Yahoo! Sports digs up UConn’s dirt

Despite having the national championship tournament down to the sweet 16, the college sports world has been negatively impacted this week by a Yahoo! Sports report detailing major recruiting violations by the University of Connecticut.

After a six-month investigation by Yahoo! Sports, Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel reported that UConn’s recruitment of former guard Nate Miles grossly violated the NCAA’s rules. According to the report, Miles and professional sports agent and former UConn student manager Josh Nochimson were involved in an illegal relationship.

Nochimson reportedly provided lodging, transportation, meals and representation to Miles and despite UConn being aware of the situation and took no action. Connecticut’s basketball staff was involved in discussions with Nochimson throughout Miles’ recruitment and exchanged 1,565 text messages and phone calls with the agent.

Yahoo! obtained call and text records from UConn Assistant Coach Tom Moore involving both Miles and Nochimson. While Yahoo! did expose a potential NCAA rules violation, and if the report is entirely accurate, UConn needs to clean up its act. However, with sports agents becoming more involved in athletes’ lives, all institutions need to make sure they are not engaging in similar acts. Recruiting violations are serious. The age and inexperience of the athletes and confusing nature of the period they are at in their lives is not something for agents and institutions to tamper with. While the NCAA has contacted UConn about the report, the NCAA needs to send a message to all of its institutions and get more involved to make sure these violations are reduced and eventually eliminated.

Tourney time!

No, not the big one, but the Division-III tournament starts today and I am thrilled. While there won’t be the hype and national coverage of these smaller schools, there will be plenty of action. Here are some thoughts on the men’s bracket.

This is an interesting bracket, with some serious strengths in the Western brackets. The John Carroll bracket has a ton of schools in the top-25 in No. 10 John Carroll, No. 13 Capital, No. 17 Trinity, No. 22 Texas-Dallas, No. 23 Guilford and No. 24 Transylvania.

The St. Thomas bracket is a wild one. I expect to see No. 1 St. Thomas and No. 3 Wheaton battle it out and finals of this one, but any of the UW teams or No. 7 Puget Sound could pull an upset.

The Middlebury bracket could provide some interesting headlines. No. 9 Middlebury vs. No. 6 Richard Stockton seems like the most obvious match up for the final in this one but there is a lot of buzz around MIT in its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance.

The Ithaca bracket is full of potential Cinderellas. Brandeis is expected to make a run and UMass-Dartmouth and Worcester Polytechnic Institute could make some noise as well. Also, look for Rochester Institute of Technology and center Mark Carson to show up to play after taking the Empire 8 championship. I see Ithaca taking this one. As long as the Bombers shots are falling and they bear down on the boards, they should come out on top.

As far who will be leaving Salem, Va. as a champion is a toss up. Wheaton looks real strong and St. Thomas is undefeated. I believe this will the final match up in the D-III showdown.

Women’s preview to come.