Wouldn’t it be nice if this were Oct. 19 instead of Sept. 19?

• Which Great White Hope is actually a better player? – maybe we’ll delve into that sometime soon.  Gary Parrish takes a look now.
• The seemingly snakebitten AJ Price from UConn is supposedly all the way back from offseason ACL surgery.  In completely unrelated news, UConn has added Lojack to all of its campus laptops. 
• In a somewhat odd twist, the NCAA directed Indiana to delay its response to the latest allegations from the Kelvin Sanctions scandal last spring.  The university now has until Sept. 26 to craft its response.  Someone go on vacation?
• Seth Davis writes a pretty good recount of what five teams – Kansas, Missouri, Purdue, S. Illinois and Notre Dame – did on their Labor Day weekend trips.
• Remember Illinois guard Jamar Smith? – he received 18 months probation for his alcohol violation stemming from his DUI arrest last spring.  He plans to play for S. Indiana next season (yeah, that’s what we said too).

It’s no secret around these parts that Lute Olson has experienced a volatile year since he decided to take a leave of absence from his Arizona Wildcats last November.  There were already the rampant rumors that Olson was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, or at minimum, some other undisclosed health issue, accompanied by the not-so-private saga involving a divorce from his second wife, Christine.  Throw in the embarassingly open secret that Olson was unhappy with his replacement, Kevin O’Neill, in addition to the loss of several key players either in or coming into the program (Jerryd Bayless, Brandon Jennings, Emmanuel Negedu) and it’s safe to say that the Silver Fox had a stressful year.  All that said, Olson has gone on record to exuberantly state that he expects to remain the coach at Arizona at least through his current contract, ending in 2011. 

Happier Times for Lute and Christine Olson  (photo credit:  azstarnet.com)

Well why not? – so long as you intend to wilfully flout the NCAA rulebook in an attempt to get recruits to Tucson.  From the AP report: 

The University of Arizona has reported a possible NCAA recruiting violation by men’s basketball coach Lute Olson, who called it “an unfortunate and regrettable error.”  Athletic director Jim Livengood said Monday that Olson had sent a letter to basketball boosters asking for a donation to Jim Storey’s Arizona Cactus Classic basketball tournament, held last May at Arizona’s McKale Center. NCAA rules prohibit institutional representatives or boosters from arranging financial assistance for potential recruits.  “A ‘personal and confidential’ letter was sent to Rebounders Club board of directors over the electronic signature of Lute Olson, requesting that they provide financial assistance to Jim Storey’s Cactus Classic AAU Tournament,” Livengood said in a July 2 letter to Ron Barker, Pac-10 associate commissioner in charge of governance and enforcement. “The letter expressed how important this tournament is to the Arizona basketball program’s recruiting. The letter also stated (correctly) that ‘The athletics department can’t assist in any way.’ Which would include requesting that donors make financial contributions.”

Forget the one-and-dones, Olson has apparently decided that he will simply have his boosters finance players into Tucson.  (sidenote: the #2 PG in the class of 2009, Abdul Gaddy, also commited to the Wildcat program today – was he at this camp?).   

To be fair, Olson disabused reporters of the notion that he knew anything about this letter, which had an electronic signature on it.  Yet numerous poeople within in the program have gone on the record to state that Olson wanted this letter sent out.  Some Arizona fans are suggesting this is a setup propagated by the AD, Jim Livengood, who (the assumption goes) wants the powerful Olson out of the picture.

There’s one thing we can remain certain about – the Lute Olson stories are getting exponentially more interesting the older he gets.  Stay tuned for more out of the desert.   

