This was the manner in which the story was originally reported when it broke.
More than 20 college basketball schools were originally implicated in federal documents taken from a sports agency college basketball corruption case, which revealed potential widespread NCAA violations.
Former associate Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, Chuck Person of Auburn, Emanuel Richards of Arizona, and former USC assistant Tony Bland were each charged in the corruption and fraud scheme.
The sheme involved assistants steering players to certain agents and financial advisors in an alleged pyramid scheme of sorts.
The original list of of 20 schools went…. Duke, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Michigan State, USC, Alabama, NC State, Seton Hall, LSU, Maryland, Washington, South Carolina, Louisville, Utah, Xavier, Wichita State, Kansas, Creighton, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Iowa State.
I honestly don’t know where it now stands with these other schools in relation to the NCAA investigation.
I would assume USA Today and The Athletic will be writing a follow up as to what occurred with Oklahoma State this week in relation to the NCAA penalties which were just levied.
I do know though that’s a very impressive list of basketball schools which make O State’s program post Eddie Sutton seem almost anecdotal in comparison. Oklahoma State in the period from which Eddie Sutton retired only made the NCAA Tournament three times.
Once to the second round with Travis Ford. Once to the first round with Brad Underwood who was the coach who had Lamont Evans on staff at O State. And once to the second round this past season with Mike Boynton.
Brad Underwood is now the head coach at Illinois which interestingly enough wasn’t on the list of 20 schools. Illinois was a No. 1 regional seed in last year’s Big Dance and along with Gonzaga was at the top of the overall bracket entering March Madness.
Off the top of my head Mike Boynton’s record at O State is 72-58. O State with Cade Cunningham did for the first time in its history make the finals of the Big 12 Tournament this past spring losing to Texas. O State lost in the second round to Cinderella Oregon State. I believe O State was a No. 5 regional seed.
As someone who’s an avid OU hoops fans…I’ve never been anything but impressed with the manner in which Coach Boynton coached his team and handled the young men in his program.
He did with Cade Cunnigham exactly what Billy Tubbs did with Waymon Tisdale back in the day. That being… Billy Tubbs kick started his program with one elite national-regional recruit. Cade is from Dallas, Waymon was from Tulsa.
I also remember the violations which got Kelvin Sampson in trouble back in the day wouldn’t even be an NCAA violation today. If I were a real scribe like Tramel… I’d be on the phone with Kelvin today and write a story on the O State situation from Kelvin’s prism.
So what the NCAA is going to tell me is that three hundred dollars of cash loaned to a student athlete from this program gave Oklahoma State an unfair competitive advantage. During Mike Boynton’ s tenure… the O State Cowboys have been a middle tier basketball school in the Big 12 and only played in two NCAA Tournament games in Mike Boynton’s four years.
As I wrote on the previous post…O State this season is projected to be a nice team, but was not ranked in the preseason Top 25.
If Oklahoma State was perceived to be cheating…then my take is they weren’t very effective cheaters in comparison to Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina….just to name four. This is where Abe Lemons would come in handy with a cryptic quote.
I would think some interesting followup stories will be coming from USA Today and The Athletic in the next week or so in regards to the Oklahoma State basketball story.
- Note to Barry Tramel, take my advice and write a story from Kelvin’s perspective on the NCAA since Kelvin at Houston is going to be back in the Big 12 in two years. His takes would be interesting and relevant since he was basically banned from college coaching for a period of time for texting.
- Note: Kansas, Auburn, Louisville, and Miami have allegations/investigations pending and currently have not had their fate revealed by the NCAA.