UCONN caught cheating in Men's Basketball

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/sports/ncaabasketball/26UConn.html?ref=sports

University of Connecticut men’s basketball coaches broke N.C.A.A. contact rules in the recruiting of Nate Miles, a former player, according to a report by Yahoo Sports on Wednesday. The article drew on cellphone records to detail contact among Miles, UConn coaches and a former student manager.

Yahoo cited multiple sources in establishing a relationship between Miles and Josh Nochimson, who became an agent after his years as a UConn student manager. By N.C.A.A. rules, Yahoo reported, Nochimson would be a representative of the college’s athletic interests. Therefore, providing Miles with lodging, transportation and meals, which the report alleges, might be a serious violation.

UConn released a statement on Wednesday addressing the allegations and promising to look into the report’s details.

“The N.C.A.A.’s Eligibility Center reviewed all information that it had concerning the student-athlete’s eligibility status and determined that he was eligible for his freshman year,” the statement said. “The student-athlete departed from the university before ever participating in athletics competition.”

The controversy surrounds Miles, a 6-foot-7 swingman from Toledo, Ohio, who signed with UConn in 2007 and was expelled as a freshman in 2008 when he violated a restraining order obtained against him by a female student. Miles never played a game for UConn and played this season at the College of Southern Idaho, a junior college.

N.C.A.A. rules limit contact to one phone call a month to recruits (or their family or associates) still in their junior year of high school, but Yahoo reported a stream of communications with Nochimson and significant phone calls and texts to Miles himself. Tom Moore, a former UConn assistant coach, was reported to have made 27 calls to Miles’s guardian and a man Miles called his uncle as well as three calls to Miles in December 2006 alone.