Many of you remember the saga of Guerdwich Montimere, the 22-year old who was caught pretending to be a 16-year old while becoming a Texas high school basketball star last year. Earlier today Montimere, who had claimed to be an orphan from Haiti when he first moved to Texas, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and three counts of tampering with government records and was sentenced to three years in prison (technically he received three years for each count to served concurrently, which basically means that he just serves three years for each count at the same time). Montimere’s case captured the nation’s attention last year as a bizarre mix of strange nostalgia (a former high school athlete trying to recapture his high school glory days) and seediness (dating and having sex with high school girls) with a little bit of Texas lore mixed in (Montimere was attending Odessa Permian High, the school that Friday Nights Lights is based on).

Not your average 16 year-old

Montimere made the move to Texas in 2009 with the help of a high school teammate and assumed the name Jerry Joseph before eventually moving in with his high school coach, who had been told that Montimere was an orphan from Haiti. Montimere immediately made an impact on the basketball team and was named the District 2-5A Newcomer of the Year. Unfortunately for Montimere, his success also meant that he was offered opportunities to play on a bigger stage. When he traveled with his AAU team to a tournament in Arkansas several of the coaches from Florida recognized him as Montimere, who had graduated from Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2009, which led to several anonymous tips to Permian officials. The first time Permian officials contacted immigration authorities Montimere was cleared, but a subsequent investigation revealed his true identity and Montimere confessed that he was, in fact, not Jerry Joseph.

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Tickets to Duke home games at Cameron Indoor Stadium are among the most coveted in college basketball or any sport for that matter. With a capacity of just 9,314 the supply is not nearly enough to meet the demand for tickets. Everybody is aware of Krzyzewskiville (thanks to ESPN) that is used to award students a block of seats. For non-students and those without connections (former players or celebrities) scoring an elusive ticket is nearly impossible unless you are willing to spend several hundred dollars per game and occasionally four figures for the annual UNC game.

A family that brings new meaning to Cameron Crazies (Credit: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

A small portion of the ticket allotment is available for purchase as season tickets, but as Duke’s official site notes they are sold out. The only individuals who are allowed to purchase the tickets (when they are available, which is rarely) are those in the Iron Dukes club (a group of donors/boosters) with the current minimum donation to get a ticket being $7,000 and even that may not get you a season ticket if another Iron Duke with more time on the list has donated a similar amount. Consequently season tickets are a highly coveted commodity and just as season tickets for NFL teams are passed down from generation to generation so are some Duke season tickets.

Unfortunately, sometimes the transition from one generation to the next does not always happen as smoothly as you would hope. The latest example of that is a family in North Carolina that is fighting over their deceased father’s tickets in court. Katrina Dorton, a Duke graduate, filed a lawsuit today against her sister, brother-in-law, and Duke University based on what she claims was a “fraudulent transfer” of her deceased father’s two season tickets. She claims that the transfer occurred without the consent of her father or the other family members.

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It’s not often that you’ll hear people lauding the Lone Star State as a bastion of progressive (some might say anti-business) legal thinking, but we’re here today writing this article because of just such a thing.  If there’s one thing that Texans love more than their free markets, it’s collegiate sports.  And if you read the tea leaves of its lawmakers on its latest bill sent to Governor Rick Perry on Wednesday, they’re getting a little sick and tired of the agents, runners and other assorted hangers-on getting their grubby hands on Texas’ amateur athletes and jeopardizing their eligibility.  What’s left unsaid in the name of protecting the athletes is that the public doesn’t like the prospect of UT football or Baylor basketball, to cite only a couple of the state’s many D-1 universities, having to face NCAA-mandated vacations of great seasons down the road if those schools inadvertently use ineligible players because of agents’ influence.  From the Austin American-Statesman:

Texas is Taking the Lead in Punishing Unethical Sports Agents

If Gov. Rick Perry signs it into law, agents who lure college athletes into contracts with improper benefits and gifts that cost an athlete their NCAA eligibility could face felony charges and up to 10 years in prison. […]  The bill by Rep. Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat, requires agents to post a $50,000 bond with the state and be certified with a national professional sports association. Agents would be banned from providing anything of value to the athlete or their family before the athlete completes their eligibility.  The bill also requires individuals, not corporations, to register as agents, and includes so-called “runners,” who are sometimes hired by agents to contact athletes or their families on their behalf.

