Maybe we now have a little insight to the Binghamton situation

Binghamton didn't exactly have the greatest off-season.

No, no, they didn't. It was actually about as bad as you could imagine.

Six players were kicked off the team for a variety of reasons. Tiki Mayben was arrested for selling crack. Maalik Alvins was arrested for stealing a box of condoms and knocking over an old lad as he was trying to get away. Corey Chandler was kicked out of two schools in two months. DJ Rivera, David Fine, and Paul Crosby also were all dismissed. It resulted in head coach Kevin Broadus getting the boot.

And this is just a year removed from Milidan Kovacevic putting a BU student in a coma before fleeing back to his native Serbia.

Not exactly what you would call a squeaky clean program.

Which makes new head coach Mark Macon's comments seem a little ill-timed.

After a loss to league rival, Macon had the following to say (video after the jump):

We were never trying to sneak up on anybody anyway. Why? We want people to know we’re coming. When I knock on your door, I want you to know who it is. If you don’t, I might steal something. We’re not trying to surprise anybody. Like I said, if I knock on your door and you ain’t there, it’s your fault your TV got stolen, not mine.

Clearly (hopefully?) Macon made these comments in jest, and, to be completely honest, I thought they were hilarious. I know it is a new regime, and I know that the program has made an attempt to get rid of the bad apples, but given what the program went through this fall and given what the program's image looks like (Phil Mushnick went as far as to call them UNLV East) to the outside observer, maybe now is not the best time to make jokes regarding breaking and entering.
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Binghamton coach Kevin Broadus placed on leave

Who saw this coming?

Kevin Broadus has been placed on a paid leave of absence by Binghamton University.

Without getting into the details (did he have to?), interim athletic director said that the punishment was being handed down as a result of "continuing incidents of concern" that fail to meet the "university’s high standards."

Assistant Mack Macon will serve as the interim head coach.

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Kevin Broadus commits violation, gets suspended from off-campus recruiting

Things have gone from bad to worse to an utter and complete disaster at Binghamton.

Two weeks ago, Emanuel "Tiki" Mayben was kicked off the team after being arrested for selling crack. That prompted the school to toss five more players, including DJ Rivera, the best player in the America East, off the team as well. The University then began to clean house, first firing a professor that had worked there for 11 years, and then losing AD Joel Thirer, who resigned from his post. All of this turmoil has led to an independent investigation into the Binghamton athletics program, which is headed up by retired NYC Chief Judge Judith Kaye.

It wasn't all that long ago that Kevin Broadus cut down the nets during a Final Four run as an assistant at Georgetown.
(photo credit: daylife)

You would think that given all the hoopla surrounding his program, Broadus would want to do all he could to avoid anymore negative publicity. He already barely avoided an NCAA violation after canceling campus wide tryouts for the team last week.

But Broadus wasn't done.

You see, the contact period, the 27 days during the fall where coaches are allowed face-to-face contact with recruits, ended on Monday, October 5th. Tuesday the 6th marked the first day of the evaluation period, where coaches are allowed to watch and, well, evaluate the kids they are recruiting. But in-person contact with those recruits is not allowed until after the evaluation period ends March 31st.

NCAA rules apparently don't bother Broadus. On Tuesday, while watching two recruits - Marcus Glenn and Antoine Myers - at Notre Dame Prep in Massachusetts, Broadus was seen with an assistant walking the two players up a hallway. The recruits were seen returning to the gym with business cards. The two recruits later confirmed that Broadus had spoken to them, blatantly violating NCAA rules.

On Friday, the school self-reported a secondary violation to the NCAA and on Saturday they banned Broadus and his assistants from recruiting off-campus.

Yup, things are really bad up in Binghamton. The Bearcats have just seven scholarship players on the roster, their leading returning scorer averaged under 5 ppg last season, and they cannot recruit off-campus because their head coach was just busted for an NCAA violation while the school's athletics program is under an external investigation.

Former Boston University head coach Dennis Wolff went as far as to say that "It's conceivable (Binghamton) could not win a game" to the Albany Times-Union.

The question now becomes how long will Kevin Broadus be allowed to keep his job, because he sure isn't acting like he wants it.

The answer is trickier than you think because Broadus signed a contract extension this summer. He is owed over $1 million for the next five seasons, which is a lot of money for a school with a $10.4 million athletics budget.
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Is anyone else sick of hearing about Binghamton?

