Miller once again does it again!

TJ

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So to be clear, your stance is every allegation against Arizona is fake, and yet they fired Book?

How many of the arrested coaches kept their job? Book was arrested on felony bribery. Of course he’s going to get fired. How dumb do you think UofA’s athletic department is?

Additional, when your school is dragged in the mud by a false report, you tend to be skeptical of the other allegations for good reason. Known crooks and frauds listing numbers doesn’t do anything for me and shouldn’t for you. Basically, it is now acceptable for me to call the LA Times and claim that Jaylen Hands received $100k and a car, and then the burden of proof would be on you to prove me wrong. That’s a dangerous precedent.
 

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Bill Self never seems to do anything wrong at Kansas. Perfectly clean program. Miller fighting on an unfair playing field and doesn’t complain. ESPN = Fake News
 

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Bill Self never seems to do anything wrong at Kansas. Perfectly clean program. Miller fighting on an unfair playing field and doesn’t complain. ESPN = Fake News

It is interesting to see Miller’s face on the headline of these ESPN articles. My guess is they know Schlabach was lied to and will get exposed as the trial concludes. ESPN will separate themselves from him but continue to paint Miller in a bad light to drown out the wiretap story. People will think “hey they were wrong but he’s dirty anyway so it’s not a big deal that some of the details were off”.

Meanwhile Arizona, Louisville and USC are continuing on like nothing has happened. I thought all 3 would be shut out on the recruiting trail for a while.
 

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How many of the arrested coaches kept their job? Book was arrested on felony bribery. Of course he’s going to get fired. How dumb do you think UofA’s athletic department is?

Additional, when your school is dragged in the mud by a false report, you tend to be skeptical of the other allegations for good reason. Known crooks and frauds listing numbers doesn’t do anything for me and shouldn’t for you. Basically, it is now acceptable for me to call the LA Times and claim that Jaylen Hands received $100k and a car, and then the burden of proof would be on you to prove me wrong. That’s a dangerous precedent.

That's nonsense TJ. Nobody is saying Arizona is this horribly dirty program in a sea of clean programs, but you seem to believe that they did absolutely nothing wrong. if the FBI had come out with a story that listed Jaylen Hands as player 12 who got money to go to UCLA, then yes I'd believe Jaylen got money. These kids GET PAID, we all know that. I fully expect it will come out at some point either some of the Compton Magic kids, or other kids UCLA got were paid too.

What you are trying to suggest is that when this cycle was going on Arizona was recruiting Sexton, Quinerly, Cherry, Little and Bowen, HEAVILY, 3 in that class 2 in the next class. At one point or another Arizona led decisively for 4 of those kids, and at one time they were 1 of 2 favorites for Cherry. From what the FBI has presented, they strongly believe all 5 of those kids took money. In the prior class they got Alkins, Simmons, and Terrance Ferguson, and nearly got Josh Jackson. We know Jackson got money, the FBI says Alkins got money. It was widely speculated the reason Ferguson went pro is he didn't think he was going to clear, in part because he got money. And when the FBI story first broke, before anybody had time to piece together which kids were involved, most Arizona fans were immediately guessing Simmons was one of the players because of the way his recruitment went down. That's at least 9 kids in 3 classes that virtually everyone believes got paid, and I'm not even listing Ayton who's a person of interest in the Gatto case and who Gershon and Scheer keep insisting was one of the players named in the FBI case as part of the Arizona part. 10 kids in 3 years who virtually everyone who follows college basketball believes got paid, all of them closely involved wtih Arizona. You had 2 coaches on your staff directly named in the FBI report, you had a 3rd who provided free plane tickets to a player on the team and then claimed he didn't know it was a violation, he thought if the kid repaid the money that made it ok. When one coach got a new job he was replaced with Romar, who's now being brought into this case because someone at UW arranged to pay Fultz' personal trainer, and btw at one point Arizona was considered the leader for Markelle Fultz.

These kids get paid, everyone knows it and every school, including UCLA, has had kids who got paid. I completely believe that. What I don't believe is that all these schools were as invested in that part of recruiting as others. I think Duke and UK are on another level getting kids steered to them by the Nike machine, using USA basketball etc. But I think it's incredibly difficult to believe that it's coincidence that ARizona was involved with that many kids in that short a timeframe who are now coming out as having been paid, and yet arizona is completely innocent of wrong doing.

