Former Oklahoma State assistant coach Jimmy Williams won his lawsuit against the University of Minnesota and head basketball coach Tubby Smith on Wednesday, with $1.25 million awarded to Williams as compensation for lost and presumptive wages.  In 2007, Smith allegedly hired Williams as an assistant coach but the school then rescinded the offer after UM athletic director Joel Maturi alerted Smith to NCAA violations in Williams’ past.  Thinking he was headed for Minnesota, Williams had resigned his post at Oklahoma State in the meantime — then found no job waiting on him on Smith’s staff.  Williams then sued Smith and the school, feeling that Tubby had misrepresented himself in terms of his authority to hire Williams.

To Tubby and UM, it may have been worth it.

According to the cited AP story, Williams states that he hopes this victory means he can get back to coaching.  We wonder if that’s really possible, at least at the level which he’d like.  We’re thinking it might be tougher than Williams figures.  If you’re a coach or athletics director, how enthusiastic would you be to hire a coach who has a history of suing other coaches and schools — especially one who had a hand in wrongly giving players financial help twenty years ago? And if you look at it from Tubby Smith’s point of view, this doesn’t appear to be that big of a loss.  Sure, nobody likes forking over $1.25 million, but the reason Smith and Maturi didn’t want to bring Williams into the fold was because they simply didn’t want to hire anyone who had even a hint of NCAA violations in his past.  Consider also that Williams’ wrongdoing happened back in the 1980s, while he was an assistant coach — at Minnesota.  Tubby Smith is widely known as one of the great men in the game, a man who values his integrity and that of the program of which he’s at the helm far more than any dollar amount.  If he (and his AD) felt that not hiring Williams — a man who has been slapped by the NCAA while working for the very school to which he’s re-applying — was the best thing for the UM program…well, that just might be worth $1.25 million.

Williams remarked that he hopes the win will vindicate him.  But that’s not what this lawsuit was about.  This was about whether or not Smith and Minnesota owed him the wages he lost after quitting his Oklahoma State job and the wages he would have made if he had been allowed to continue in his appointment at Minnesota.  As far as vindication, this had nothing to do with Williams’ guilt or innocence in terms of those recruiting abnormalities back in the 80s.  His culpability in those matters was decided upon long ago.  If the jury felt like it had enough evidence to find that Tubby Smith misrepresented himself and/or that Minnesota really did officially hire Williams, and they were to blame for Williams’ lost wages, then they had no choice other than to rule in Williams’ favor.  So, Williams may have won his lawsuit, but in addition to the question of impropriety he carries with him, he now has the reputation of a guy who sues coaches and schools for which he’s worked in the past.  By not settling, Minnesota has told him, “Based on information we have, we’d rather risk losing a lawsuit and paying you over a million dollars than actually hire you.”  Smith and Minnesota did what they thought was best for their basketball program.

Who really won and who really lost, here?

Remember the story we posted a few days ago about the basketball player at Odessa, Texas’ Permian High School — yes, it’s the Friday Night Lights high school — who claimed to be 16-year old sophomore Jerry Joseph, but was under suspicion of being an impostor?  Yesterday, we found out that this person was indeed Guerdwich Montimere, not a Harry Potter villain, but a 22-year old from Florida who graduated from Ft. Lauderdale’s Dillard High in 2007 and decided to relive part of his youth.

Montimere, aka Jerry Joseph.

Claiming to be a 15-year old orphan from Haiti at the time, Montimere moved to Odessa under the Jerry Joseph moniker in February 2009 and impressed everyone with his hooping skills, eventually winning the Texas District 2-5A Newcomer of the Year award.  Last month, a Florida AAU coach named Louis Vives saw Joseph at a tournament in Arkansas and immediately recognized him as Montimere, setting off speculation as to exactly who Jerry Joseph really was.  An anonymous e-mail received a few weeks ago by folks at Permian High led to an investigation, and Joesph was actually cleared by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who couldn’t prove that Joseph and Montimere were really the same person.  What they did find out was that the person who claimed to be Joseph’s half-brother last year when he enrolled Joseph in that junior high school — one Jabari Caldwell, actually a former teammate of Montimere’s at Dillard High in Ft. Lauderdale — was no relation to Joseph.  With no relatives in the country, Joseph was therefore said to have no legal basis for being in America, and he was subsequently taken into the home of Permian High School head coach Danny Wright while all the immigration issues were sorted out.  Likely hearing the footsteps behind him, Joseph came clean yesterday and admitted the was not 16-year old Jerry Joseph, but really 22-year old Guerdwich Montimere.

