Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia fired men’s basketball Head Coach Craig Esherick (GSB ’78, LAW ’82) on March 16, surprising many with his decision to end Esherick’s nearly 30 years on the Hilltop.

“This is as difficult a decision as one could possibly be asked to make,” DeGioia said in an interview with student press March 18.

Esherick, whose team went 13-15 this year and was not invited to a postseason tournament for the first time in 30 years, was heavily criticized by alumni and students as the figurehead of a program that was falling woefully short of its previous levels of success under legendary Head Coach Emeritus John Thompson’s reign.

Yet the increasing pressure, in the form of planned rallies, petitions, letter campaigns and chants and signs at games, was met with stalwart support for Esherick from the administration.

As recently as late February, DeGioia released a statement saying, “I have confidence that Craig Esherick – who helped to build our tradition of excellence in men’s basketball – is the right person to strengthen and lead our program.”

“I knew that we didn’t have a great year,” Esherick said in a telephone interview March 17. “But I was surprised when Jack told me I was fired.”

Something clearly changed for DeGioia, whose history at Georgetown is nearly as long as Esherick’s. DeGioia watched Esherick play as a student, graduating one year behind the lanky forward, and both men have spent nearly all of their adult lives at Georgetown.

“We’ve known each other all the years I’ve been here, and I recommended him for this position five and a half years ago. I’ve had a supervisory relationship to the program for about 20 years now. So it doesn’t get more difficult than this,” DeGioia said. “This is a man who has served this institution exceptionally well for 25 years and is an inextricable part of the success of Georgetown University basketball over this last quarter century.”

While Esherick played a role in the rise of Georgetown basketball, serving as an assistant coach on the 1984 team that won the national championship, his time as head coach was markedly less successful.

His record was 103-74 since succeeding Thompson as head coach in the middle of the 1998-99 season. He took Georgetown to one NCAA tournament, in 2000-01, where they lost to Maryland in the Sweet 16. The following year, he turned down an NIT bid.

“When the season ended, I had the opportunity to step back and reflect on the overall trajectory of the program,” DeGioia said. “At the five-and-a-half year mark, I just felt that the direction of the program warranted a change in leadership.”

DeGioia called Esherick back from a recruiting trip in Kansas and had a meeting with him in his Healy office in the evening on arch 16.

“Jack got right to the point and said he decided he wanted to make a change,” Esherick said. “I asked him, I said, `Jack, two weeks ago you made a public comment and Joe made a public comment endorsing me . What happened? What changed?’ And he basically said that he had come to a conclusion after careful thought and he just thought the program needed new leadership.”