Harvard’s longtime men’s basketball coach, Frank Sullivan, will leave his position with the Crimson, the University announced earlier today.

The announcement comes on the heels of the conclusion of the Crimson’s 2006-2007 campaign, one which produced another losing record and a disappointing 5-9 finish in Ivy League play.

Sullivan’s 16 years at the helm of Harvard represent the longest tenure in school history. He holds the school’s record for the most wins. Sullivan will depart with a 178-245 record on the Crimson bench.

Unable to crack Penn and Princeton’s stranglehold on Ivy League supremacy, Sullivan nonetheless brought respect to the program with a number of winning seasons in the 1990s and the early part of this decade. Still, he has failed to crack .500 in the league since 1996 and has watched his teams skid to prolonged late-season losing streaks in each of the past two years.

Director of Athletics Bob Scalise said in a statement that the hunt for a successor will begin immediately.

“I am hopeful that a change in the leadership of our men’s basketball program will bring us closer to our goals of consistently contending for the Ivy League championship and achieving excellence in all aspects of the program,” Scalise said.

It was unclear when Sullivan would formally step down from his position.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.