Iowa State player ruled ineligible

[tornado]

Here is that link

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/SPORTS0208/712040390/-1/SPORTS09

But then, this fits right in with a number of things I have said for years about Greg McDermott, and his recruiting of kids he had never seen play ball, and kids from Europe who he had never seen play in a game.
I think he has been careless and tied up scholarships on numerous kids who either never played - never panned out, were deemed ineligible, or quit the teams such as Polakovic, Raffington, Anthony Davis, and even guys like Dunham, Brister, and Staiger.....who either just weren't ready or who ended up sitting a year.

[tornado]

Lucca Staiger was granted an opportunity to appeal his case, and actually had his hearing already, and
word is they are expecting a decision in the next day or two. I wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA sticks to its guns,
but they might reduce his penalty or award him back the lost year even if he has to wait 'til next season to play.

Either way....the fact that Staiger was granted an appeal hearing so soon, is a little of a good sign.
Normally nothing in the NCAA works very fast or efficiently, unless it has to do with coming down on BU with penalties!

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071218/SPORTS020604/71218048

[tornado]

NOPE---

the NCAA's final ruling is that they deny Staiger's appeal.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071222/SPORTS020604/71222006

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071223/SPORTS020604/712230355/-1/LIFE04

This writer thinks if Staiger shouldn't play then Kelvin Samson should be banned..
and I agree!!!!!

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071223/SPORTS05/712230353/-1/NEWS04

[Da Coach]

That last article has an interesting line at the end--

It's enough to make you wonder if Brand, the NCAA's president, and the rest of his posse secretly delight in the misery of others. There's a word in German for that: schadenfreude. There's a term in English, too. Humbug.

[FarmerClone]

NOPE---

the NCAA's final ruling is that they deny Staiger's appeal.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071222/SPORTS020604/71222006

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071223/SPORTS020604/712230355/-1/LIFE04

This writer thinks if Staiger shouldn't play then Kelvin Samson should be banned..
and I agree!!!!!
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/app...0353/-1/NEWS04

The NCAA completed their witch hunt with the final denial of the appeal. Yet their inconsistency in enforcing this rule is laughable and wreckless. For example, Baylor center Mamadou Diene spent last summer playing basketball in a professional league in Spain and was third in the league in blocked shots yet he is playing for Baylor with no penalty.

Texas freshman Dougas Balbay played in a professional league in Turkey and has received no penalty.

Every member of the AIS (the Australian Institute of Sports) signed a contract to play for said team in the second tier of professional basketball in Australia. While the contract they signed did not include any money, NCAA rules state that a player cannot sign any contract, whether for pay or not, to play for anyone and still remain an amateur. AIS players are all over the country including Aaron Bruce (Baylor), Alecs Maric (Nebraska), Andrew Ogilivy (Vandy), Patrick Mills (St Marys), and others. Yet no penalty has been waged on any of said players. The NCAA used Lucca as an example but is turning a blind eye to many, many more cases very similar. At some point, members of the NCAA need to say enough is enough. But so long as the USC's and Ohio State's of the world are getting their backs scratched, it is unlikely that any of the smaller schools will be able to make enough fuss to make a difference.

[tornado]

I have been saying for a couple years that the tremendous influx of Euro and African players WILL force the NCAA to revise and standardize their rulings.
Almost every D-I team has one or more foreign players (we have had Saihou Jassey and a couple Canadian kids), so just how sure can the NCAA be that accurate academic records and records of playing for pay are being seen in order to deem the kids eligible?
The story of Mac Koshwal is just one funny example of how some of these kids clearly falsify documents and lie about their age and their schooling.
The examples Farmer Clone gives also shows how inconsistent the anti-pro rules are enforced.
But if a questionable kid just happened to end up at UNC, UConn, etc....then watch how fast they get qualified!!!!!

Here's one kid who lied about his age and did everything to hide his academic background and overseas playing experience.
But he wanted to play at UConn and is 7-3 -- so presto---------eligible!!

http://media.www.dailycampus.com/media/storage/paper340/news/2006/10/26/Sports/Thabeet.Declared.Eligible-2404178.shtml

[tornado]

Question for PTTB

I have a question...
what ever happened to Everette Pedescleaux?

http://unipanthers.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/pedescleaux_everette00.html

http://unipanthers.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/pedescleaux_everette00.html

He was highly touted coming out of HS as both a football and basketball player. He accepted a basketball scholarship to UNI but then chenged his mind when a football scholarship came along from Minnesota.
Then he left Minn., transferred to UNI and was on FB scholarship, but still walked on for basketball, although appears to have never even played one minute, not even in an exhibition.

This season (now his junior year eligibility-wise) he isn't listed at all on the basketball roster, but is still listed on the FB roster,
and seems to be playing defensive tackle and getting some decent playing time.
I assume he is done playing basketball?

[tornado]

Another recent NCAA ruling of interest is on Mario Stula.
Stula was from Decatur Christian and went to DePaul. His penalty from NCAA is even worse than Lucca Staiger's

Stula is ruled ineligible for an entire season plus seven games, so he will sit out this entire season and still not be eligible until the 8th game next season, due to his play on teams in europe that used pro players.

http://depaul.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=775022

[FarmerClone]

Another recent NCAA ruling of interest is on Mario Stula.
Stula was from Decatur Christian and went to DePaul. His penalty from NCAA is even worse than Lucca Staiger's

Stula is ruled ineligible for an entire season plus seven games, so he will sit out this entire season and still not be eligible until the 8th game next season, due to his play on teams in europe that used pro players.
http://depaul.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=775022

And Texas's Dougas Balbay that I mentioned was recently handed down an "approximately" ten game suspension for next year due to playing for a pro team. Now will the NCAA crack down on the AIS athletes like Ogilvy at Vandy, Pat Mills at St Marys, Aaron Bruce at Baylor or Alecs Maric at Nebraska? They should all face large penalties as well.

