Dan Gelfand/The Hoya Throughout the season, fans have expressed their frustration at games with ‘Fire Esherick’ chants. A protestor displays his hope for a new coach at last week’s Big East tournament in New York.

Shock was one of the only common reactions to the firing of Georgetown men’s basketball Head Coach Craig Esherick.

Even with all the different perspectives – students who wanted immediate wins, alumni who watched the program fall far from the national spotlight, those within the program and administration who saw Esherick as part of the Georgetown family – virtually no one foresaw the drastic turn of events.

But on Tuesday night University President John J. DeGioia stunned the Hilltop when he released a statement saying he had decided to make a change.

From the outside, it may be difficult to believe that a coach many saw as leading the Hoyas to irrelevancy never appeared in danger of losing his job.

But repeated endorsements from the administration as well as stalwart confidence from Esherick himself left students, alumni and fans believing that Esherick could very well, as he said himself, “be here for another 30 years.”

“With the previous comments [from the administration], we were very surprised,” said Slade Smith (MSB ’06), a fan who slept outside MCI center for front-row student-section seats to January’s game against Duke.

Esherick, too, was stunned by the news.

“I was surprised when Jack told me I was fired,” Esherick said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “I was surprised because of what had been said in the papers by Jack and by [Athletic Director Joe Lang]. And it wasn’t at my behest, I had not asked either one of them to say it.”

The firing dominated conversation on campus, where students returned from spring break this past weekend to news of a petition at savethehoyas.com that garnered 3,790 signatures in favor of a coaching change. In addition, a rally calling for renewed commitment to the basketball program was planned for Wednesday at noon.

DeGioia said that he had learned about the petition last Thursday at an alumni gathering in New York, but that it did not play into his decision to dismiss Esherick on Tuesday.

“There’s been quite a bit of, what’s the right word, `commentary’ over the course of the last several weeks. I think it’s been pretty constant. But I think people who know me know that those factors don’t play very heavily in my thinking.”

The organizers asserted the rally was not primarily about firing Esherick, although that likely would have driven many more students to attend, were it not preempted by DeGioia’s decision late Tuesday night.

Instead, only about 25 people showed up in Healy Circle, some with signs, many wearing “I Bleed Hoya Blue” T-shirts. The main organizer, Steve Thomas (SFS ’97, GRD ’01), used a bullhorn to outline a plan, the highlights of which included an on-campus arena, better communications from the sports information office and a tougher non-conference schedule.

Thomas passed out a letter which detailed his plan for the rally attendees to sign. After signing, the group went into Healy Hall to take the letters upstairs to DeGioia’s office.

On a business trip in California, DeGioia could not meet with the students but Daniel Porterfield, senior vice president for public affairs and strategic initiatives, and Todd Olson, interim vice president for student affairs, discussed concerns raised by students and alumni.

The 45-minute discussion, all of which was off the record, mainly consisted of the rally attendees voicing their opinions, to which Olson and Porterfield seemed very receptive.

At one point, one student remarked that attendance at the rally was decreased because of the previous night’s firing.

“But you know what? I’ll take last night,” another student responded.

All seemed to agree, however, that the coaching change was not a panacea for everything they dislike about the program since many of their stated goals will not necessarily be ameliorated with the arrival of a new coach.

“If you don’t change anything else that’s wrong in the athletic department, the name of the coach is just semantics,” Steve Medlock (SFS ’06) said.

But after almost 30 years on the Hilltop as a player, law student, assistant coach and head coach, Esherick was certainly more than just a name at Georgetown, and even his harshest critics rarely attacked him personally. His manner with the public was generally affable, and rarely did he come across as cold or overbearing.

These personal qualities were part of what seemed to make the decision so difficult for DeGioia and produce sadness from those closest to Esherick.

“I can’t begin to tell you how I felt,” Head Coach Emeritus John Thompson said on his WTEM-AM radio show Wednesday. “That’s just not something that is easy to digest . This is not about sports to me right now.”

Thompson, who is denying all interview requests on this topic, said on the show that he was informed by a phone call from assistant coach Jaren Jackson (GSB ’89) on Tuesday night.

Thompson expressed his support for both Esherick, calling him “a damn good man” and “a bright, talented person who made major contributions to my success,” and DeGioia, “a very good and decent man.”

But he never said whether or not he agreed with the decision.

“In the process of whatever occurred last night, there were two guys who I respect greatly,” he said. “You had two men in a very difficult position . Things don’t always work out the way we want them to work out.”

Thompson, who noted he has “absolutely no intentions of going back to Georgetown,” said of Esherick’s five-year tenure: “I know that it was not easy to follow me. Craig knew that. He did not have an easy job to carry out.”

“It is predicated on wins and losses . a lot of it has to do with that. It’s a tough business and it takes a tough man to be in it.”