Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. As the off-season starts to wind down, there’s big news with NCAA investigations as well as a scare for one coach in the news.
The first topic is Kansas receiving a Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, and it’s a big deal. Five Level I violations are alleged, and Bill Self is not immune as he could receive a significant punishment since the notice alleges a violation of NCAA bylaw 11.1.1.1, which notes what a head coach is presumed responsible for. Included is a charge of lack of institutional control, which is a big one. This will be a big test of the NCAA’s new procedure for handling cases, as well as punishment, and also a challenge for those of us who cover the sport in talking about this.
On a related note, the NCAA recently announced it plans to pause on issuing a Notice of Allegations and for schools to respond to any allegations that come from these investigations. While this might sound like a good thing for schools that are known or thought to be under investigation, it actually drags out the process and gives rival schools more time to use this to negatively recruit against them. At this point, any Notice of Allegations that gets issued to a school will not have a final resolution until sometime after this season, so in a sense this is moot, but college basketball involves more than just five months out of the year.
We mention that Georgia Tech also got hit with a punishment from the NCAA after a two-year investigation by the school and the NCAA. The program is banned from postseason play for the 2019-20 season and is on probation for four years (with recruiting restrictions and one less scholarship for each year), along with a few other penalties that don’t stand out. As Josh Pastner enters his fourth season at the helm, this will hamper his attempts to rebuild the program at a time when it is getting tougher to crack the top portion of the ACC.
Later, we talk about Dan Hurley having a health scare that he has since addressed. The UConn head coach had a severely herniated disc and spinal cord compression, and he was one accident away from being paralyzed. Thankfully, he has had surgery to address it, and as Dana O’Neil detailed in a terrific piece on The Athletic (subscription required), this posed a number of challenges for the coach because of how he is wired. We pray for his continued recovery to full strength.
Finally, we close with a few notes from a couple of the early preview magazines that are out, Athlon and Street & Smith’s. Of note, there appears to be very close to a consensus top 10 between them and at least one other preseason ranking, although some of the ordering is clearly up for debate.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Be sure to tune in again soon as we continue to look ahead to the 2019-20 college basketball season.
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