First, Emanuel Mayben was kicked out of school. Then, five more of his teammates got the boot. And yesterday, news came out that the Binghamton Zoo was offended by the comments made by AD Joel Thirer referring to the basketball team as a "zoo".

And now, it seems as if the university is not yet done cleaning house.

Sally Dear, an adjunct lecturer who has taught Human Development at the school for 11 years, was fired Tuesday. The school says she was let go due to “uncertain fiscal environment” and “strategic reprioritization of resources across the university.”

As you might imagine, Dear disagrees. From The Quad:

"I'm being fired for being ethical," Dear said. "I have no doubt about that whatsoever."

Seven Binghamton men's basketball players majored in human development last year, and Dear said she believed some of them received preferential treatment.

"They know that people have been covering up for the athletes and not holding them to the same standard for other students," Dear said. "They know that athletes who are not passing classes have been given independent studies to carry them through.

Not making sense to you?

Take a look at this article by Pete Thamel of the NYT from back in February in which Dear provided some pretty inflammatory accusations:

Sally Dear, an adjunct lecturer at Binghamton, said that her experience last semester with three men's basketball players in her Human Development 304 class had frustrated her to tears. They were a continual nuisance, she said, missing classes and appointments, or arriving late and leaving early. Dear, who has a strict attendance policy, also said Broadus once showed up to check that the players were in class, something that had never happened in her 10 years of teaching.

Dear said she stopped teaching numerous times because of their disruptive behavior. When she caught one player text-messaging during class, she recalled, he said he was receiving a message from his coach.

"All I know is the aptitude and the attitude that are displayed in the classroom," Dear said. "I would have preferred to see a more academically prepared and serious student."

Dear would not reveal the players' names or grades, citing privacy rules. Under Dear's policy, students are dropped a full grade after three absences. After the players missed three of her classes, Ed Scott, the associate athletic director for student services, questioned her right to drop their grades.

Dear was unhappy that their playing schedule had not been made available to her at the start of the semester so they could plan for the absences.

"I felt pressure to cut them breaks that weren't available to other students," she said, adding that Scott sent e-mail messages and called relentlessly to question her grading policy.

"That was uncomfortable and inappropriate," she said. "My expectations were called into question, and I was being essentially asked to bend the rules or overlook them or not apply things equally."

That's not the end of it. Binghamton AD Joel Thirer resigned today. As Pat Forde tweeted, maybe Thamel should help Thirer pack up the things in his office.

Players putting students into comas and selling coke, AD's resigning, ex-professors lashing out at the school, and zookeepers writing letters to the press trashing the university? And this is supposed to be the cream of the SUNY system?

Could head coach Kevin Broadus be next?

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Binghamton Zoo offended by comparison

Clearly, Binghamton AD Joel Thirer has been a bit stressed by the current situation involving his men's basketball team.

When you are the AD of a school with absolutely no basketball tradition, I'm sure it is difficult when you see your basketball team implode just six shorts months after their first trip to the NCAA's.

An hour before the announcement that the five more members of the basketball team would be getting thrown off, Thirer had this to say when asked about who he would blame (from PressConnects.com):

Truthfully, if I'm the president? Who's running the zoo? I'd start with me.

Now, if I were to tell you that Thirer has received some critical backlash for this quote, who do you think it would be from?

I bet the actual Binghamton Zoo would be pretty far down that list. This is an actual email sent by the Business Manager of the Zoo (first seen at The Dagger via The Quad):

I am tired of hearing that blight on Binghamton University, the men's basketball team, being referred to as a "zoo." The Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park has just received re-accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the industry's governing authority. We achieved this status by being in the top 10 percent of all the zoos in the country.

Our animal care, safety, employees and educational and service standards are set high and met accordingly. Not one of our tigers has been arrested with cocaine. No otter knocks over old ladies to shoplift condoms. Our bear doesn't have temper tantrums and storm off his exhibit. You won't find any of our lemurs busted for smoking pot. So, please, stop insulting zoos by comparing those criminals to us.

Amanda J. Padwa

Business Manager

Binghamton Zoo

Wow.

...

That second paragraph was vicious.

The most ironic part about all of this? The Binghamton student section is known as the BU Zoo.

