Brown said he was penalized because of a new rule that makes the head coach responsible for every person on his staff. It was reported that an ex-assistant basketball coach assisted junior guard Keith Frazier academically, so that he was eligible to play at the school.
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The SMU men’s basketball team has been banned from postseason play this upcoming season in the wake of an NCAA investigation that uncovered rules violations.
SMU has not yet decided whether it will appeal the NCAA’s ruling, it said in the statement, while offering a condemnation of the governing body’s postseason ban. These sanctions represent a major step back for Brown and SMU and it looks like they will have a lot of work to do, again, to get the program back on track.
The penalties levied will ban SMU from the 2016 postseason. The Mustangs, who won the American Athletic Conference tournament last season before losing in the NCAA tournament’s first round, are presumed to be a top 25 team entering the season.
The violations stem from an administrative assistant for the basketball team doing all of the coursework for a class for one of the players and then attempting to cover it up. This marks the third time a Brown-coached program has been sanctioned by the NCAA, with the others happening at Kansas and UCLA. Still, there was a violation in our program and I take responsibility for that and offer my honest apologies to the University community.
A reduction of recruiting communications with prospects by 12.5 percent in the men’s basketball and golf programs during 2015-16 and a prohibition from communicating with prospects for a seven-week period in the spring of 2016.
SMU President Gerald Turner said he was disturbed by the penalties against student-athletes who had “no involvement whatsoever with any of the issues that resulted in violations”.
Head coach Larry Brown becomes the latest in a line of head coaches whose credibility will take a hit.
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“Upon learning of the misconduct in 2014, the head basketball coach did not report it to the compliance staff, conference office or enforcement staff for more than a month”, the report stated. The NCAA says Brown initially lied to investigators about his knowledge of the situation. When he coached UCLA and Kansas in the ’80s, both programs landed on NCAA probation. SMU appealed the ruling, but was shot down by the NCAA. We know that. But it’s certainly beginning to appear that whenever an SMU athletics program is on the verge of a national breakthrough, it’s also likely on the verge of NCAA sanctions.
