The Morning Dish – Tuesday, September 9th
New AD In Town: Baylor has announced the hiring of UMass athletics director Ian McCaw. McCaw, who takes over AD duties at beleaguered Baylor, replaces Tom Stanton, who resigned a month ago with head coach Dave Bliss when the Patrick Dennehy investigation revealed impropriety in the men’s basketball program. He inherits an athletics program that in the past months saw one player that was booted from the team for drugs (Carlton Dotson) allegedly murder teammate Patrick Dennehy, while the head coach illegally paid for two players that were supposed to be on scholarship, and an assistant coach taping the head coach plotting to cover up improprieties by depicting Dennehy as a drug dealer. Nice. McCaw, the AD at UMass for just over a year, was previously an AD at Northeastern and at Tulane.
Nittany Lion Sitting: Penn State senior guard Jamaal Tate will redshirt this upcoming season to seek treatment for alcohol addiction, head coach Ed DeChellis said. Tate, who played only five games last season due to injuries, has stopped drinking, and will focus on academics this season. Tate scored 40 points in the Nittany Lions’ first two exhibition games, but then notched only 13 in the first five regular season games before going down to injury.
Good Knight: Indiana University attorneys have asked a Monroe (Indiana) Circuit Court judge to dismiss Texas Tech head coach Bobby Knight’s lawsuit, stemming from Knight’s dismissal in the 2000 offseason. At issue is the verbiage in Knight’s contract, and whether Knight was fired for cause. Knight’s attorneys claim that his firing cost him more than $2 million in media, clothing, and camp deals, and even though Indiana has paid the remainder of his contract, the coach is still owed those monies. Judge Kenneth Todd has not indicated when he would make a ruling.
Washington Update: Former Minnesota recruit Wesley Washington has announced that the reason he was not admitted into the school last week, despite being approved by the NCAA clearinghouse, was that there were questions regarding his standardized test scores. According to Washington, the university admissions office wanted him to re-take the SAT, which he had taken three times, scoring an 810, a 1010, and a 1030. The jump between the first and second attempt raised a flag, though Washington claimed the jump was due to tutoring and an understanding of how the test was scored. Minnesota has been unable to comment due to student privacy laws. Meanwhile, Washington is looking to live up to his name, as he’s likely going to enroll in the University of Washington, which doesn’t start classes until the end of the month.
