Antelope Valley College Men's Basketball

The LA Wave reported that the West LA basketball program was suspended due to budget cuts.

In talking to a number of knowledgeable JUCO basketball fans, the decision to close the program was not as big of a surprise as the timing of the closure.  Although the college location seemed ideal for recruiting JUCO basketball players, the West LA program has not been as competitive as hoped under current coach Ron McClurkin. 

With only 9 weeks till the beginning of the 2012-13 pre-conference season, the very late closure could cause major disruptions for a number of JUCO teams and the players that were on the West LA Team.  Conference members of the Western State Conference –South must be scrambling to reschedule their conference season and to add on non-conference games to make up for the missing games caused by the West LA program closure.  Add on to that, any tournament that West LA was scheduled to play in the pre-conference season will now be thrown into disarray. 

More confusion.  Antelope Valley College was scheduled to move to the Western State Conference – South next year from the Foothill Conference.  How will the last minute closure of  the West LA program affect the transfer??? 

Finally, the players.  Did the West LA college notify the basketball players early of their pending decision and assist in transfer to other JUCO programs?

Oxnard College closed its basketball program this year as well but announced it at the end of the 2010-11 season giving the players and conference team members a chance to plan for the disruption. 

One JUCO basketball expert I talked to wondered out loud if this was “just the beginning” of a run of closures of “weak sister” JUCO basketball programs in California.  Although doubtful, it would be interesting to know if the new NCAA rules requiring a 2.5 GPA to transfer on scholarship to 4 year colleges had any impact on the West LA decision?

• http://wavenewspapers.com/sports/article_2a4b245c-ebef-11e1-93d2-0019bb30f31a.html

• Posted: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 5:19 pm | Updated: 3:15 pm, Wed Aug 22, 2012.

By Ron Guild, Sports Editor Los Angeles Wave

West L.A. College has announced it is suspending the men’s basketball program for the upcoming season due to budget cuts.

“Making a decision of this magnitude was extremely difficult and required many hours of thought and deliberation,” athletic director Steve Aggers said. “However, we feel that we made the best possible decision that impacts the fewest number of student-athletes and employees, while preserving the integrity of the remaining programs in our department.”

The college initially considered further reducing the budget allocation to every team to make keeping all of the teams possible. But, with their budgets already so lean, such across-the-board reductions would severely hobble all of the programs. Instead, it was decided to suspend one team to allow the others to remain adequately funded.