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, and we’re trying to get back into gear here…

• Reason #73 to love college basketball – apparently, us.  Sweet. 
• How about reason #70 – Duke is All Things Evil and Sweaty.  We thought that was Sarah Palin, no?  Politically speaking, Washington insider and Terp fan Robert Novak says he will no longer inveigh against Duke after he had his successful cancer treatment at their medical center.
• Kentucky is using an NCAA rulebook loophole to get a leg up on Midnight Madness this year.  Apparently you can use 2 hrs/week for instruction prior to the traditional mid-October practice starting date, and UK will use their 2 hrs on Oct. 10 to get going early. 
• Dickie V. is in the Hall of Fame!  Supposedly his bust will be enshrined perilously close to the Coach K wax figure anus. 
• Patty Mills is back at St. Mary’s enjoying his lavish praise from the Olympic experience, unless you ask this writer.  Editing, people!
• All the BracketBuster information you could ever want…  including 102 teams and nine conferences sending their entire rosters this season (MAC, MVC, OVC, CAA, Horizon, Big West, WAC, MAAC). 
• Kevin Love is the cover boy of 2009 NCAA Basketball (formerly March Madness) for all you gamers out there.

Some older stuff you might have missed…

• American’s Jeff Jones parlayed the school’s first ever NCAA appearance into a nice contract extension through 2014. 
• Tom Crean can’t catch a break (other than his new bitchin paycheck).  His only returning scholarship player, Kyle Taber, injured his knee and will be out of action for 10 weeks.   
• Ty Lawson confirmed that he “probably” would be in the NBA right now had it not been for his “drinking while driving” arrest in June.  If Lawson had left, would Danny Green and/or Wayne Ellington have stayed too?  UNC fans should be thanking their lucky stars for Lawson’s (mis)fortune this season. 
• Wow, do you think the NCAA micromanages much?  Arkansas recently self-reported six violations, and some of them just seem silly.
• Oklahoma’s Mr. Dub-Dub, Blake Griffin, was ticketed for outraging public decency, also known as the piss-and-walk. 
• Thanks to the SEC’s new comprehensive tv package deal ($2B!!!) with ESPN, there will be two more nights of SEC coverage (in addition to Super Tuesday) on the network starting in 2009-10.  In related news, Time Warner Cable has picked up the Big Ten Network (whew!  glad we’ve got Comcast at the RTC abode!!). 

As July leads into August, here are some tasty bits of knowledge for the summer heat…

• Richmond’s top player Dan Geriot is expected to miss the 08-09 season with a knee injury.  Auburn’s best player, Josh Dollard, was simply kicked off the team for not getting his sh!t together.
• Guess we know how Texas A&M-Corpus Christi made the Tourney two years ago. 
• Thuggins, summertime, scofflaws.  Any questions?
• It appears as if Illinois’ Jamar Smith violated the terms of his probation by drinking alcohol; he’ll learn his fate at a Sept. 17 hearing.  In other news, a 21-year old ball player recently had sex with a woman. 
• Memphis could be in some hot water over an improper phone call made by the FedEx CEO to one of his employees (who also happens to be the mother of the #2 rated PG in the class of 2009, Abdul Gaddy). 
• Baylor????  No, really, Baylor????
• Gregg Doyel says he’ll bury the hatchet with Coach K if he brings home the gold medal next month.  The most interesting part of this piece is the story about Coach K torpedoing Doyel’s book deal in 1999.   
• Yes, UK Fans are insane.  We mean that in a good way, of course.
• Andy Katz takes a look at the Wake Forest program one year after the untimely death of head coach Skip Prosser.
• We thought this article by Dana O’Neil about coaches working themselves too hard in light of Prosser’s heart attack was going to suck, but we really enjoyed it.  Coaches whine and complain about the summer circuit, but they really love it (poor headline, ESPN). 
• Jeff Goodman breaks down his top ten prospects from the summer camps in Vegas.
• Gary Parrish gives an interesting insight into how programs game the summer recruiting circuit by not hiring assistant coaches until after they’ve developed good relationships with top prospects (sidenote: why did Arizona fire Miles Simon – that guy won them a championship!).  He follow that up with another article on how coaches get creative but ethically suspect in getting recruits onto campus in a legal manner.

Now that the gumshoes (an overly generous term if ever there was one) over at the WWL have pretty much made the case for the NCAA that OJ Mayo was taking improper benefits both before and during his short stint at USC, TrojanLand is doing all it can to respond in the most American of ways – by covering their ass.

