- The decision by Syracuse to self-impose a postseason ban for this year has been controversial to say the least. On one hand it shows that the school understands how serious the allegations against it are, but the decision to announce this self-imposed ban for one of its weaker teams in recent memory seems a little disingenuous. If this had been a Syracuse team that would have been a NCAA Tournament team (not necessarily a high seed either) the announcement might have been viewed as more significant, but it seems like the school is essentially banning itself from something it would not have been invited to anyways. Of course, all of this is assuming that the NCAA won’t hit the school with more sanctions when it makes its own announcements, but given the way the NCAA is handling the North Carolina case we would not hold our breath.
- While Syracuse was not a realistic postseason team this year, Kansas State certainly is although those chances have been dropping recently. Things got worse for the Wildcats when the school announced that Marcus Foster and Malek Harris had been suspended indefinitely for an unspecified violation of team rules. Losing Foster, the team’s leading scorer (14 points per game) and best player, is obviously a huge loss and it showed in the team’s loss to Texas Tech on Wednesday. The question for Kansas State is how long Foster in particular will be out since this is the second time that he has been disciplined this season. If he is out for a prolonged period of time, Bruce Weber can forget about making the NCAA Tournament.
- While Ohio State’s place in the NCAA Tournament is more secure than Kansas State’s, we are not sure how long they can maintain that security if Marc Loving misses much more time. Loving, the team’s second-leading scorer at 11.7 points per game, was suspended prior to Wednesday night’s loss at Purdue. The school did not give an explanation outside of that Loving had “temporarily lost his privilege to wear the Scarlet and Gray.” Given the wording we would assume that Loving will be back relatively soon and although the Big Ten is down this year, D’Angelo Russell needs more than just cursory support if he wants to have a memorable March.
- Kent State also suffered a big albeit apparently temporary loss this week when they announced that Jimmy Hall, who leads the team in scoring (15.1 per game) and rebounding (7.5 per game), would be out for at least a week after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. The Golden Flashes currently are tied for first in the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference (four-way tie in a six-team division), but lost their only game without Hall (a one-point loss at Western Michigan on Wednesday). Unlike the other teams we mentioned they don’t have a shot at an at-large bid so as long as Hall is back and healthy for the conference tournament it probably won’t matter in the end.
- Recently, we mentioned how a court had ruled that Geno Ford owed Kent State $1.2 million for getting out of his contract early. Now it is a college coach (Gib Arnold) who is going after his former employer (Hawaii) for the $1.4 million that they owe him. Arnold is essentially challenging the charges levied against him by the NCAA (including two Level I allegations) and says that the school owes him the full $1.4 million due to him based on his contract as he was fired without cause (reason for challenging the NCAA allegations) rather than the $346,000 that they paid him (presumably based on the idea that there was cause for the firing). His official statement goes into a little more detail about the issues at hand, but we think in the end it will be difficult for Arnold to win his case fighting on two fronts (the NCAA and Hawaii).