NCAA Basketball: Programs currently in danger of facing NCAA sanctions

NCAA Basketball schools yet to receive notice

Five schools have still yet to receive their notice. A couple of those schools are at the forefront of this investigation and are expected to have numerous level I violations levied against them. Creighton and Alabama are two of the schools that have yet to receive their notices. It remains to be seen how still the penalties for these schools will be. The involvement in these schools’ results from the key information Marty Blazer III letting the FBI know that payments were accepted by assistant coaches at these schools.

Alabama has an entirely different coaching staff currently. Avery Johnson was the head man when this happened, and he has since been fired and the school has gone a different direction with Nate Oats. Creighton fired their assistant coach Preston Murphy and head coach Greg McDermott has issued a few statements saying he had no idea that former coach Murphy was doing this. So, don’t be surprised if McDermott gets hit with a failure to monitor.

Auburn is an interesting case. Tiger head coach Bruce Pearl has already been on the NCAA’s radar for quite some time after a set of recruiting violations while at Tennessee. Pearl was given a five-year show-cause penalty for those violations. Pearl also hired Chuck Person. Person was one of the main players in the scandal. Person was charged with six counts of bribery and wire fraud. Coach Pearl hired Person at Auburn and promoted him to associate head coach, so it is a bad look for the university and for head coach Pearl. Pearl and his coaching staff have done a great job building Auburn back to a national power, but when the punishment comes out Auburn may be an afterthought

LSU and Arizona are two other schools that have yet to receive their notice and that is likely due to the NCAA is trying to compile all of the information possible for both of those schools. These two schools have the potential to be the schools that receive the stiffest penalties of the schools associated with the investigation. The head coaches at the respective schools are looking at very stiff punishment most likely and it is all due to them being caught on recording talking about the very money they are hoping exchanged hands to a recruit.

There have been conflicting reports on Sean Miller at Arizona. ESPN published an article that had Miller on tape discussing a payment of a significantly large amount of money to be paid to the family of former player DeAndre Ayton. Arizona also employed the coach who was at the center of the scandal with Assistant coach Book Richardson. Richardson, much like Person, was one of the ringleaders of the scandal. He was recently sentenced to three months in prison.

The one potential saving grace for Arizona, which many do not believe because of the tapes, is Richardson claims and has claimed multiple times that Miller never knowingly accepted money for a player. The NCAA isn’t going to care and likely are going to hit Arizona hard especially Miller with a failure to comply and other compliance-related issues. If it is proven that Miller signed off on the money given Ayton and other recruits it would probably mean the end of the coaching career for the Arizona head man.

Head coach Will Wade has been very brash during this entire process. He much like Kansas coach Self has been very apathetic towards the entire process and has an attitude that one would equate to you can’t catch me. Wade was heard on recording multiple times signing off on payments to players and recruits’ families. LSU has already tried to self-police this somewhat when they suspended Wade indefinitely.

It only got worse for LSU when the Scheme aired on HBO. The Scheme saw the Tigers head coach on the phone with middleman Christian Dawkins discussing payments or numerous players including point guard Javonte Smart. LSU has their head coach have the egregious and blatant breaking of the rules of any team implicated in the FBI scandal. When LSU does finally get their notice, it is likely going to be a bad day for the program.