Vance Walberg Resigns as Basketball Coach
1/17/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
“I’d like to thank Dr. John Watson and Dr. Andrew Benton for the opportunity to come here,” Walberg said. “This is a beautiful place. It just comes down to what I need to do personally and what’s best for my family. I’d like to thank the entire Pepperdine community for their support. We have a lot of good people here. We’ve got some really good kids on this team and I wish them well.”
Walberg was hired in April 2006 after an extremely successful stint as the head coach at
Walberg went 133-11 at
“Vance came to me this morning and told me that this is what he needed to do,” Watson said. “I’m sorry this had to happen like this, but it’s more important that he take care of his personal matters at this time. We’ll move forward as best we can. Our concern now is for our student-athletes and making sure that they can handle this transition period in the best manner possible.”
Eric Bridgeland, in his second year as an assistant coach at Pepperdine, will take over as interim head coach. Bridgeland was a head coach for seven seasons at the Division III level and posted an overall record of 115-65 (.639).
In five seasons at
“This is not how we drew it up, but we’re going to make the best of it,” Bridgeland said. “The most important task at hand is to pull our family together and make sure every individual team member is okay. We’ve got a young, resilient group and we’ll move forward as best we can.”
The Waves head back onto the road next week for games at Saint Mary’s on Saturday (Jan. 19) and at
The following is a partial transcript of a January 17 press conference at
JOHN WATSON: “Good afternoon everyone. As you’ve heard, this morning Coach Vance Walberg tendered his resignation as our head men’s basketball coach. Vance has done a great job for us and I wish him and his family well as they make this transition. Right now our goals are to move forward, to develop our program, to encourage our student-athletes, to be certain that they are prepared to deal with this transition and the emotional trauma that they’re going through, and then start competing. We want to maintain the strong tradition that Pepperdine Athletics has. Coach Bridgeland is going to become our interim coach and take the team on the road starting tomorrow to play some more games.”
ERIC BRIDGELAND: “It’s a tough situation. It’s not how we drew it up. We have some resilient young men. If you’ve ever been a member of team athletics, the number one thing it teaches you how to do is deal with adversity. I can assure you there’s a lot of that right now. But our young men will deal with it and make people proud. We will do our very, very best that they are okay socially, emotionally and academically. That’s number one. Two, get our relationships going at a high, high level with each other. We want to make Pepperdine proud.”
BRIDGELAND: “Team athletics is in place to achieve something greater than yourself. You learn those lessons by facing adversity. To keep the team competing at a high level we have to learn how to deal with this kind of situation. It’s great training, even though you don’t draw it up that way. We’re going to do our best to hold up together, both individually and collectively, and see where we can go with this.”
(on talking to the players) BRIDGELAND: “Classes are in session and this just happened this morning. So we’ve met with the team briefly. Some had classes this morning. We are meeting with them individually as we go. So we’ve met with about half the team at this point. We are working through individual meetings and then a team meeting later on tonight.”
(on if this was a surprise) BRIDGELAND: “I think it’s always going to be a surprise in this situation ... Coach Walberg has to do what’s best for him and his family. We have to move forward from this point and make the best possible culture and environment for our student-athletes.”
(is anyone leaving the program) BRIDGELAND: “I am not aware of it. We have met with half the team and they seem to want to make it work. Everyone is in a little bit of shock, which is natural I think. It’s been positive to this point and we’re anticipating everybody back.”
(on Pepperdine’s recruits) BRIDGELAND: “To be honest, we haven’t really thought about that yet. We’re worried about the current players and their well-being and I’m sure that will come up in the following hours and days ... We’re not even thinking about practice.”
(on if Jason Walberg will stay on the team) BRIDGELAND: “We have not met yet. That meeting is coming up. He’s been in class.”
(on if he will continue to run the Walberg system) BRIDGELAND: “To reiterate, it’s about their well-being right now. We haven’t even thought about that. Obviously there wouldn’t be a full-scale change of any sort ... We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
BRIDGELAND: “It’s a matter of creating the most positive and nurturing environment possible within this adversity. And that’s what our staff is prepared to do right now. We’re not thinking about anything past right now and how they are doing. We’ll reevaluate everything else later on. We want to make sure they’re okay. They obviously have to be in a little bit of shock, like we all are. This doesn’t happen every day.”
(on what he’d say to the student body) BRIDGELAND: “I would say that our current student-athletes need as much support as possible from the student body ... If we can get through it, and we will get through it, it will only make our student-athletes stronger so they need as much as support as possible in the days to come.
(on NCAA secondary violations that were reported) WATSON: “Each year we do kind of a periodic audit of our rules compliance. In the fall we discovered some discrepancies that we further investigated and discovered that innocently, but still specifically, we exceed the number of days of recruiting that we were allotted by the NCAA, and that we had an encounter with a parent of a current athlete who also has a son who is a high school student who is a prospect athlete that should not have occurred on that particular day. We self-reported to the NCAA, we adjusted our system to accommodate for these errors, we’ve done educational programs. The NCAA has accepted our self-imposed directions, and recognized that these were secondary, innocent violations, and it’s done ... I want to emphasize that is not what we’re talking about today. The violations had nothing to do with this. Coach Walberg is a man that needs this campus’ warmth and encouragement and love as he goes through this personal decision. He’s a wonderful man who’s done a great thing to encourage young men to develop as human beings and to serve others, and I hope that this campus would embrace him and his family and wish them well, and also embrace our student-athletes as we move forward in the future.”
(on the self-imposed sanctions) WATSON: “We reduced the number of recruiting days, we changed our educational system, we are monitoring our recruiting processes more diligently on a monthly basis, those kinds of things.”
(on searching for a new head coach) WATSON: “We’ll begin thinking about that process right away. But right now our attention is on the student-athletes and what transpired today. But we’ll start thinking about the future of the program right away.”
(on outside complaints of verbal abuse at practice) WATSON: “I absolutely looked into it and I spoke with every player, every coach, and there was no abuse that has taken place.”