[Decatur]

It is a really silly rule, and they are doing a mediocre at best job enforcing it.

These second and third tier foreign semi-professional teams that pay a couple of guys (the ones not expecting to go to America and play ball) are not even close to the talent level of the top AAU programs in America that often times have multiple future NBA players on them. Beyond that these players are forced to play for these teams if they want to be seen by American scouts and have a chance to play over seas. It is a double edged sword. If they stay off the teams, they have no chance at being seen. If they join the teams, they have to throw away a year of their basketball career.

Beyond that, the penalty for playing on one of these teams was not as severe (20% of 1 year maximum) at the time Lucca actually played for that team in Germany. 20% of a year is a penalty someone could live with (although I think that is even uncalled for with all things considered). It seems to me as if the NCAA should have put word out about the rule change several years before they started enforcing it so that players were aware of the penalty of playing on one of these teams.

Beyond that, the timing was terrible. The NCAA didn't announce Lucca's ineligibilty until a week or two prior to the first game. He was all set to be a member of the starting lineup, and the NCAA just threw this at him a week before the season. That is just a terrible thing to do to a kid.



And lastly, although you guys have already hit on this, the NCAA needs to enforce their rules consistantly. Every foreign player in the country played on one of these teams. If you go after Lucca, you have to investigate all of them, and you have to give them all the same punishment... Of course it is OK for Darren McFadden to accept a loaded SUV and still play in a bowl game while Lucca did everything exactly as he was told to get to play college basketball in America (never accepting money... turning down the major money to play professionally at a high level) and he has to miss out on an entire year.

It really is unfortunate.

Stula too. They don't deserve it.

[tornado]

Decatur.....as far back as Ewe Blab, there have been European kids coming to the US to play ball in hopes of making a career of it, but back then, Ewe came well before he finished high school, he obviously had good credentials and age documentation, as he had to satisfy even the strict IHSA requirements, and he also played a lot of regular high school ball qualifying the "old fashioned way" by coming through a well established foreign exchange program, graduating a regular high school, and getting good test scores.

So is this what the Euro kids are going to have to do?

By the way, we have also discussed Vince Polakovic who actually played two years of college ball before the NCAA caught up with him and deemed him ineligible, and Germaine Raffington, both of whom were also Greg McDermott recruits like Lucca.

One last question...
there has been recent talk of getting up to FIVE NBA teams started up in Europe.

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=6964

Will this help those European kids, as they might have a little better shot at getting seen since the continent will have a whole lot more NBA-type people and scouts.

[FarmerClone]

The pace at which the NCAA is reviewing these cases is ludicrous. A member of the Cyclone Report cite noted back when Lucca was suspended that he did a simple internet search of some foreign born NCAA freshman can came up with several instances where the players were members of similar teams like Lucca. One of them was Dougas Balbay, who has not been playing this year due to injury, but would have been playing up until the NCAA decided a week ago that he would have to sit games. How on earth can a Cyclone fan use Google and find these players months before the NCAA? And why on earth is the NCAA cracking down on kids that were not paid but played on a team where people were paid extremely small amounts instead of cracking down on things like blatant abuses of rules like USC football players getting perks, etc? It is ridiculous and retarded. I understand the concept behind the rule, but shouldn't it also be required that a player have knowingly and maliciously intended to break the rule? Lucca technically did something illegal, but I have no idea how on earth he was supposed to know that his teammates were being paid when he was not.

[Decatur]

Decatur.....as far back as Ewe Blab, there have been European kids coming to the US to play ball in hopes of making a career of it, but back then, Ewe came well before he finished high school, he obviously had good credentials and age documentation, as he had to satisfy even the strict IHSA requirements, and he also played a lot of regular high school ball qualifying the "old fashioned way" by coming through a well established foreign exchange program, graduating a regular high school, and getting good test scores.

So is this what the Euro kids are going to have to do?

By the way, we have also discussed Vince Polakovic who actually played two years of college ball before the NCAA caught up with him and deemed him ineligible, and Germaine Raffington, both of whom were also Greg McDermott recruits like Lucca.

One last question...
there has been recent talk of getting up to FIVE NBA teams started up in Europe.

http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=6964

Will this help those European kids, as they might have a little better shot at getting seen since the continent will have a whole lot more NBA-type people and scouts.

I suppose they will start having to do it that way, but the bottom line is that the max penalty at the time Lucca played for that team was 20% of one season. Had he known the consequences of playing for such a team, he probably would have done something differently. The NCAA needed to forward the new consequences to European coaches 2 or 3 years prior to the penalty change so that these players would be aware that they'd have to sit out an entire year if any player on their team recieved money.

I can't remember the name for it, but here in America it is illegal to punish someone for a crime that wasn't illegal at the time they commited it. You can't make jay-walking illegal on Thursday, and write up Jimmy for Jay-walking on Wednesday.


5 NBA teams in Europe seems like it would be awfully hard on the players having to travel to those European games. I suppose we'll see if it actually happens, but it seems unlikely to me in the near future. And yeah, I'm sure that would help with future cases like Lucca's and Mario's, but that still doesn't change the fact that the two of them got screwed.