Kalijvari left the university in 1944 to become the athletic director at Cheshire Academy in Connecticut. Due to the emergency caused by World War II and the limited sports schedule, he was not replaced until Stafford Cassell returned to AU as athletic director on January 3, 1946. During the interim, and during the years of Cassell's second tenure, the AU men's basketball team won the Mason–Dixon Conference championship in 1945, 1946, 1950, and 1951. Cassell resigned on March 10, 1952, to become an aide to new AU President Hurst Robins Anderson.