Look Who’s Coming, Trojans!  (photo credit: AP)

Anticpating an imminent NCAA investigation – after all, Myles Brand ain’t nobody’s chump – USC is battoning down the hatches and getting its story together.  According to the LA Daily News:

USC intends to tell the NCAA it knew of no wrongdoing involving O.J. Mayo and banned his mentor, Rodney Guillory, from receiving tickets as an illustration of its attempt to prevent the basketball star from receiving any improper benefits, according to sources.  That will be the outline of the university’s defense, according to officials familiar with the situation.  “Right now, we’re just trying to weather the storm,” said a USC official, who asked not to be identified.

Sounds reasonable enough.  Guillory, the man who gold-foil giftwrapped Mayo for USC, wasn’t allowed to receive tickets to games.  We’re not sure exactly what that proves, as we suppose he could have simply bought tickets off of Craigslist like everyone else.  But what about this little piece of prejudicial information?

But there remain some questions to this defense. Guillory was frequently seen in the basketball offices and also around the locker room, and regularly attended pickup games at the Galen Center when Mayo played last summer. 

So USC’s defense is that they didn’t provide game tickets to Guillory, where unless he was literally sitting in the huddle he wouldn’t have been able to communicate with Mayo anyway; BUT, Guillory was allowed to loiter around the locker room, the basketball offices and the pickup games (where he could ostensibly run into Mayo at any moment).  We’s no lawyerin type, but that sounds like troubles in Troy. 

Of course, it IS the typically-befuddled NCAA we’re talking about.  They might start investigating USC and end up putting UCLA on probation. 

Your weekend news and notes…

• OJ, OJ, OJ, OJ, OJ…
• In the wake of the Kelvin Sanctions fiasco, Indiana has responded to the five major NCAA allegations and believes that it has already punished flagellated itself enough.  Since IU is painting Sampson as the fall guy, he felt the need to defend himself in a separate letter to the NCAA.  
• The NCAA is proposing a change to the college goaltending rule to make it mesh with the NBA version – a ball that hits the backboard may no longer be blocked whether it is moving in an upward or downward motion.  Our biggest pet peeve, the lack of a collegiate block/charge restricted area under the basket, was merely “discussed.”  Wonderful. 
• Orchestration, or tampering, Coach Crean?  Say what you really mean.
• Kentucky’s Derrick Jasper has decided to transfer closer to home. 
• Andy Glockner writes that Davidson as the “new Gonzaga” is fraught with challenges.
• Vegas Watch breaks down odds on who will be #1 in the draft.
• Speaking of which, one Who? (Missouri’s Leo Lyons) decided to return to school, while another Who? (Duquesne’s Shawn James) decided to stay in the NBA Draft. 
• STF took a look at the 69 early entries (now 68!) and breaks each player down into a probable spot. 
• The Anxious Tar Heel has a solid breakdown of the percentages of an early entry a) getting invited to the Orlando Predraft Camp, and b) getting drafted from there. 

We had to come out of our work-induced hibernation for a brief passage on what’s being reported from Indiana today.  This is getting juicier than Lindsay Lohan’s tenderloin on display in New York Magazine. 

Mutiny on the HMS Hoosier

Luke Winn is reporting that the IU players are on the verge of a full-scale mutiny if Kelvin Sampson is fired, as many are expecting his termination today.  If assistant coach Dan Dakich is promoted, Winn writes that the players may walk out on the season in unison.

The source said that in meeting with Hoosiers players on Thursday night, IU athletic director Rick Greenspan informed them of the likelihood that Sampson would no longer be their head coach — either as a result of a termination or suspension Friday.  The players’ response, according to the source? “If Sampson isn’t our coach, we’ll quit.” The source said this was the unified sentiment of the whole team, but was first expressed by the Hoosiers’ senior leadership in a smaller meeting earlier Thursday. Greenspan and the players reached a stalemate in the second meeting, with the athletic director reportedly asking them if “the whole season should just be canceled.”

We’re sure something like this must have happened at some point in college basketball history, but we certainly cannot remember something like this happening at such a high-profile program such as Indiana.  Just thinking back in our lifetime, did the Michigan players in 1989 threaten to walk when Bill Frieder was fired?  Who else?