According to an AP report from 2010, some 42 states have laws on the books restricting the contacts and influence that agents can have with NCAA athletes, but the regulations are largely toothless and only rarely enforced.  The report found that Texas was one of the few states that had punished unethical agents, assessing a total of $17,000 in fines during the previous two years, a substantial number to most of us but pocket change to the agent who signs a star athlete to a professional deal.  It’s certainly no secret that the state of Texas is ripe with talent in all three major American sports at the amateur level — football, basketball, and baseball — so agents have a clear incentive to befriend future stars very early in the hopes that they eventually sign with them when they eventually turn pro.

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With the news released today that former University of San Diego star Brandon Johnson was allegedly a co-conspirator in an ongoing criminal scheme involving point shaving, illegal bookmaking and marijuana trafficking, the NCAA was once again sideswiped by the harsh reality that its games are particularly vulnerable to these and other such enterprises.  This is the second such conspiracy uncovered by federal authorities in the last three years — remember that former Toledo guard Sammy Villegas admitted in 2008 to attempting to fix games during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons and is currently awaiting sentencing in Ohio.

Johnson is Toast -- Are There Others?

As we’ve been on record stating through educated inference and others’ statistical analyses examining betting tendencies, we believe that this sort of thing happens a whole lot more than the NCAA would like to believe.  Here’s what we know.  We know that approximately one percent of games (~30) per season fall into a statistical outlier against the spread that does not appear to be explained through the normal ebb and flow of the game.  We know that the NCAA itself says that 1.6% of its men’s basketball players self-report illicit solicitations to influence the point spread in their games.  We know that these players are not paid beyond room, board and incidentals.  And we also know that with the proliferation of offshore gaming and the ubiquity of legal gambling in our society (lotteries, card rooms, casinos, horse racing, etc.), the stigma of gambling is probably at an all-time low in American history.  With all of these factors working against the NCAA’s stated core value of preserving the integrity of its contests, how is it that we’re only seeing one of these scandals pop up every few years?  The easy answer is that the non-existence of such scandals proves that education and enforcement is working, but color us mighty skeptical.  We fear that the more truthful answer is that it’s happening repeatedly right under our noses, but the NCAA and federal law enforcement simply do not have the resources or focus to catch it until it gets out of hand (e.g., an absurd ten people were involved in this!).

In a formal statement this afternoon, NCAA President Mark Emmert had this to say:

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Earlier today federal authorities named a former San Diego assistant basketball coach and two former players among a group of 10 individuals indicted for an alleged point-shaving scandal. The former Toreros named were assistant coach Thaddeus Brown and players Brandon Johnson and Brandon Dowdy. According to the filing, Johnson, who scored 1,790 points and handed out 525 assists for the Toreros, was paid to influence the outcome of a game in February 2010 and solicited someone else on the Toreros in January of this year to do something similar. The indictment also claims that the three tried to similarly influence a game in February of this year involving UC-Riverside, which is where Dowdy played after transferring from San Diego.

Johnson was a star at San Diego, but now his career will come under scrutiny (Credit: Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review)

Along with the charges of point shaving the 10 individuals arrested were reportedly involved in running an illegal gambling business and distributing marijuana. The investigation has apparently been ongoing for the past year under the code name “Hook Shot” (the full indictment is available here). The connection for the three former Toreros to the illegal gambling business and marijuana distribution is unclear as they were only named in the point-shaving operations while other individuals were named in the parts of the indictment referring to gambling and marijuana. Eight of the individuals named have already been apprehended in San Diego and will appear before a judge tomorrow while Johnson was arrested Saturday in Houston and will appear in front of a judge there later today. Jake Salter, the individual who is still at-large, does not appear to be directly associated with the point-shaving or San Diego basketball.

The federal government has not identified which game was reportedly fixed, but Johnson’s game log from last season might give us some clues as there are a few awful performances in there that might be suspect in retrospect. We will have a more extensive post on this subject later today as more news comes out.