Do you actually believe Book is innocent? if so, you need to read that newspaper story that used Freedom of Information Act to get access to his travel records and connected the dots to recruiting. You can literally track his trips to what the FBI said was going on. It matches up, it's a big reason I keep saying Randolph is one of the kids in the FBI story. Because they have documented proof that Book travelled to Yonkers NY to visit someone named "Brandon" during a recruiting dead period. Randolph is from Yonkers NY, at the time of the visit he was already committed to Arizona. and 2 weeks after that visit, the FBI on tape got Book and Dawkins discussing 2 kids with Arizona who Book claimed had agreed to work with him to be steered to Dawkins(and Sood).

I don't think Sean Miller is the antichrist or the dirtiest coach in history but he had 3 assistants on his staff and all 3 of them broke NCAA rules within a year. It's damn near impossible to believe he didn't know any of this stuff was happening.

Schlablach's story may be entirely false, no idea, but it in no way clears ARizona in the FBI story. They are not the same story.

The known crooks and fraud thing is ridiculous, who exactly do you expect to be involved in schemes to pay HS basketball players to attend certain schools and sign with agents? Do you expect that to be done by choirboys? there's a reason these kinds of stories always involve "bad guys", because good guys don't get involved in stuff like this.

I fully believe if the FBI looked into any of the top 50 or so schools they would have found something on all of them. It still infuriates me that nobody seems at all interested in pursuing how Nike funded Bagley's family in LA for 2 years and then funneled him off to Duke, but it is what it is, they have the evidence they have and unfortunately it makes it appear that damn near every kid in these classes that was looking for money, was involved with arizona.
 

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It is interesting to see Miller’s face on the headline of these ESPN articles. My guess is they know Schlabach was lied to and will get exposed as the trial concludes. ESPN will separate themselves from him but continue to paint Miller in a bad light to drown out the wiretap story. People will think “hey they were wrong but he’s dirty anyway so it’s not a big deal that some of the details were off”.

Meanwhile Arizona, Louisville and USC are continuing on like nothing has happened. I thought all 3 would be shut out on the recruiting trail for a while.

Currently they have the top 3 classes in the country.
 

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Bill Self never seems to do anything wrong at Kansas. Perfectly clean program. Miller fighting on an unfair playing field and doesn’t complain. ESPN = Fake News

The story directly names both Jackson and DeSousa, and Gatto says the price for Bowen went up because of the amount Preston got to play for Kansas. So of course Kansas has been accused here too.

So far if anybody might have a case for saying we were wrongfully accused, it appears to be Oregon since Bowen's dad insists he was never offered money by them or told by Dawkins they had offered money. That's the biggest question to come out of the Gatto case so far IMO, he's saying Oregon started the bidding war for Bowen but the guy who wanted the money, the dad, says they didn't.
 

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Currently they have the top 3 classes in the country.

As we’ve seen with Quinerly, Williams, Shareef and Ferguson it’s not official until they step on the court. I’ve heard the schools think the punishment could be vacated season rather than future punishment. Even without proof of kids/families getting paid the NCAA could make examples of the schools implicated. I could see the last season with the assistant coaches on staff being stripped and a scholly reduction. Given the way AZ, USC and Louisville are loading up they’d prefer a postseason ban this year rather than 2019-20. I think Louisville is already banned from this year’s postseason.
 

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As we’ve seen with Quinerly, Williams, Shareef and Ferguson it’s not official until they step on the court. I’ve heard the schools think the punishment could be vacated season rather than future punishment. Even without proof of kids/families getting paid the NCAA could make examples of the schools implicated. I could see the last season with the assistant coaches on staff being stripped and a scholly reduction. Given the way AZ, USC and Louisville are loading up they’d prefer a postseason ban this year rather than 2019-20. I think Louisville is already banned from this year’s postseason.


That's definitely the most likely scenario but again, Arizona took a risk playing kids they had reason to believe might be involved and thus ineligible so they could actually get a bit more punishment even in that scenario. I don't think anybody is going to get absolutely nailed, I just think it's going to take so long to get all the facts out that the NCAA will feel it's too late to hammer anybody. SC suspended Melton, Louisville never actually admitted Bowen into school etc, my guess is the NCAA will take that into consideration.
 

