| |
 Probation for Purdue NCAA penalizes Boilermakers for major violations
Posted: Wednesday June 30, 1999 02:07 PM
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) -- The NCAA on Wednesday put Purdue on probation for two years, cut a scholarship for the men's basketball program and limited recruiting visits to the school for a series of major violations involving an assistant coach and two others close to the program. The Boilermakers were spared bans from postseason tournaments or restrictions on television appearances. The NCAA did not site basketball coach Gene Keady for any wrongdoing. Purdue officials said they had no immediate comment on the NCAA sanctions. The school scheduled a news conference for later Wednesday. The NCAA Committee on Infractions said the university violated rules regarding recruiting, extra benefits and ethical conduct. There were also several secondary violations by the NCAA champion women's basketball team. As part of the school's penalty, it must repay up to 90 percent of the revenues generated from the Boilermakers' appearance in the 1996 men's NCAA tournament, and an assistant men's basketball coach was banned from off-campus recruiting for a year. The Boilermakers will lose a scholarship for the 2000-01 and 2000-02 academic years, limiting the men's basketball team to 12 scholarships for those seasons. The university also will be limited to four paid recruiting campus visits during the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 seasons. All team and individual records from the 24 games during the 1995-96 season in which an ineligible athlete participated will be vacated. That includes the NCAA tournament appearance that season. The committee penalized Purdue, in part, for a 1995 loan that an assistant coach arranged for a prospective player to receive $4,000 through a university representative. The loan was never repaid, minimal effort was made to collect the balance and eventually the loan was charged off by the bank after the player left for another institution following the 1995-96 academic year. Last fall, athletic director Morgan Burke said Purdue found no evidence to support allegations about the loan. But the NCAA found the loan was unsecured, given to a player with no credit history and lacked a cosigner. The NCAA began a preliminary inquiry with interviews at the school in the summer of 1997 and expanded it in March 1998. By that time, Purdue had already disciplined assistant coach Frank Kendrick for meeting with then-recruit Jamaal Davis in the summer of 1996 during a period when coaches are barred from contact with recruits. Kendrick was fined an undisclosed sum and forbidden to recruit off campus for 10 days during the official recruiting period that began in November 1996. The NCAA, which did not mention Kendrick by name in the report, said an assistant coach involved in the recruiting violations would be subject to NCAA 'show-cause' requirements for one year. The penalty allows the committee to determine whether the individual's athletic duties should be limited for a specified time. In December 1996, Burke said Keady and Kendrick inadvertently violated NCAA rules by making 15 telephone calls to Davis, who later signed with the Boilermakers, but did not play as a freshman because of academic ineligibility. Davis played in 12 games as a sophomore last season, then quit the team in December.
| |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