We mentioned the story of Florida forwards Erik Murphy and Cody Larson in our Morning Five post earlier today, but a new detail has emerged that makes the story even more ridiculous. As we noted before the two players were involved in an argument at a St. Augustine bar where they claimed to have lost a wallet. When they confronted an employee working at the bar who was counting money at the end of the night they were thrown out of the bar. According to reports, the two players along with Josh Adel, a student-manager on the basketball team, were seen trying to break into the car of a bar employee in the nearby parking lot. When employees confronted them, the three ran away, but Adel was caught about about a block later. According to police officers, they convinced Adel, who used to have a Twitter account and was apparently planning to have a wild weekend, to call Murphy and convince him to turn himself in. Murphy agreed and walked back to where the police were to turn himself in. This is the part where it gets interesting…

Larson, still on the loose, then called Murphy seven or eight times while Murphy was in the back of the police car and they began to discuss how they would get out of the charges while on speaker phone. That’s right. They were discussing how to get out of an arrest on speaker phone in the back of a police car with officers present and a tape recorder in the car. Eventually Larson was convinced by the other two to turn himself in. Murphy and Larson were charged with one felony count of third-degree burglary while Adel was charged with principal to burglary (as the lookout). All three were released after posting bond.

Things are not looking good for Larson (L) and Murphy (R)

The University of Florida has not released a statement on the matter yet, but we can’t imagine that this will end well for the three particularly Larson, who already had received a 120-day suspended jail sentence and 2 years probation on charges of illegal use and possession of Hydrocodone while he was still in high school and he is still within that 2 year window now. Billy Donovan was aware of the charges when he was recruiting Larson, but decided to offer him a scholarship anyway. The arrests could be a big blow to the Gators next season as the two 6’10” forwards were expected to fill some of the massive void created by the departure of Alex Tyus, Vernon Macklin, and Chandler Parsons. Murphy averaged 4.3 PPG and 2.3 RPG in just 10.8 minutes per game as a sophomore and was expected to complement Patric Young on the inside as the Gators transitioned to a very different team. Larson, who redshirted this past season, but was a highly touted recruit even with his legal problems, was also expected to contribute significantly. Now, it appears that Donovan will have to scramble to find additional help for Young on the inside unless he decides to keep either one or both of these two on the team despite the arrest.

Update: Audio from the time around the arrest where, in an attempt to get Larson to turn himself in, Adel says, “We’re not in f-ing Gainesville. They [St. Augustine Police] don’t give a f-.” Later on Murphy tries to come up with ways to get out of the arrest before Adel talks him out of it.

“We’re Not In Gainesville, They Don’t Give a F—“ by sportsxbrooks

(Video clip with the audio from the arrest available here via SportsByBrooks)

A little over two years ago we mentioned the budding music career of Renaldo Woolridge before he had even played a game for Tennessee. We noted that his constant references to his involvement with the basketball team appeared to be a NCAA violation and we were met with criticism from many Tennessee fans who felt that it was just an innocent hobby and nothing bad would happen from it.

The NCAA will be looking for real answers on this one (Credit: http://www.myspace.com/rwtheanswer)

Well, it appears that Swiperboy aka Baller Vol aka The Answer aka Woolridge [Ed Note: Is this inspired by Puff Daddy aka Diddy aka P. Diddy aka Sean Combs?] has caught the attention of the media and the NCAA again with his music. Earlier today it was first reported that Woolridge had filmed a music video on Saturday at a local bar without having to pay for using the area. That act could be construed as a NCAA violation (impermissible benefit granted due to one’s status as an athlete) that would not be unlike what happened to Jacob Pullen and Curtis Kelly a little over a month ago for getting discounted clothing. Later in the day, however, Tennessee responded with a statement that essentially cleared Woolridge and the program of any wrongdoing stating that the area was used for free by other student groups, no filming had taken place, and the area had not been blocked off to the public. Case closed, right? As Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast my friend.”

