Frank Haith comments on the Miami situation

For the first time since Charles Robinson's explosive article on Miami for Yahoo! Sports dropped a month ago, Missouri head coach Frank Haith publicly and directly denied any wrongdoing during his tenure with the Hurricanes.

"I'm still unsure of what-all I can say," Haith said on KTRS' "Inside College Sports" show. "First of all ... I did nothing wrong at the University of Miami."

Haith has essentially been told to keep mum on the subject in the media, but he has commented on it before, usually in the form of a non-denail denial -- "I was not aware of any allegations against my program" at Miami "until this story was written."


But of course Haith is going to deny these accusations in the media. He's not going to come out and say "Yeah, we spent $10,000 on DeQuan Jones, and I was pissed. We only got 4.5 ppg out of him." What I found to be a more interesting part of the story is where Haith comments on his ability to recruit given the fact that every other team going after a kid the Tigers are on the trail of uses this situation to negatively recruit.

As we laid out here, recruiting for the next two years will be an enormous priority for Mizzou with the amount of talent headed out the door after this season. You think it hurt that two top Tiger targets -- Marcus Smart and Chicken Knowles -- both committed elsewhere over the weekend?

Would that be frustrating enough for Haith to speak to the media? I wonder if the lack of a public denial of the scandal factored into the decision.
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Frank Haith is off to a good start on the recruiting trail

The biggest concern that most folks, including myself, have in regards to Missouri's future under Frank Haith is how well Haith and his coaching staff are going to be able to recruit.

With seven players -- including key pieces like Kim English, Ricardo Ratliffe, Laurence Bowers and Marcus Denmon -- graduating after this season, for Haith to have sustained success with a program many believe can compete for this year's Big 12 title he's going to have to restock the cupboard.

Recruiting top talent to a school like Missouri is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Its certainly more difficult when, as a coach, you have potential NCAA sanctions hanging over your head -- if you've forgetten, Yahoo! Sports reported that Haith knew about a $10,000 payment paid to secure the services of DeQuan Jones at Miami. Negative recruiting is the practice of drilling the cons of a program competing with you for a recruit into that kid's head. How many times to you think Rodney Purvis has heard that Haith is going to be fired before he steps foot on a college campus?


The good news is that before any of the shrapnel from the Miami scandal struck Haith, he was able to land two key transfers in Earnest Ross, who led Auburn in scoring and rebounding last season, and Keion Bell, a high-scoring and high-flying guard from Pepperdine. Both players will become eligible in 2012-2013 -- Ross for two seasons, Bell for one -- and will provide some talent and experience to help hold the program over while some of the younger guys the Tigers bring in develop.

And there will be younger guys coming in. For all the negative recruiting and the smoke surrounding the program, Haith has steadily been landing commitments.

Yesterday, it was Travis Jorgenson, a 5'10" Missouri-native and three-star recruit according to Rivals, that committed to the Tigers, joining Tyrek Coger in the Class of 2013.

Last Saturday, it was Shawn Smith, a three-star off-guard from Florida, that committed to Missouri. He joins Quantel Denson, Aaron Scales and Simon Goines as Haith's Class of 2012 commits.

All told, that's six commitments Haith has already gotten for his next two recruiting classes. Hard to argue against that being a good start.

Its far from the end, however. None of those players have been mentioned in any of the top 100 lists that we use to make our Consensus Recruiting Rankings. The next step for Haith, and Tim Fuller, who is Haith's lead recruiter, is to land some of the top 25 and top 50 kids they are chasing -- Rodney Purvis and Marcus Smart and Chicken Knowles.

Landing local kids is easy. Convincing elite talent to take a risk by committing Missouri is a different story, but it will make the difference between competing for NCAA Tournament berths and Big 12 titles.
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What is to come of Frank Haith?

From a hoops perspective, the biggest issue that comes out of the explosive Yahoo! report on former Miami booster Nevan Shapiro -- beyond how Jim Larranaga probably feels about leaving George Mason -- is the job status of new Missouri head coach and former Miami head coach Frank Haith.

The accusations he is facing are bad. Really bad. Simply put, he was aware -- if not the facilitator -- of a $10,000 payment to the family of top 25 recruit DeQuan Jones back in the summer of 2008. Its a bit more complicated than that, yes, but you really don't need to know much more.


Now, the NCAA still needs to do their due diligence. They must investigate and corroborate the accusations laid out by Charles Robinson. But if those accusations turn out to be true, there is a good chance that Haith can be hit with a show-cause penalty, which essentially means that the NCAA must give the OK for a program to hire him.

The problem is, as Gary Parrish points out, the NCAA is going to have their work cut out for them proving what Shapiro said. The deal was made in cash -- you can't trace cash -- that went from a booster to an assistant to a player's family. That money never touched Haith's hands and unless there is a smoking gun or Haith finds his conscience and admits it, how will the NCAA prove Haith's knowledge?

That doesn't mean that it will save Haith's job at Missouri, just like Tim Floyd wasn't able to save his job at USC after being accused of paying OJ Mayo's handler. But what it likely will mean is that Haith isn't hit with an NCAA violation, like Floyd, who is now coaching at UTEP.

