Tom Knott: Just call brackets cheat sheets
Friday, March 27, 2009
The sleaze inevitably rises to the top in the NCAA tournament.
That would be Connecticut this time - not Memphis, the college basketball program that was enveloped in whispers and questions last spring.
The news that UConn is possibly not as pristine as the landscape around Storrs is hardly surprising. You are guilty until proven deficient in the recruitment of the latest prep sensations.
Being deficient in that area happens to be the charge against Terps coach Gary Williams, who refuses to get down and dirty with recruits and their representatives.
His teams routinely overachieve, even the team that won the national championship. It was not as if reed-thin Juan Dixon, the lead player on that team, drew the interest of the national programs.
Jim Calhoun, the old-school coach of UConn, did nothing to debunk the charges that surfaced in a report on Yahoo Sports.
He resorted to mumbo jumbo instead.
"The university is going to look into any matter, as we would, when we hear light of something with regards to... making sure that we are being compliant," he said.
The story tells of the chummy relationship between a former UConn student manager and a recruit who was expelled from the program last fall. The story tells of the former student manager providing the recruit with all kinds of perks, from lodging to transportation to meals and his vast insights into UConn. It also tells of the 1,565 telephone calls and text messages between the UConn coaching staff and the former student manager. It is not a reach to assume that most of the phone work was made in pursuit of the recruit.
Associated Press Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun said the school would look into reports of recruiting violations.
That is how the game within the game is played beyond the bright lights of the arena, cheerleaders and school bands.
Recruiting is the sustenance of the major conference programs. X's and O's are secondary, although many breathless dispatches are written each March about how this or that bantam rooster on the sidelines knows his coaching stuff.
There is nothing magical about identifying a future NBA player. That is the easy part. The hard part is landing his signature on a grant-in-aid, which occurs only if you make the recruit and those around him feel truly wanted.
That can result in lots of phone calls, text messages and e-mails, plus handwritten notes that arrive at a recruit's home the old-fashioned way. That can result in forging relationships with family members of a prized recruit and the bottom-feeders who lurk on the AAU courts each summer. That can result in all kinds of improprieties.
The coaches who play it straight live with the knowledge that a white hat does them no good if the conference losses are piling up in January and February. You could ask Williams, who lifted the Terps out of the post-Len Bias abyss and won a national championship, only to receive the back of the hand from so many of the program's supporters this past season.
Those same disgruntled supporters can take a measure of satisfaction in Williams eschewing the questionable recruiting practices of other programs.
UConn's supporters cannot be feeling too encouraged at the moment. The investigative body of the NCAA has a sudden interest in Storrs, and all that separates the Huskies from serious recriminations is the plausible-deniability position of Calhoun and his staff.
That did not work out too well for Kelvin Sampson, the cell-phone addict who sullied both Oklahoma and Indiana.
Calhoun can revert to his combative self and hope it all goes away. Or he can reveal what he knew at the time of Nate Miles' recruitment.
It probably would not be heartwarming. But it would beat the alternative of trying to obfuscate and letting the matter drag out.
It is a sordid business, this recruiting of elite players. It sometimes forces coaches to play by two sets of rules - the NCAA's and the ones established by those who befriend the precocious.
You do not have to go there.
You can go with the leftovers and deal with the objections and criticisms of your program's fan base.
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