NEW YORK — Dereck Whittenburg has been fired in his seventh season as the basketball coach at Fordham after the Rams’ 1-4 start.

Athletic director Frank McLaughlin announced the move Thursday and said assistant coach Jared Grasso will take over on an interim basis.
Whittenburg, the player who took the long shot that led to the winning basket for North Carolina State and Jim Valvano in the 1983 championship game, was 69-112 at Fordham.
His only season with an over-.500 record was 2006-07, when the Rams went 18-12. Fordham was 3-25 last season, including 1-15 in the Atlantic 10.
Whittenburg was head coach at Wagner for four seasons before going to Fordham. He led the Seahawks to the NCAA tournament in 2003.