OXFORD, Miss. (WTVA) - Ole Miss Athletics Director Ross Bjork addressed the media on Monday, discussing Saturday's decision to remove Adrian Wiggins as the head coach of the women's basketball team and place him on administrative leave. Bjork announced Monday that Wiggins has been terminated with cause.
"This is a sad ordeal for our University, and especially our athletes in our women's basketball program," said Bjork. "I've had the chance to be around them the last couple of days, and they are a strong group of young women and, ultimately, in athletics, we serve them."
Despite not having a buyout clause in his contract, Wiggins will be paid a total of $250,000 through March 31, 2013.
"On Saturday morning, I met with coach Wiggins and informed him that he would no longer be our head women's basketball coach and we would place him on leave pending the continuation of an investigation in our program," said Bjork. "We have no findings at this time that coach Wiggins was involved in our violations. However, ultimate responsibility rests with each head coach in all of our programs and we discovered and determined more could have been done.
"The tough part about all of this is Adrian Wiggins is a good man, and we hope the best for him and his family as he moves forward."
Bjork also announced that Ole Miss assistant coaches Brett Frank, Rebecca Kates-Taylor and Taja Edwards are currently running the team, and he expects to name an interim head coach as soon as possible.
"We had a lot of hope for our program when we hired coach Wiggins back in March, and there was really new-found energy around Ole Miss basketball and our basketball practice facility - a state-of-the-art facility - is really the place to be right now. There's tons of energy in both programs.
"We're disappointed that the actions of a few individuals, and our findings so far to date, have led us to be here today."
Wiggins was introduced as the head coach at Ole Miss on March 28, 2012, replacing Renee Ladner.
You can view Ross Bjork's entire news conference addressing the termination of Adrian Wiggins in the video monitor, and you can also view the original article
here.
