More names and more players linked to David Salinas

(UPDATE:Pablo Torre's profile of Salinas for Sport's Illustrated can be found here. It doesn't provide much new information in the scandal, but its a terrific read.)

The saga of Houston Select founder and investment advisor David Salinas has taken another turn.

SI.com's Pablo Torre has done some more terrific investigative work and lengthened the list of people known to have money invested with Salinas. There are some new names on the list -- which can be found in its entirety here -- which includes former Baylor forward Ekpe Udoh ($350,000), former Select and Kansas State player Cartier Martin ($374,000), former Oklahoma State and Rice forward Jason Skaer ($129,000), Illinois State head coach Tim Jankovich ($184,000), current Evansville and former Kansas State assistant coach James Eglas ($24,000), and current Creighton and former SMU assistant coach Steve Lutz ($9,000).

I think its safe to assume that there are still more names with ties to college basketball that will come out eventually. Along those same lines, its probably pretty safe to assume that there were many more people outside of the world of college hoops that had money invested with Salinas.

But in no way, shape, or form does that prove that Salinas wasn't offering up the players from his AAU program in exchange for investment. It also doesn't change the theory that some -- or all -- of these coaches were investing money with Salinas in order to gain access to those players.

Remember, the Houston Chronicle quoted an anonymous coach that said Salinas was offering access to his players in exchange for an investment. Dan Wolken of The Daily got Tom Penders, formerly the head coach of Houston among other programs, on record as saying that Salinas "made a strong, strong implication" that investing with him would help him recruit kids in the Houston Select program. And finally, Jawann McClellan, who played for the Houston Select and then at Arizona for Salinas investor Lute Olson, was quoted by AZCentral.com as saying he's "pretty sure" coaches invested Salinas in order to gain favor with him from a recruiting perspective.

No one is arguing that Salinas wasn't an financial advisor. No one is saying that he didn't have clients outside of college coaches.

But whether or not he had other investors is irrelevant, because the fact of the matter is that there are now 14 confirmed players that were part of the Houston Select program that have played for a coach in college that invested with Salinas.


Did the coaches that invested with Salinas do so in an attempt to gain a recruiting advantage?

It sure looks that way, doesn't it?

(Major h/t to Will Green of The Slipper Still Fits for the chart)