Connecticut In Trouble: Recruiting Violations Revealed

By now, you no doubt have heard about the story. Yahoo Sports unviels a lengthy and detailed investigation into rules violations committed by Connecticut basketball in relation to their recruitment of Nate Miles, a player who was expelled last fall from UConn for trouble with the law. Hard to defend the Huskies on this one; it appears they have been caught with phone records to back up the charges. How timely of Yahoo to unveil this on the eve of the Sweet 16 match-up against Purdue. I would not be surprised to see UConn come out flat due to the story, but that is really up to the players who had nothing to do with this.

Calhoun has been the subject of praise and disdain in his tenure at Connecticut. He built the program literally out of nothing into one of the premeire programs in the sport, but his salty attitude and what some would call sketchy recruiting practices had landed him scrutiny from those who do not care for him. Earlier this season he got into a verbal exchange with a reporter some jackass in a postgame press conference about his million dollar salary. He has never faced any kind of challenge like this where the facts seem laid out in plain sight. The critcism from the detractors will be overwhelming now.

The story of this kid seems to be one that encompasses the entire dark side of college basketball. He had academic and personal problems, he had vampires all around him "advising" him, there were respected people in basketball that did their part to stay away from him, and he eventually self-imploded. As a lifelong fan of Connecticut basketball it is a dark day and I am not even going to try to spin this until we here from the NCAA or Calhoun. If one were trying to force themselves to see the intentions in this, it would be the UConn staff was trying to get this kid on the right track while improving their team at the same time and then cut him loose after he got arrested, but the story indicates the Huskies have continued to recruit him even after Miles landed in a JC in Idaho.

The two cases that came to mind when reading this story were USC and Oklahoma. USC because Yahoo reported on the Reggie Bush scandal and the "advisor" involved with OJ Mayo which has subsequently been swept neatly under the rug and Oklahoma because of the improper phone calls made by former coach Kelvin Sampson. What will happen in this case? We will certainly discuss this story more as it develops and I'm certain will cover it on the Shackleford Files this week. Link to the story below.

UConn violated NCAA rules [Yahoo Sports]