Baruch athletics photo

After 13 seasons at his alma mater, including leading them to the NCAA Tournament five times and being named conference coach of the year three times, including the past two seasons, John Alesi is leaving Baruch, D3hoops.com has learned.

This season, Alesi has also been the national chair of the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Committee. 

Alesi will be taking a non-coaching role in an area athletic department after the end of the season. 

The Bearcats played in the CUNYAC tournament title game eight times in the 12 seasons in which conference play occurred. The most recent season was a controversial one, where Baruch advanced to play in the conference title game, but had its opponent switched one day before the game. Lehman, which had defeated John Jay in the conference semifinals, discovered it had used an ineligible player, and the CUNYAC removed Lehman from the conference final, replacing Lehman with John Jay. John Jay ended up beating Baruch in the conference final.

"It was just very unfortunate, not for us necessarily. We were beat, frankly," Alesi said after the event. "But it was a frustrating few days, not so much for us but the timing of it was distracting, it was obviously not anything anybody wanted. The conference office -- we think we're going in for one opponent and we spend the entire day preparing and practicing for that opponent, and as I'm walking out of practice that evening we hear we're playing somebody else."

Alesi also expressed dissatisfcation that sixth-seeded Medgar Evers (6-20 overall, 4-8 in the CUNYAC) was not also given new life in the conference tournament after losing to Lehman in the first round of the conference tournament. John Jay (19-9, 11-3) ended up representing the CUNYAC in the NCAA Tournament.

Including one season as head coach at Hunter, Alesi has a 234-130 career record.