Montimere was arrested and, just a few hours prior to the posting of this very article, was released from jail after posting a $500 bond.  We’re certain Coach Wright has an opinion on a fitting sentence for Montimere, having taken the guy into his home.  Also, the Permian boys basketball team will probably have to forfeit all of their wins from last season because they used an ineligible player, so we doubt Guerdwich has any friends left in Odessa.  Therefore, if you’re approached in the next few days by a rather tall, mature-looking 16-year old with a Haitian birth certificate who wants you to enroll him at your local high school, just play it safe and call the cops.  You’re likely looking at Guerdwich Montimere — the David Hampton/Paul David Poitier of our times.

It appears that Nike’s controversial Duke advertisement is the least of their worries.  In a move that was seen as a long time coming at the University of Wisconsin, the school recently dropped Nike from their apparel contract over a dispute with labor on severence pay.  This is the first time that any American college has dropped an agreement with the multi-billion dollar company over what the school perceives as worker’s rights abuses, but the school has had a history of taking the initiative in contract agreements.  Wisconsin recently ended contracts with both New Era and Russell Athletic over similar practices, and chancellor Biddy Martin had given Nike 120 days to pay $2.6 million to Honduran workers in severance pay and back wages that started the standoff.  Wisconsin’s main apparel supplier, adidas, has had labor issues of their own but their are no plans yet to sever ties with the other shoe giant.  Wisconsin’s take:

According to the university’s Labor Code of Conduct, local labor laws must be followed, the freedom of associated and collective bargaining must be respected, and responsibility must be taken for subcontractors. Since Nike acted outside these rules, its contract was terminated.

Is Wisconsin the First of Several?

The amount of royalty fees that Wisconsin stands to lose is in the neighborhood of $50,000, relative chump change in the world of athletic apparel at a major school like Wisconsin.  But perhaps most importantly for Nike, other schools may be getting in on the act as well.  Georgetown and Washington are interested in learning more themselves.  Oklahoma, which unlike Wisconsin has Nike as their primary sponsor, is getting pressure from their students to drop the company, even going so far as to write a column requesting that OU terminate their contract with Nike.  Cornell may also be following Wisconsin’s lead as multiple workers’ rights organizations on campus have supported a termination of their contract.  Although Nike does not own the factories where the wage abuses occurred, they do use the factories to manufacture their apparel, which activists say violates Cornell’s Code of Conduct.  The ball is already rolling downhill on several campuses and if Nike isn’t careful, they’re going to find themselves underneath an avalanche of negative publicity on this matter.

According to Google Finance, the company is worth nearly $37 Billion.  So why do they feel the need to take such a PR hit when $2.6 million should be pocket change to them?  Probably the same reason that some of their overseas employees make less than $5 a day — unless you’re a potential Oregon head coach, CEO Phil Knight is not known as the most generous man in the world.  But if he doesn’t calm the storm soon, he could be facing a much bigger hit than any money he owed his (subcontracted) employees.

There’s a good chance that you would never have heard of Kwame James if not for some pieces written about him like this AP article at ESPN.com and this 2006 article at SI.com, and we wanted to do our part to spread his name among the masses.  Outside of some college basketball fans in Evansville, Indiana, and minor league hoop fans in Brooklyn, those who haven’t actually met James (us included) might never know his story.  And that would have been fine with him.

Better never to have heard of him than to remember him as a name on a long casualty list.

Kwame James -- American. (AP)

James was born in Canada and grew up in Trinidad, and played four years of college ball at Evansville.  Back in 1999, he was on an Aces team that went to the NCAA Tournament (lost as an 11-seed in the first round to Kansas), the last Evansville squad to make it.  If his name sounds familiar at all, this is probably not how you remember him, or why you now will.

According to the cited articles, two years later in December 2001, James was playing professional basketball in France and was on a Paris to Miami flight on the way to meet up with his girlfriend, and both of them were to fly to Trinidad for the holidays.  While he was napping on the Paris-Miami leg, he was awakened by a yelling flight attendant who begged for his assistance with a little problem ten rows to the rear.