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That's nonsense TJ. Nobody is saying Arizona is this horribly dirty program in a sea of clean programs, but you seem to believe that they did absolutely nothing wrong. if the FBI had come out with a story that listed Jaylen Hands as player 12 who got money to go to UCLA, then yes I'd believe Jaylen got money. These kids GET PAID, we all know that. I fully expect it will come out at some point either some of the Compton Magic kids, or other kids UCLA got were paid too.

What you are trying to suggest is that when this cycle was going on Arizona was recruiting Sexton, Quinerly, Cherry, Little and Bowen, HEAVILY, 3 in that class 2 in the next class. At one point or another Arizona led decisively for 4 of those kids, and at one time they were 1 of 2 favorites for Cherry. From what the FBI has presented, they strongly believe all 5 of those kids took money. In the prior class they got Alkins, Simmons, and Terrance Ferguson, and nearly got Josh Jackson. We know Jackson got money, the FBI says Alkins got money. It was widely speculated the reason Ferguson went pro is he didn't think he was going to clear, in part because he got money. And when the FBI story first broke, before anybody had time to piece together which kids were involved, most Arizona fans were immediately guessing Simmons was one of the players because of the way his recruitment went down. That's at least 9 kids in 3 classes that virtually everyone believes got paid, and I'm not even listing Ayton who's a person of interest in the Gatto case and who Gershon and Scheer keep insisting was one of the players named in the FBI case as part of the Arizona part. 10 kids in 3 years who virtually everyone who follows college basketball believes got paid, all of them closely involved wtih Arizona. You had 2 coaches on your staff directly named in the FBI report, you had a 3rd who provided free plane tickets to a player on the team and then claimed he didn't know it was a violation, he thought if the kid repaid the money that made it ok. When one coach got a new job he was replaced with Romar, who's now being brought into this case because someone at UW arranged to pay Fultz' personal trainer, and btw at one point Arizona was considered the leader for Markelle Fultz.

These kids get paid, everyone knows it and every school, including UCLA, has had kids who got paid. I completely believe that. What I don't believe is that all these schools were as invested in that part of recruiting as others. I think Duke and UK are on another level getting kids steered to them by the Nike machine, using USA basketball etc. But I think it's incredibly difficult to believe that it's coincidence that ARizona was involved with that many kids in that short a timeframe who are now coming out as having been paid, and yet arizona is completely innocent of wrong doing.

Do you actually believe Book is innocent? if so, you need to read that newspaper story that used Freedom of Information Act to get access to his travel records and connected the dots to recruiting. You can literally track his trips to what the FBI said was going on. It matches up, it's a big reason I keep saying Randolph is one of the kids in the FBI story. Because they have documented proof that Book travelled to Yonkers NY to visit someone named "Brandon" during a recruiting dead period. Randolph is from Yonkers NY, at the time of the visit he was already committed to Arizona. and 2 weeks after that visit, the FBI on tape got Book and Dawkins discussing 2 kids with Arizona who Book claimed had agreed to work with him to be steered to Dawkins(and Sood).

I don't think Sean Miller is the antichrist or the dirtiest coach in history but he had 3 assistants on his staff and all 3 of them broke NCAA rules within a year. It's damn near impossible to believe he didn't know any of this stuff was happening.

Schlablach's story may be entirely false, no idea, but it in no way clears ARizona in the FBI story. They are not the same story.

The known crooks and fraud thing is ridiculous, who exactly do you expect to be involved in schemes to pay HS basketball players to attend certain schools and sign with agents? Do you expect that to be done by choirboys? there's a reason these kinds of stories always involve "bad guys", because good guys don't get involved in stuff like this.

I fully believe if the FBI looked into any of the top 50 or so schools they would have found something on all of them. It still infuriates me that nobody seems at all interested in pursuing how Nike funded Bagley's family in LA for 2 years and then funneled him off to Duke, but it is what it is, they have the evidence they have and unfortunately it makes it appear that damn near every kid in these classes that was looking for money, was involved with arizona.

Pretty much everyone, educated and uneducated, is saying what I bolded. This fiasco has stigmatized our program probably worse than anyone else, save for Louisville (and that's debatable if you include the Schlabach piece).