I wonder if they were offended as well?
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Can Binghamton even field a team now?

Yesterday, we wrote about how Binghamton's basketball program had been dubbed "UNLV East" by Phil Mushnick of the NY Post.

In the post, we asked the question "So what's next for the Bearcats?"

Today, we got the answer.

Binghamton kicked five more players off the basketball team - DJ Rivera, Corey Chandler, Malik Alvins, Paul Crosby, and David Fine. According to the school's associate athletic director John Hartrick, they were dismissed because “they are not toeing the line. Their attitude and behavior … is not what we expect from our student-athletes.”

DJ Rivera and Malik Alvins were two of the five players kicked off the Binghamton team.
(photo credit: Binghamton Athletics)

These aren't just walk-ons that are getting the boot either. Rivera, who averaged 20.2 ppg after transferring to BU from St. Joe's (where he was academically ineligible), would have been the league's player of the year if he hadn't been blackballed by the America East coaches. Alvin was a starter that averaged 11.5 ppg and 3.7 apg. Chandler was a top 100 recruit coming out of high school who averaged 11.5 ppg as a freshman at Rutgers (he was dismissed from Rutgers in August, notice a theme here?). Those three, combined with Tiki Mayben (who was arrested on Thursday, sparking this whole controversy), would have formed one of the best back courts in the east.

If you include Milidan Kovacevic, the 6'9" Serb that fled the country after putting a BU student into a coma last summer, Binghamton has dismissed seven players from the team in just over a year. The question one has to ask is why just the players? When more than half of a basketball team is kicked out of school 15 months, wouldn't it make sense that there is something wrong with the brilliant minds running the team?

Probably.

But we are in a recession, and BU head coach Kevin Broadus just signed a contract extension through 2013-2014. Seeing as Broadus was earning $205,000 a year before the extension, it probably would have cost at least $500,000 to get rid of him. This is college hoops, not the NBA. It is much easier to get rid of a few players than it is to fire a coach.

So what is BU left with?

Well, not much.

They have just 10 players on scholarship, and of those 10 just one, Chretien Lukusa, is a guard under 6'5". (6'0" freshman Jimmy Gray is a walk-on). And he isn't even a point guard; he's an off-guard known for his defensive ability. I guess that's what happens when you kick your entire back court out of school.

Don't count on BU repeating as America East champs this year.
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"UNLV East" would be referring to...

That would be Binghamton.

Why?

Well, first there was Miladin Kovacevic, the 6'9" Serbian thug that beat a fellow student into a coma before fleeing the country. Then, there was Malik Alvin, a 6'0" point guard who knocked over a 66 year old woman (giving her a concussion) while running from Walmart security after trying to steal a box of Magnum condoms.

It got so bad that America East coaches blackballed DJ Rivera, who led the league in scoring at 20.2 ppg and was top 10 in rebounds, assists, and FG%, from the all-conference team.

All of this happened at least six months ago, so what brought on Mushnick's claim that the Bearcats are UNLV East?

Emanuel "Tiki" Mayben, who was arrested for slinging rock instead of dishing the rock (terrible joke, apologies).

Once considered a blue chip recruit, Mayben was affiliated with Syracuse, UMass, and Hudson Valley Community College before ending up at Binghamton. He was a key member of last season's NCAA Tournament team as he started and averaged 11.5 ppg and 4.2 apg for Kevin Broadus.

Tiki Mayben, who was arrested on crack cocaine charges, was in the running for the nation's best unibrow.
(photo credit: Binghamton Sports)

So what's next for the Bearcats? From the Quad:

So now the question ... will be asked again about Binghamton’s success: Is it worth it? Binghamton won the America East tournament last season and qualified for the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time in the university’s history.

“It seems like we don’t learn any lessons here,” said Dennis Lasser, a former faculty athletic representative at Binghamton and an associate professor in its school of management. “It’s sad for a school like Binghamton. Why should we have to be dealing with this kind of stuff? I guess you can almost rationalize it for a school bringing in millions to support an entire athletic program. I personally wouldn’t support it. But at Binghamton? We have 5,000 seats and $10 a ticket. What are we doing here?”

I'm all for giving troubled kids a second, and even a third, chance. But, at some point, when so many stories end in failure across national headlines, isn't it time to change your recruiting strategy?





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