BERKELEY, Calif. » UC Berkeley is taking a closer look at the role of basketball head coach Cuonzo Martin in the handling of a sexual harassment scandal involving assistant coach Yann Hufnagel, who was fired on Monday.

The review, the campus said today, is to “dispel any doubts” about whether Martin responded properly to complaints made by a female reporter, who contacted him directly about his coach’s conduct.

“We firmly believe the results will support our confidence in coach Martin,” athletic director Mike Williams said in a statement.

Cal Athletics later downplayed the statement, saying Martin was merely part of a broader, routine inquiry about whether anyone knew about Hufnagel’s alleged conduct — but failed to report it — before July 5, when Martin received an email from the reporter detailing her complaint.

“Coach Martin is included among this group of people, but is not a target of an investigation,” the updated statement from the department said, the line bold-faced for emphasis.

The reporter told campus investigators she informed Martin over the phone in late May that Hufnagel had been sexually harassing her, but the investigation shows that more than a month passed before the coach reported the complaint to campus authorities.

Martin, who was not made available for an interview Wednesday, told investigators he did not realize at first that the reporter’s complaint about Hufnagel involved sexual harassment.

The Hufnagel case is the latest in a string of sexual harassment complaints at UC Berkeley that have come to light in the past year — the third in the past five months.

The investigative report, released Tuesday, raised questions about what the head coach knew and when and whether he acted quickly enough.

In late May, instead of immediately reporting the complaint to campus authorities, Martin directed Hufnagel to apologize to the reporter, whose name and media outlet are redacted in the report. It was only after the reporter sent the head coach an email in July with screen shots of explicit text messages from Hufnagel that he alerted the campus office that investigates sexual harassment and gender discrimination complaints, according to the timeline outlined in the report.

In the July 5 email, the reporter wrote to the coach:

“I only briefly touched upon the extent of his harassment of me in our two conversations. You told me that you take this very seriously, and that you were hoping it was just an isolated incident. I should have been clear at the time … this was not an isolated incident. Conversely, [Hufnagel]’s harassment of me spanned a period of months, since last October, until about a month and a half ago, when we first spoke about it.”

After the email, which triggered the campus investigation, more than eight months passed before the university completed the probe. Martin and Hufnagel weren’t interviewed until Oct. 23, according to the report.

Martin brought Hufnagel to Cal when he took over the program in 2014. In his second year as Cal’s head coach, Martin is still working without a signed contract, but university officials say those ongoing negotiations are unrelated to the Hufnagel case.

“Coach Martin is the Cal men’s basketball coach,” said a statement Monday from the UC Office of the President. “We look forward to finalizing his contract.”

Hufnagel’s firing was announced Monday, just days before Cal tips off Friday in the NCAA Tournament. Late last week, UC President Janet Napolitano sent a letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks in which she expressed her disappointment about his administration’s handling of sexual harassment cases. Law school Dean Sujit Choudhry resigned from the post last week and celebrated astronomy professor Geoff Marcy left his teaching job last year after a public outcry over the university’s handling of cases against them.

But a campus spokesman denied that the lengthy investigation of Hufnagel was the result of an effort to stall the outcome until after the season ended.

“I can assure you without reservation,” said spokesman Dan Mogulof, “that the timing of the investigation and the length of time that it took were solely a function of the resources that were at the disposal of the office (and) not in any way influenced by other events.”