Look, I genuinely have no idea what to believe anymore. There's been too much information and misinformation to form a conclusion one way or the other. Would it surprise me if they offered a recruit money? Probably not. At the same time, however, Arizona has been an attractive option for top-tier recruits for decades, including today; and I highly doubt that if Arizona were engaging in inappropriate recruiting tactics, that it would continue to do so at this point.
 
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Russ Smith

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Pretty much everyone, educated and uneducated, is saying what I bolded. This fiasco has stigmatized our program probably worse than anyone else, save for Louisville (and that's debatable if you include the Schlabach piece).

Look, I genuinely have no idea what to believe anymore. There's been too much information and misinformation to form a conclusion one way or the other. Would it surprise me if they offered a recruit money? Probably not. At the same time, however, Arizona has been an attractive option for top-tier recruits for decades, including today; and I highly doubt that if Arizona were engaging in inappropriate recruiting tactics, that it would continue to do so at this point.


Oh I don't think Miller is cheating now, he'd be insane if he was, but you can't be involved with 13 kids like that, and have all 3 guys on your staff get caught breaking rules, and be a complete control freak, and not know what was going on.

Josh and Evan posted on BRO well over a year before the FBI story happened what they see going on with kids. I think we were talking about Zimmerman at the time, don't recall for sure. The scenario they spelled out was almost exactly the same as what the FBI exposed, the only difference was assistant coaches level of involvement.

I think Miller had completely changed his recruiting focus from So Cal and West Coast to national, he was pursuing more elite kids, and it evolved into going after kids that frankly dropped him right in the middle of the FBI story, or his program. Josh and EVan made it very clear, coaches know what's happening but there's built in layers of insulation to create plausible deniability, it's by design.

I don't think anybody should go to jail, and it's up to Arizona to decide if they're going to fire Miller or not. If the ESPN story has any shred of truth, that is if Ayton got paid, they should fire Miller because it would mean he lied to them.

I've made the exact same comment on Alford btw, he guaranteed he has not broken any NCAA recruiting rules at UCLA and they have no involvement with this scheme. If that turns out to not be true, he should be fired. He should already be fired for performance IMO but if Etop was getting paid to steer kids to UCLA or something like that, eh needs to be fired because he lied about it.

There's just no way I can buy that many kids Miller were involved with were involved in this FBI story or something like it, and yet ARizona was not paying anybody. I don't see people saying Arizona is the only dirty program, even on BRO right now on multiple threads nobody is saying you guys cheat, we don't, they're just saying we'd be surprised if UCLA had anywhere near as many kids involved as Arizona did. I think Arizona got caught because they were dealing with a guy in Dawkins who was completely careless, and I think that goes back to Miller giving Book another chance, because he got players, and getting burned for it.
 

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:grabs:


So far the best stuff today is that Bowen Sr is apparently under oath contradicting statements he made under oath before. He's saying he doesn't recall an offer from Oregon, doesn't recall payments from an Oregon assistant, doesn't recall talking to Lamont Evans, and doesn't recall an AAU assistant(now at DePaul) relaying an alleged offer to have his son play for UCLA.

On the Oregon and Texas ones he said he didn't recall it which directly contradicts statements he gave to the FBI before. When they showed him those statements to remind him, he said he still didn't recall it. Not sure how you get out of that he either lied the first time or is lying now.

First time UCLA has come up.
 

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Bowen couldn't recall a number of things. Not exactly the bombshell Vitale embellished it to be.

Yawn.
 

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I think Louisville gets hit harder than any school implicated because of track record, but the death penalty? I doubt it. If Penn State, Baylor, and Michigan State aren't getting the death penalty, no one else should.

They certainly shouldn’t get punished over an assistant handing the dad $1300. Unless something more comes out this has been pretty underwhelming. Book’s trial starts next year and unless he admits he gave a kid or their family cash I’m not sure what they can do to Miller. Quinerly and Little were both investigated and are set to play.
 

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Bowen couldn't recall a number of things. Not exactly the bombshell Vitale embellished it to be.

Yawn.

Well he apparently contradicted statements he'd given to the FBI earlier because they kept showing him prior statements to jog his memory and he still said no I don't recall.

Kind of odd, maybe he doesn't realize his immunity deal(from food stamp fraud and apparently 3 years of not filing taxes) will go away if he doesn't cooperate.
 

