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Western Kentucky’s Basketball Coach Fired After His Team Loses On An Illegal Play

Western Kentucky fired basketball coach Ken McDonald today. McDonald’s tenure got off to a good start – he took the Hilltoppers to the NCAA tournament in his first season and won 21 more games the year after that – but then, they backslid to 16-16 last year and 5-11 this season before the school decided it had seen enough.

It’s curious, though, that the firing just happened to come a day after a loss that had to rank as the most unusual of McDonald’s WKU run, and one of the strangest we’ve seen in a while, period. The Hilltoppers fell to Louisiana-Lafayette last night in overtime, 72-70. Disappointing, but that’s not the strange part. The strange part is that the Ragin’ Cajuns scored the winning basket with an extra player on the floor, and no one noticed:

One could argue that McDonald should have noticed this, but there are other people (namely, the refs) who should have, too. If this loss was truly the straw that broke the camel’s back for McDonald, this is a rough way to go out. His team was the victim here. Yeah, his program was trending in the wrong direction, and maybe the school higher-ups were looking for any excuse to get rid of him…but doing it the day after an unfair loss (even if, again, the onus falls on McDonald to see it and say something)? They’re ruthless down there at WKU.