Jerod Haase shuts down hot seat rumors, says he's 'laser-focused' on being with team
There is a massive elephant in the room when it comes to Stanford men's basketball.
Head coach Jerod Haase is a lame duck of a head coach who has lost support from fans, former players as shown in a recent Jon Wilner article, and maybe even current players as Providence transfer Jared Bynum wasn't with the team for their senior night win over Cal after publicly shading the head coach.
If Bernard Muir is to stay true to his words from the conclusion of last season, this will likely be Haase's final couple of weeks as the head coach.
"Coach Haase and I agree that the on-court results of our men's basketball program are not what we want them to be," Muir said at the end of last season. "Having said that, I believe that the young nucleus of talent on our team and promising recruiting will propel us to take the next steps we all desire while our program continues to operate with great integrity and achieve the highest levels of academic excellence. I look forward to my continued partnership with Coach Haase."
The next steps were unfortunately not taken for Stanford who just finished the regular season 13-17, sitting in 10th place in the Pac-12. With the clear lack of improvement from a team with a duo of elite freshmen complemented by a group of veterans, this program which has gone 10 years since making the tournament, is due for a fresh start.
Stanford coach Jerod Haase
Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports
Despite knowing all of these questions about his job security were coming, Haase didn't seem fazed after their Thursday night win. When asked for his thoughts about the noise and the possibility that this was his final home game as head coach, Haase revealed that's not what he is focused on and wasn't taking time to soak in what could be his final moments in Palo Alto.
"No, and look the reality is...I mean I know there was a local article today which is fine," said Hasse. "The reality is I'm pretty good at being laser-focused kind of on the moment and with these guys. I understand I don't know what the word would be noise or comments and opinions I can compartmentalize things pretty well.
"I do think it's great...to have a program and to build a program in today's day and age there's so many components to that. Nowadays it's things like NIL and transfers was never really a thing in the past. But it's also so many things like we had a great home court advantage today, that's a big deal. How you travel, how you do things within a program there's so many things. Having former players invested and interested in the program is so great and we have the greatest group, unbelievable group of former players and to be the program that we want to be that's a wonderful thing to have interest and investment in the program."
Haase ended his answer with a quote from the Apple TV head coach who was also once on the hot seat, Ted Lasso.
"I would say with everything you know the Ted Lasso kind of quote of 'be curious'. I think we're at a time right now that everybody should be curious, and when your curious you ask questions, you learn, you grow you figure what are the deficiencies. You identify those and then you try and solve them. But now is a wonderful time for everyone, myself, players, fans, former players, anbody around Stanford... be curious. And when you are curious you start asking questions and you learn and you grow and that's when you get solutions."
He called the situation an "inflection point" for Stanford basketball, which he then pointed out can lead to "wonderful opportunity".
The Cardinal can still technically make a NCAA Tournament run, but would need to win the Pac-12 Tournament. This would require winning four straight games, with two games being their highest consecutive win streak amount this season.
