not even the eight months that have passed since the team went through its own March Madness have healed the wounds.

“Sometimes I try to go to sleep and I can’t stop thinking about it,” said Jon Folonis, whose 12.7 scoring average was second on the team. “It makes me mad, because it’s just wrong.”

It was the final act of a season gone awry, an avalanche of losing that resulted in a 1-26 record. Coach Dave Yanai announced his retirement following the last game on March 5. Stephen Thompson, a three-year assistant, took his place. They say coaches have to go because you can’t fire the players. Well, Cal State L.A. did.

According to Scott, Thompson held a team meeting about a week after the season ended and emphasized the work that lay ahead for them. All of them.

“He made it sound like we were all in this together,” Scott said. “We were going to be a better team [this] year because we were all in it together.”

Then, about a week after that, Thompson called players in one by one.

They all heard the same story. We’re going in a different direction. We’re not bringing you back.

“I was shocked,” said Ivan Jackson, whose 6.5-point average was second-highest among the cut players. “I actually thought he was bringing me in to re-sign my scholarship.”

Scott says he had never been cut from a team, never been fired from his jobs at Foot Action or Marie Callender’s. He had walked on at Maricopa College, a two-year school in Arizona, and become a team captain. Given a chance, he’d take advantage of it.

“It would be one thing if you brought in a bunch of new players and we all had a big tryout,” Scott said. “If I could see these other players playing better than me, I could face that, that’s fine. But to say I can’t even try out for the team? That was the part that frustrated me the most.”

DeJesus Brown, Bryan Lay, Mike Gavaldon and Andrew Maxie also were cut.

Gene Myvett, who led the team in scoring, rebounding and assists, Joseph Lewis, David Lester and Tayo Wesey were the only players from last season’s team on the roster Thursday when Cal State L.A. opened its season with a 90-75 exhibition loss at Cal State Northridge.

Thompson, a former Crenshaw High star who played with Syracuse in the 1987 NCAA championship game, and Cal State L.A. Athletic Director Carol Dunn declined to comment.

Assistant athletic director Chris Hughes said federal privacy laws prevented him from discussing individuals, but that one or more of the players did not adhere to all of the guidelines in the school’s student-athlete handbook, which includes expectations such as: “Conduct yourself with class and in a sportsmanlike manner at all times,” “Be punctual,” “attend every class and stay on track to earn your diploma,” “treat your coaches, teammates and the administration with proper respect,” and a code of conduct that mandates “dignity in manner and dress when representing the university.”

Division II men’s basketball teams are allowed 10 scholarships, which are renewable annually at the school’s discretion.

Folonis, who was on a full scholarship, said Thompson told him he was cut because his jersey was untucked, he wore a sweat suit on the road and he made a face “that wasn’t pleasing to him” after a remark by Yanai.

But apparently none of these issues was severe enough to warrant a suspension during the season. And I’m guessing these would have been non-issues had that 1-26 record been 26-1.

“That was not the case at all,” Hughes said. “It had nothing to do with their performance. Effort is different from performance.”

Folonis called the reasons given to him “absurd” and “just an excuse.” From a basketball standpoint, he was told his defense and rebounding were deficient.

“Defense is not my strong point, but I’m willing to work on that,” Folonis said.

“He never brought me aside and said, ‘You could do this on defense.’ He never really encouraged me.”

That gets to the real trouble here, the unshakeable notion that the coaches gave up rather than worked harder.

They brought the players in, deemed them worthy of scholarships. A failure on the order of 1-26 represents a failure of the entire program.

They didn’t recruit enough big men, players said. And the system didn’t suit the team.

“It was a really slow-down offense,” Jackson said. “You’d think a smaller team would get out there and try to run the bigger teams. But he had us slow the ball down.”

Not all of Thompson’s ex-players say bad things about him. Jonathan James called him “a cool guy” and said he had “nothing against him at all.” He’s happy that he wound up at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Mo., because it has allowed him to focus on his faith.

Still, he thinks what happened was unfair.

“It’s up to the individual to improve his game, but it’s also up to the coaching staff and the program to help develop the whole program,” James said. “You lose and you just get thrown away? No, that’s not how you build.”

Instead they have to build new lives. NCAA eligibility rules designed to discourage transfers didn’t make it easier. For example, Folonis, who had already played at UC Riverside and College of the Sequoias, was not eligible to play for another NCAA program, so he transferred to Cal State East Bay, an NAIA Division II school in Hayward.

Jackson is at Livingstone College in North Carolina. Scott, who was not on scholarship, put his desire to graduate over his love of basketball. He doesn’t have to worry about applying credits to another school. But Cal State L.A. isn’t quite the same for him without basketball.

Without an incentive to stay in shape, he’s put on 20 pounds. Eventually, even the best players have to step away from the court. But did that harsh reality have to come to kids so far from the competitive apex?

“It’s hard to realize my basketball career is over,” Scott said. “And it ended on that note.”

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/Adande