Mouton will take over on an interim basis

By Brooks Hatch
Gazette-Times reporter

Jay John was relieved on Sunday after 5 1/2 seasons as Oregon State’s men’s basketball coach. He will be replaced on an interim basis by associate head coach Kevin Mouton, a charter member of John’s staff here.

OSU athletic director Bob De Carolis met with John on Sunday morning and with the team on Sunday night to deliver the news of the change.

“I want to thank coach John for his contributions to Oregon State and his tireless effort in trying to turn around the men’s basketball program,” De Carolis said in a statement released by the university. “I commend him for being an ambassador for the university and his solid record of graduating his student-athletes.

“However, our progress on the court has not been what we all had hoped for so we are moving in a different direction.”

John, 49, is under contract through the 2009-10 season. He is owed the remainder of this year’s approximate $525,000 annual salary, and about $1.05 million over the next two years of his contract.

John was 72-97 overall and 28-68 in the Pacific-10 Conference . A former assistant coach at San Francisco, Butler, Oregon and Arizona, John was hired on April 9, 2002, as the successor to Ritchie McKay, who left OSU after two seasons for a similar job at the University of New Mexico.

“I want to thank Bob De Carolis and Dr. Ed Ray for years of support,” John said in a statement released by the university. “Also, I want to thank Mitch Barnhart and Dr. Paul Risser for giving me the opportunity to coach at OSU.

“My wife and I made a number of meaningful relationships in our six years and we are grateful for that.”

OSU entered the year with high hopes after an off-season roster makeover but struggled through a soft nonconference schedule with a 6-6 record that included losses to Division II Alaska Fairbanks and Tennessee Tech. The Beavers are winless in six Pac-10 games after falling at Washington State and at Washington this past Thursday and Saturday, and have lost eight games in a row.

They are 6-12 overall heading into Thursday’s 5:30 p.m. home game with USC. They appear destined for their fifth losing record in John’s six years here, and their 16th such mark in the past 18 seasons overall.

OSU did not practice on Sunday, as is customary during the season. School is closed today for the Martin Luther King Day holiday, but OSU is scheduled to work out at 1:30 p.m., the usual time.

Mouton, 42, was 1-0 as an interim coach in 2004-05 when John was hospitalized for high blood pressure, directing an 88-66 rout of Arizona State at Gill Coliseum. He played under John at Oregon, at Jamestown (N.Y.) Community College and at San Francisco when John was an assistant at those schools.

He then assisted at the Colorado School of Mines, Butler, Eastern Illinois, New Hampshire, St. Mary’s and Nebraska before coming to Corvallis with John for the 2002-03 season.