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They certainly shouldn’t get punished over an assistant handing the dad $1300. Unless something more comes out this has been pretty underwhelming. Book’s trial starts next year and unless he admits he gave a kid or their family cash I’m not sure what they can do to Miller. Quinerly and Little were both investigated and are set to play.


I'm against the DP too but remember this alleged payment was just 2 months after Louisville got hammered on the prostitution for recruits deal. They were essentially on major NCAA probation at the time Johnson did this. And as the article said, if true he says we don't need to pay kids, and then 2 months later agrees to pay him, does pay him, and while implying it's a one time thing, Dawkins has already told him he'll be getting 2K a month from Johnson. If all of that is actually true you can make the argument that Louisville just 2 months later is back to business as usual paying kids and violating rules and completely ignoring their probation.

Still I think the right decision is more probation, more limits on visits and scholarships, not death penalty since that impacts the current staff and players not the ones who cheated.
 

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As I suspected Ayton was implicated today but if you read what Wetzel is saying I don't think it's actually implicating Arizona and Nike. TJ Gassnola, an Adidas employee, testified that he paid multiple players including Bowen, DeSousa, Smith Jr, Preston and DeAndre Ayton. The Wetzel tweet lists their colleges so it says Ayton(Arizona) but remember Gassnola works for Adidas. It says that he claims to have met with Self directly and told him we're here to help you, which of course doesn't mean I'm going to pay kids to come to Kansas, but the implication is Gassnola is talking about kids he was paying on behalf of Adidas. It makes no sense for him to be paying Ayton for Adidas to go to Arizona, and we all know for ages Kansas was the perceived leader for Ayton, so the logical conclusion is Gassnola was paying Ayton trying to steer him to Kansas.

If true it does create a dilemma for Ayton because it would mean he directly lied to the FBI when he told them, under oath, he never took money. When the Ayton ESPN story first broke his family issued a statement saying he'd directly told the FBI 6 months earlier he never discussed or took payments to go to Arizona. He later doubled down on that saying he'd never discussed or took payments from anybody else either, neither schools or shoe companies, and had told the FBI that under oath.

I don't think at this point anybody is going to do anything to Ayton, he's already in the NBA, I seriously doubt the FBI is going to come after him for lying to them if he did in fact take money from Gassnola, but it does now explain why he was listed as a person of interest in this particular trial that didn't involve Nike at all.
 

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Strange situation.

Was the payment for him to go to Kansas? AAU? Certainly wasn’t to go to Arizona. Now, I could easily see Arizona get dinged for playing an ineligible player, if this is corroborated.
 

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Strange situation.

Was the payment for him to go to Kansas? AAU? Certainly wasn’t to go to Arizona. Now, I could easily see Arizona get dinged for playing an ineligible player, if this is corroborated.

Right if he got money then he should never have been cleared. And of course the obvious argument to make here is do we really believe that Little, Bowen and Ayton were all being paid or offered to be paid by Adidas to go somewhere, and yet all 3 were going to choose to go to Arizona instead, for free? Occams Razor suggests if Adidas was really paying these kids, and they chose someone else, they probably got offered the same or more from that school as well.

But of course that's conjecture not proof. And so far at least I'm not aware of Gassnola saying we were paying him to go to Kansas but Nike paid him to go to Arizona instead.

But it certainly could mean Ayton was ineligible, it already appears Alkins was, and from the Yahoo story awhile back it appears Lauri was probably ineligible too so you can argue if the NCAA really wants to go that route they could vacate 2 full years for Arizona.
 

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why in the world do they put even Gassnola said they tried to keep it quiet? Of course they did, nobody advertises these payments to kids if they did the kids would all be ruled ineligible and the shoe companies are all public companies creating phony invoices to explain away the money they're paying.

I assume that was Scheer that wrote that?
 

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why in the world do they put even Gassnola said they tried to keep it quiet? Of course they did, nobody advertises these payments to kids if they did the kids would all be ruled ineligible and the shoe companies are all public companies creating phony invoices to explain away the money they're paying.

I assume that was Scheer that wrote that?

He's a prosecution witness combating the defense's claim that the schools were in on it. He said that they kept it secret from the schools.
 

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Adidas must have been PO’d when Ayton didn’t choose Kansas. I guess we have to pretend Ayton never played for Arizona just like Reggie Bush never played for USC.
 

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