He was escorted near the back of the plane where he saw none other than Richard Reid — yes, the thankfully unsuccessful “shoe bomber” — being restrained by other passengers.  We can only assume that the flight attendant awakened James because of his 6’8 and 250-pound size, but after Reid was restrained with belts and headphone cords — headphone cords?!? — it was Mr. James, at the behest of the flight’s captain, who sat on an armrest next to Reid for the remaining four hours of the flight and held him by the ponytail, acting as security until the flight could successfully divert to Boston.  Keep in mind, this was in December 2001…barely three months after the 9/11 attacks.

This past Thursday — April 8, 2010 — James officially became an American citizen.  It took a little longer than expected and required a little help from Hillary Clinton (a senator at the time), New York Representative Joe Crowley, and a resourceful immigration lawyer, but this particular Hero of Flight 63 — and there were many — was sworn in on Thursday in Atlanta.  He might not play basketball professionally any more, but it was his love for the game that brought him here and his appreciation of our country that kept him here.  All we can say is:  Welcome, Sir.  Thank you, and were glad to have you.

You may have missed it with all the news about Robbie Hummel‘s torn ACL, but Corey Stokes of Villanova was cited earlier this morning for public urination. The 21 year-old junior who averages 9.1 PPG and 4 RPG for the Wildcats was cited (not arrested or fined) after he was found by police urinating between 2 parked cars outside a bar near the Villanova campus at 3 AM following the Wildcats win over USF. I’ll let you guess why he was in that situation and I doubt it was BPH or Lasix.

At this point we still are not sure if Stokes will play at Syracuse on Saturday (we are guessing he will get a 2-minute “suspension” at the beginning of the game) because the only response we have out of Villanova regarding the incident is Jay Wright‘s generic PR response: ““This was a simple mistake by a college student. Corey regrets it and has apologized for it. We will now deal with it within our basketball family.” We are guessing that more than a few of the NCAA on-campus record 34,616 fans that will attend Saturday night’s game between Syracuse and Villanova at the Carrier Dome will be happy to remind Stokes, Wright, and the entire Wildcat squad about that “simple mistake” during the game.

Corey wants to know how Calvin gets away with it

For our money, Stokes still has a long way to go to catch Bill Walker for sheer brazenness while urinating in public.

Northern Iowa big man Jordan Eglseder has been suspended for three games as a result of his arrest in the early hours of Sunday morning for drunk driving.

According to a report at DesMoinesRegister.com, Panthers coach Ben Jacobson announced the suspension and his disappointment with Eglseder’s actions.  Eglseder himself released a statement noting, “I made a regretful decision last night,” and apologized to UNI basketball fans and indeed the entire university.

Not that there’s any good time for this kind of thing, but it’s especially bad for UNI right now.  They suffered their third loss of the season yesterday, a 68-59 defeat at the hands of Bradley, and are trying to build some momentum heading into the Missouri Valley conference tournament and the NCAA.  The Panthers have been to the NCAA Tournament five times, including last year’s 61-56 loss to Purdue in the first round as a 12-seed.  Their only victory came as a 14-seed in 1990, a 74-71 first round victory over Missouri, and have a very good chance of adding to that this year.  Eglseder leads UNI in rebounding at 7.6 RPG, is their second-leading scorer at 12.2 PPG, and is statistically the Panthers’ most efficient player.

Eglseder will miss home games against Creighton and Old Dominion, and a road trip to Evansville.  He should be back for the final regular season home game of his career on February 27th against Illinois State.

Aside from Eglseder, the only true center on the team is 6’10 redshirt freshman Austin Pehl, who has only appeared in five games for an average of 1.6 minutes.  Then it’s another freshman, 6’9 forward Jake Koch (2.1 PPG, 2.6 RPG, 11.6 MPG, played in all 25 games this year), the brother of senior Adam Koch, UNI’s leading scorer.  The Panthers will rely on both Koch brothers, as well as junior forwards Lucas O’Rear and Kerwin Dunham, for a few more minutes and a little more production in Eglseder’s absence; this is not a new concept for UNI, as Eglseder averages only about 22 minutes per game.

Former Oklahoma State coach Sean Sutton, son of famed coach Eddie Sutton, was arrested on Thursday for attempting to fraudulently possess controlled substances.  He was jailed in Stillwater, Oklahoma last night and the original report from Tulsa World did not specify a time for his arraignment.

