Fresno State men’s basketball is 5-23 and in a gambling probe, and that’s acceptable? | Opinion
.JPG "Fresno State has played its basketball and women’s basketball games at the Save Mart Center since 2003 and its women’s volleyball games there since 2006.")
How do you know when a college basketball program has finally bottomed out?
Hint: It’s not when the team has a 5-23 record under a first-year coach hired because the university president succumbed to the wishes of influential donors.
Hint: It’s not when three players get dismissed or suspended under a cloud of sports betting suspicions, generating negative headlines from coast to coast.
Final answer: It’s when the team is historically bad, has multiple players implicated in a gambling probe and university administration doesn’t automatically feel compelled to clean house.
Such is the wretched state of Fresno State men’s basketball. Not even the worst season in program history, or a betting scandal, rock the boat to the point where people get tossed overboard.
Can things possibly get worse for the Bulldogs? Short of an academic scandal, it’s hard to see how.
At any other university, I have to believe a 5-23 record (with three regular-season games left) combined with players alleged to have placed bets involving their own games would result in a complete do-over.
Vance Walberg would be gone, and most of the current roster flushed by the new coach. Push the reset button, gut the building to its studs and start anew.
Not at Fresno State. Walberg’s job is reportedly safe because he is not under investigation by the university, because he has been entirely cooperative and because the gambling probe by itself is not contractual grounds for termination.
Plus there’s the non-insignificant fact that Fresno State cannot really afford to dismiss Walberg and pay him the remaining guaranteed year on his contract, which the university would be forced to do if the coach is not fired for “cause.”
“(Walberg) has been as helpful as he can be,” a university source told The Bee’s Robert Kuwada, who broke the initial story even though local TV stations credited ESPN.
There is no reason to suggest Walberg was involved or knew what was happening, but it’s clear the university has not been completely forthright. Otherwise, Mykell Robinson’s name would not have been quietly deleted from the roster following Fresno State’s Jan. 11 loss to Nevada, with no explanation.
Robinson, along with leading scorers Jalen Weaver and Zaon Collins, who were withheld from Saturday’s loss to Air Force due to what the university termed “an eligibility matter,” are the three players under scrutiny.
It has also been reported, by KFSN-30, that Robinson and Weaver are being investigated for placing bets on their own statistics during Bulldogs games (“prop bets” is the common term) while Collins is alleged to have wagered on pro sports.
Another Bulldogs black eye
Even though sports betting has gone mainstream due to the rise of online wagering companies such as FanDuel and DraftKings, such activities remain illegal in California with certain exceptions. In addition, Fresno State’s student-athlete handbook states that gambling on Bulldogs games will result in permanent ineligibility while the punishment for gambling on outside teams is a one-year suspension.
This is a serious situation and undoubtedly the program’s biggest black eye since 2006 when former player Terry Pettis was convicted of the first-degree murder of a Fresno City College student in a botched drug robbery and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Crazy to think that gruesome crime took place nearly 20 years ago.
Bulldogs fans with even longer memories surely recall the point-shaving allegations that surfaced in 1997 (but were never proven) when Jerry Tarkanian was coach and sharp-shooting guard Dominick Young missed three of four free throws in the final minute against Wyoming, including an air ball. The misses helped ensure Fresno State didn’t cover a 10-point spread.
What do those past occurrences have to do with current wrongdoings? Besides the stain they left on the university’s reputation, practically nothing.
But it certainly says something that a Division I basketball team can stumble through the worst season in school history, have multiple players investigated for gambling and the coach’s job get declared safe.
It says Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval and Athletic Director Garrett Klassy are either A-OK keeping things as they are, feel powerless to make a change or don’t care all that much.
This is what rock bottom feels like.
This story was originally published February 24, 2025 at 2:31 PM.