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It’s been some time since we’ve mentioned Rick Pitino’s old friend and flame, Karen Sypher.  You recall that the middle-aged blonde was convicted of extortion last fall for trying to bilk Pitino of millions of dollars and later accused the Louisville coach of raping her after the feds caught on to her crazy scheme.  She’s had a couple of sentencing hearings delayed already as her attorney earnestly (and we’re sure, honestly) tries to put together more evidence for a re-trial motion.  She’s now due for sentencing to a federal penitentiary on February 18 of this year.

All of this extra free time has apparently given Sypher more creative license to concoct additional stories involving Pitino as a horrible, horrible man.  In this weekend interview with Geraldo Rivera of all people, she states that Pitino threatened to have her four kids buried in the concrete of a bridge in New York if she refused to keep quiet about their tryst on the floor of Porcini’s and her subsequent pregnancy (that Pitino paid for her “health insurance”/abortion).  Apologies for the light volume on this clip, but it’s really worth hearing.

Well, we’ll give her credit for leaving no tried-and-true cliche unturned.   When all else is lost, you might as well go with the Italian/mafioso meme.  Perhaps next week, she’ll claim one of Pitino’s African-American players carjacked her and forced her at gunpoint to perform disdainful sex acts; and the week after that, she’ll be on Nancy Grace accusing a Pitino associate who looks like a leprechaun of breaking into her bedroom to “snatch her people up.”  There seems to be no line between fantasy and reality with this woman — any and all things are possible.

Can someone out there please make her go away?  Please?

In an environment where everyone is quicker than a hiccup to play the role of judge, jury and executioner, consider the case of Trevor Mbakwe at Minnesota.  The talented big man and Gophers’ best player was arrested and jailed Monday night for violating a restraining order placed on him by a woman in neighboring St. Paul after he posted a comment on her Facebook page.  The restraining order, placed upon him in 2009, allows no contact whatsoever between Mbakwe and the woman, even through the relatively safe distance of the internet.  Yesterday Minnesota officials released the blurb that Mbakwe wrote:

Mbakwe's Recent Arrest Deserves Context

I know we haven’t talked in forever and trust me I’m not trying to start any drama with nobody in your life or anything. I just wanted to wish u the best with everything and I hope all has been well with you and your family. I am still disappointed how everything played out and I do wish that in the future we could be cool again. Idk how u r going to take this msg hopefully its not bad but I just wanted to wish u a happy new year and send out a congrats for graduating. I’ve been well I’m finally playin bball again in everything down in miami finally got taken care of thank god. Well idk if u will respond or not but best wishes for 2011.

Within an hour after publishing these comments, Mbakwe had the police at his door.  Now, we’re not about to sit here and tell you that the restraining order placed on Mbakwe is meritless or otherwise diminish its seriousness.  Restraining orders are only placed on people through court order, and for a court to make such a decree, there has to be solid evidence that the restrainee has crossed or shows a willingness to cross a common line of civility.  And for the woman involved, she without question would not have gone to such lengths unless she truly felt threatened in some manner by Mbakwe’s demeanor and prior actions.  So in terms of his arrest, we have no problem with it.  The police cannot choose if or when to enforce restraining orders; they have to do what the court tells them to do.  Mbakwe gets no sympathy on this point either — he certainly knew that he was not supposed to contact the woman, and still he chose to ignore that restriction.  Actions beget consequences; Mbakwe begat his. 

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Earlier tonight Minnesota‘s star forward Trevor Mbakwe was arrested for allegedly violating a restraining order when a woman reported that Mbakwe had made a threatening post on her Facebook page this afternoon. Mbawke was arrested  at 7 PM where he was held on $500 bail and according to the most recent reports is still incarcerated. This is a big setback for both Mbakwe, who has had his share of legal problems in the past as he had to sit out last season while an assault case from Miami worked its way through the legal system (he ended up performing 100 hours of community service), and the Gophers, who had come to rely on Mbakwe’s team-leading 13.4 PPG and 10.4 RPG and are still recovering from Devoe Joseph‘s recent transfer.

So far the University of Minnesota has only released the following statement:

We are aware of the charges that have been filed against Trevor. Until we know all of the facts surrounding the charges it would be premature for us to have any further comment.

We will have more information about the story as it develops, but things are not looking good for Mbawke or the Gophers, who have lost three of their last four games and take on Purdue on Thursday.