Nebraska women’s basketball suspends assistant Chuck Love, removes Ashley Scoggin from roster | Women’s Basketball

LINCOLN — In the midst of a strong season, the Nebraska women’s basketball team on Saturday suspended an assistant coach and removed starter Ashley Scoggin — the team’s top 3-point shooter — from its roster.

The news for each development came separately, though the suspension of associate head coach Chuck Love and Scoggin’s removal came days after a road game at Penn State where Love didn’t appear on the bench and Scoggin didn’t play.

First, Nebraska’s athletic department announced Saturday morning that it had suspended Love with pay — his salary is $175,270 per year — for what it called “a personnel matter.” Five hours later, an NU spokesman confirmed Scoggin’s removal from the team. She’s no longer listed on the 2021-2022 online roster.

Nebraska, which plays Sunday at 2 p.m. against Minnesota, declined any further comment on the potential connection of Love’s suspension and Scoggin’s removal. NU head coach Amy Williams, Love and Scoggin did not answer requests for comment Saturday from The World-Herald.

A 23-year-old sophomore, Scoggin averaged 8.4 points and 1.6 rebounds this season before her removal from the team. Scoggin made 42% of her 3-pointers this year, including two Monday night in an upset of No. 5 Indiana. Despite a career full of knee injuries at previous stops — one delayed her enrollment into college — Scoggin had not missed a game at NU until Thursday night at Penn State, when she was listed as, according to Nebraska, “not available.”

But Scoggin played Monday night, then hosted her weekly one-hour local radio show Tuesday afternoon. The World-Herald confirmed that she made the trip to Penn State and attended the game, though she was not on the sideline with the team, which lost a 13-point fourth-quarter lead in 84 seconds. The Nittany Lions went on to win 83-76.

Love made the trip, too. He has been an assistant coach under Williams for a decade, first at South Dakota for four seasons and at Nebraska for the past six. He became NU’s associate head coach this season and oversees the program’s player development at all positions. He had interviewed for head coaching jobs previously and was considered a candidate this coming offseason, as well, with NU’s success this year.

In his absence, the Huskers would lean more on their other two full-time assistants, Tandem Mays and Tom Goehle, and potentially two other staffers who sit on NU’s bench, director of operations Amanda Hart and video coordinator Logan Seiser, who was previously an assistant at the University of Jamestown (N.D.) for two years before joining the Husker staff.

Scoggin was replaced Thursday in the starting lineup by Husker freshman Allison Weidner, the Humphrey St. Francis graduate whose play has surged during Big Ten games. She’s averaging 7.4 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in league contests and has drawn admiration for her strong drives to the hoop.

NU will miss Scoggin’s shooting, though. She had made 55 3-pointers this season and had shown an ability to make spot-up, catch-and-release 3s from nearly anywhere around the arc.

Correction: A previous version of this story reported Nebraska said Scoggin was out of Thursday night’s Penn State game for health and safety reasons. According to NU, Scoggin was listed as ‘not available.’