Also from the report, an extra wrinkle to this is that Sutton used his cell phone as a means to obtaining the substances and had been receiving shipments from multiple states (New York and Washington are specified in the story) containing the drugs.  A parcel had arrived for Sutton in Stillwater on Thursday; when he went to pick it up, Oklahoma narcotics agents confronted Sutton, who eventually confessed that he was “addicted to painkillers” and had been ordering the controlled substances to feed the addiction.  There is also the question of Sutton having made multiple visits to austin tx drug rehab but not revealing to the individual doctors that he was doing so, as a means to obtain the drugs.

The package snagged by the Oklahoma agents reportedly contained “Adderall and clonazepam.”  Adderall is a brand name for a combination drug containing dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, substances that increase the amount of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.  It increases awareness and wakefulness, as  well as libido, and decreases appetite.  It’s usually used for treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but it has a very high potential for addiction.  The street value comes from the effects mentioned above, and it’s frequently abused a stimulant and a weight-loss drug. These drugs can be addictive and it is important to take customized rehab treatment from popular rehab centers if you’re addicted to it.

Clonazepam is the generic name for a drug more widely known as Klonopin, a drug most often used as treatment for seizure disorders like epilepsy, or as a treatment for anxiety.  Because it has an overall net “depressant” effect, it is often abused as a sedative or in conjunction with other drugs to enhance the first drug’s effect.

No other substances were named in the Tulsa World report.

(h/t: @TheBigLead)

It’s been that kind of a year for Jeff Capel’s Oklahoma Sooners.  As soon as things start looking up, there’s an equal but opposite reaction that brings his team back to reality.  Oklahoma has experienced plentiful growing pains this year in large part due to the difficulties that Capel has had getting through to his star player Willie Warren, but also undoubtedly because of their numerous talented freshmen he has had to rely on.  Gifted though the quartet of Tommy Mason-Griffin (13/3/5 APG), Tiny Gallon (10/8), Steven Pledger (7/2) and Andrew Fitzgerald (4/2) are, with freshmen comes spectacular ups and downs, and this crew is no different.  On and off the court. 

Tommy Mason-Griffin and the Other Frosh Stepped Up Saturday

On Saturday afternoon at 3pm local time, OU tipped it off against its bitter rival Texas, running out to a twenty-point halftime lead behind the stellar play of the aforementioned guard Mason-Griffin and wing Cade Davis.  The Sooners cooled off in the second half, but they were still able to utilize some great free throw defense (10-27 for UT) and some timely buckets down the stretch to hang on to win, 80-71.  The freshman four stepped up in this one, combining for half of the Sooners’ points and two-thirds of their assists.  It was without question the Sooners’ biggest victory of the season, and one that Sooner faithful hope would springboard OU back into the Big 12 picture and contention for a late run at the NCAA Tournament. 

Cause for celebration, right?  The game ended at around 5:30 pm.  Give a reasonable amount of time for players to shower, dress and venture home, and you figure most everybody is gone by 7 pm.  Surely some players went out to eat with their families; still others may have had a date with a girlfriend; and perhaps some just went home and chillaxed for a while.  Not freshmen Steven Pledger and Andrew Fitzgerald, though.  They went to the mall.  But not only did they go to the mall, they were so excited by the big win and their individual performances (Fitzgerald: started and contributed 3/2/1 asst in 19 minutes; Pledger: 9/4/1 in 24 minutes off the bench) that they decided to steal some shirts from a local Dillard’s.  Allegedly, of course.  At 8:50 pm, the two players were watched by store security as they placed two shirts inside a blue plastic bag with the clear intent to conceal them. 

Pledger & Fitzgerald Making Smart Decisions

Not even four hours after the biggest win of their entire lives, these two knuckleheads thought they were entitled to some free shirts.  Instead of receiving a conga line of well-wishers and fans back in the dorms like campus deities, they’re busy getting written up by some rent-a-cop for petty larceny.  We’re sure that they’ll learn from this mistake, but at what cost to Oklahoma?  Tomorrow night’s game against Texas Tech in Norman is a must-win, and Jeff Capel now needs to make the decision on what punishment he’ll hand down to these two clowns.  If he’s harsh and suspends them, he’ll be extremely shorthanded for that game; if he lets them play, then there’s an implication that stealing things from department stores is ok.  We’re not sure which way he’ll turn, but we do have one question in all of this…  was Royce White visiting from out of town? 