Right now, though, everything is just speculation and talk.  Players often threaten to transfer and/or cause problems unless a certain coach is fired/promoted/hired, but eventually emotions settle, reality hits home, and the players acquiesce.  Put simply, we would be completely and absolutely shocked if the Indiana players actually followed through on this threat, considering the team they have and the possible March run they could make.

There’s an old Simpsons episode where Lisa was experimenting with Pavlovian conditioning in an effort to determine who was smarter – Bart or a hamster. Needless to say, Bart continued reaching for the goodies long after the hamster gave up, only to be greeted with a shock every time.

Oh, Bart, er, Kelvin!!

We couldn’t help but remember this episode when we heard the news this morning that, once again, Kelvin Sanctions at Indiana has been up to his old tricks again. It turns out the the NCAA came back with its report involving phone-gate with a slightly different take than the one IU was preaching back in October.

The report sent to the university Friday accuses Sampson of five major violations, including the allegation of providing “false or misleading information” to university officials and NCAA enforcement staff. The school contended in its initial report that all violations were secondary infractions. But the NCAA accused Sampson of failing “to deport himself … with the generally recognized high standard of honesty” and failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the men’s basketball program, categorized as major infractions.

Five major violations. This coming from a program that prides itself on its ethical cache in the world of college athletics (no major infractions since 1960). Is Sampson insane? They say the true definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Sampson isn’t insane because he does expect the same result every time – that, just like at Oklahoma, that he’ll get away with breaking the rules. He simply doesn’t appear to see anything wrong with what he was doing (ask Roidger Clemens about that one).

It’s probably safe to say that Kelvin Sampson has coached his only two years at Indiana, but will he survive the week, much less until March Madness? Remember last week when we referred to possible reasons for Knight’s resignation from Texas Tech? Hey, it’s possible!

Why Not??

How will this affect IU on the court? Well, if we were gamblers, we’d have taken Wisconsin +4 in Bloomington tonight. It’s a good thing we don’t dally in such losing propositions as that. Just sayin…

We didn’t go to b-school, but we did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.  While there we ran into our old friend Jim O’Brien, formerly the head coach at Ohio State and currently sitting on his ass at home banned from the NCAA until 2009 due to recruiting violations during his tenure in Columbus.

He informed us that today the Franklin County (Ohio) Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision requiring THE Ohio State University to pay O’Brien over $2.4M in back-pay stemming from his termination as the head coach there in June 2004.  This case derives from a situation involving a Serbian player in 1998:

Ohio State University and O’Brien both had appealed the ruling by the Ohio Court of Claims last year. Judge Joseph T. Clark ruled in August that although O’Brien acted improperly, he was fired without cause in a breach-of-contract lawsuit.  The Court of Claims said it was not a material breach of O’Brien’s contract when he gave $6,000 to the mother of Alexander Radojevic, a 7-foot-3-inch Serbian basketball recruit in 1998, and for concealing the payment for five years.

If any AD presiding over a college program read this today, it probably sent a quick debilitating shudder down his spine.  Not.  A.  Material.  Breach.  Of.  Contract.  Wow. 

What this essentially means is that a coach of a sports program (any sports program!) can flagrantly violate the rules of amateurism by providing at least one sizable loan to a recruit or player, and he will not be in material breach of his contract for doing so.  In other words, he cannot be fired for doing this, which provides an even greater incentive to cheat than already existed.  Sure, the NCAA could get involved, but in its typically arbitrary and capricious manner, a coach is just as likely to get a slap on the wrist as he is to get suspended.   

Now, keep in mind this decision by the Ohio court isn’t binding on other jurisdictions outside of that state.  BUT, it is damn persuasive (assuming the Ohio Supreme Court upholds it), and courts around the country could cite this case as authoritative justification to do the same elsewhere.  ADs have a difficult enough job keeping an eye on their coaches and expecting them to do the right thing.  With the knowledge that the O’Briens of the world get one “free pass”  on a recruit or player, their jobs just got precipitously tougher.

Oh, and as for the O’Brien math:    

Plug $2,400,000 into the numerator, and $6000 into the denominator, and see what you get… (hint: he’ll be fine until 2009)