The first shoe dropped today in the Tennessee basketball players New Year’s Day fiasco, as star forward Tyler Smith was dismissed from the Tennessee basketball team in a statement released by Bruce Pearl:

We felt we had enough information at this time to dismiss Tyler Smith from the team.  I am deeply troubled and saddened. Playing basketball at the University of Tennessee is a privilege, and where conduct is displayed that is detrimental to the team and the university, this discipline is required. Tyler has accomplished a great deal and we are all disappointed his playing career at the University of Tennessee will end this way.

Disappointment, Thy Name is Tyler

The three other players involved in the incident — Melvin Goins, Brian Williams and Cameron Tatum — remain indefinitely suspended as #1 Kansas visits Knoxville this weekend.  The twitterati and message board chatter yesterday implied that this decision was coming, as allegedly Smith was found to be the owner of the two guns found in the rental car where the four players were riding. 

This is obviously a huge blow to the Tennessee team this year as well as to Bruce Pearl’s program in general.  Smith was generally viewed as a success story around the SEC, as the local kid had returned home from Iowa after his freshman year to be with his sick father and help Pearl rebuild the UT program.  He was all-SEC first team as a sophomore and junior, and helped lead UT to its second straight Sweet Sixteen in 2008 for the first time in program history.  Furthermore, the perception that Pearl only has loose control of his players is exacerbated by this situation, and it may ultimately impact his recruiting to Knoxville. 

Smith, to his credit, said in a statement that he’s only a dozen hours short of his degree and he intends on finishing it, but what on earth was he thinking here?  If he really feels such imminent danger on a daily basis that he needs to have not one, but two, weapons near him at all times, then it’s probably for the best that he’s no longer staining Tennessee athletics with whatever he’s involved in; but if he’s just trying to act hard by brandishing guns in a way that really isn’t necessary given his lifestyle and status as a star UT athlete, then he may want to give Gilbert Arenas a text to see how that’s working out for him these days. 

The hits keep on coming for the University of Tennessee athletic department.  Just seven weeks after three Vol football players were arrested for attempted armed robbery of a local convenience store, four hoopsters were arrested this morning (at 11:30 am) during a traffic stop where a baggy of marijuana and two guns were found in a rental car Cameron Tatum was driving.  From the police report:

According to the incident report, one KPD officer immediately requested backup and a K-9 officer after approaching the vehicle, driven by Tatum, and smelling a “strong odor of marijuana.”  The four players then were removed from the vehicle so it could be searched, and officers found two handguns, drugs and an open container of alcohol. One weapon was discovered under each of the front seats, and the one discovered under Smith’s passenger seat had an altered serial number, the report said. That led to felony charges at first, but all charges were misdemeanors later in the evening, according to multiple sources.

Smith, Tatum, Williams, Goins

These weren’t just any average players, either.  The arrested players were forward Tyler Smith, UT’s best all-around player, along with fellow starting forward Tatum, key reserve guard Melvin Goins and center Brian Williams — the four represent 41% of the team’s point production, 47% of the rebounds, 50% of the assists and 40% of the team’s minutes.In other words, this is a HUGE problem for Bruce Pearl.  As of Friday night, Pearl has indefinitely suspended all four players and will gather more details before making a decision as to their futures with the program.

Of particular concern are the guns found under the seats.  None of the four has taken credit for the ownership of these yet, and with good reason, as those weapons could be linked to other crimes.  But, it creates an interesting prisoner’s dilemma situation, where if any player realistically wants to have a chance to continue his career at UT, he should come clean about another player’s ownership of the guns to save himself; otherwise, all four players could be charged with possession of the firearms.  Will the code of the street/team take precedence over one’s self-interest and individual survival?  You would have to believe that one or more will finger the others in order to absolve themselves of responsibility for the whole mess.  But we ask again – WHY do players need to have guns lying around (see: Agent Zero and Javaris Crittenton)?  It just doesn’t make any sense.

It will be very interesting to see how this ultimately shakes out, but things are not looking very good at all in Knoxville, a mere 24 hours after UT took it to Memphis in a huge win over their rival in the FedEx Forum, and only a few days prior to big games at home against visiting Charlotte and #1 Kansas.  It appeared that Bruce Pearl’s team might have been turning the corner after some early struggles, but the only corner that may be in the future for much of his team at this point is looking more like something out of “The Wire” rather than at Thompson-Boling Arena.