"I am more than happy to cooperate with the national office on this issue and look forward to a quick resolution," Haith said in a statement released on Tuesday evening. "The NCAA has instructed me not to comment further at this time in order to protect the integrity of their review, so I appreciate your understanding in this matter. The reports questioning my personal interactions with Mr. Shapiro are not an accurate portrayal of my character."

Its interesting that Haith offers more than a "no comment" and avoids categorically denying the report.

Its unlikely that Missouri will fire Haith before the season starts. Hiring a second head coach in the span of five months would be a nightmare, especially when that coach would probably want to pick his own coaching staff. Would it be worth it to promote a staff member to the interim position? Probably not.

The other thing to think about is recruiting. Haith already has commitments from three players in the Class of 2012 and one player from the Class of 2013. Do those commitments hold if Haith's job is uncertain? What kind of recruiting class is he going to be able to pull out of 2012? Do they still have a shot at Rodney Purvis?

Its tough to see this getting better for Missouri before it gets worse.
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How Yahoo's story will affect hoops

Charles Robinson and Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports dropped a nuclear bomb on the University of Miami football program on Tuesday afternoon.

Its thoroughly and exhaustively reported, all stemming from the confessions of Nevan Shapiro, a former Miami booster currently incarcerated for his part in a Ponzi Scheme. (Those seem to be popping up everywhere these days, don't they?) With the exception of the Baylor basketball scandal involving Dave Bliss from 2003 and the SMU scandals that resulted in the football program receiving the death penalty in the late 1980's, this could very well be the biggest scandal in NCAA history.

The majority of Yahoo!'s report has to do with Miami's football program, but the basketball side is involved and could affect more than just the Hurricanes.

(The best part about Yahoo!'s story is that they broke down the violations committed by each person on their own separate page. Here are the four you want to pay attention to for hoops -- DeQuan Jones, Frank Haith, Jake Morton, and Jorge Fernandez.)

It starts with DeQuan Jones, who was a top 25 recruit nationally in 2008. Shapiro alleges that in the early summer of 2008, Jake Morton -- then a Miami assistant and now a member of the Western Kentucky coaching staff -- came to him saying that a member of Jones' family was demanding a $10,000 payment in order to ensure Jones would remained committed to the Hurricanes. Morton got the money from Shapiro and delivered it to the family without the knowledge of the player, according to Shapiro.

Frank Haith, then the head coach of the Hurricanes and now the first-year head coach at Missouri, was aware of the payment and later thanked Shapiro for putting up the money. That wasn't their only interaction, either. Shapiro took out Haith, Morton, and Jorge Fernandez -- then an assistant with Miami and now on the staff at Marshall -- on many occassions, sometimes to the same place as members of the Miami football team.

Fernandez was also involved in another potential violation. One of the nights that Fernandez was out with Shapiro he brought along Moe Hicks, the head coach of famed Rice High School in NYC and the program director for the NYC Gauchos, arguably the best AAU program out of NYC. Durand Scott, who is a rising junior on the Hurricanes, played for Hicks at Rice and was a member of the Gauchos program.

Hicks is now the Director of Basketball Operations at St. John's.

The Miami football program is in quite a bit of trouble, but the tentacles of the NCAA's investigation will also affect hoops in a major way. And not just at Miami. One player -- Jones -- is alleged to have been bought with the coaching staff's knowledge. Another player -- Scott -- played for an AAU and high school coach that was photographed being taken out, with Miami's coaching staff, and put on the tab of a Miami booster.

Miami and Missouri fans should be worried. There's a very good chance that Haith loses his job over this, and Jim Larranaga could not have been dealt a worse hand to try and rebuild Miami. Western Kentucky, Marshall and St. John's fans should track this investigation.

Who knows what else is going to turn up.
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Otto Porter, Frank Haith's violaton, and a reporter mistake?

Missouri's new head coach Frank Haith has not had the greatest start to his tenure.

This afternoon, less than two weeks after he was named Mike Anderson's successor, Haith lost Otto Porter, a top 100 recruit in the class of 2011 and a Missouri native, to Georgetown. Losing an in-state star likely won't ingratiate Haith with the good folks of the Show Me state, who were displeased with his hiring. To top it off, Haith committed a secondary violation in the process.

Haith responded to a text message from Mike DeArmond of the Kansas City Star that asked if Porter was still in play for Mizzou by saying "No, he did go to Georgetown". He followed that up with another text saying "Did speak by phone and the process was all but over. (He) just needed to see Georgetown, which they visited this weekend."


The problem?

Coaches are not allowed to talk about recruits until they have signed a National Letter of Intent. That is a violation, one that every Division I coach is keenly aware of. Its only a secondary violation, and will likely result in nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Now, Haith should not be discussing kids that he is recruiting. There is no way that he is not aware that this is a violation. That said, DeArmond should shoulder his load of the blame. Coaches text and talk about recruits all the time. Its not a rare occurrence. The issue is that he is on the record talking about it.

DeArmond writes on the Campus Corner blog, which is where the KC Star's coverage of colleges and recruiting can be found. He should have been aware of the fact that by publishing Haith's name he would be getting Missouri into trouble with the NCAA. I'm going to assume that there was a miscommunication about whether the text was meant to be on the record, because I truly doubt that Haith would have sent that text if he had known his name would have been published.

DeArmond just cost himself all of his Missouri sources. Proof?

This isn't the first time that the media covering Missouri has been in the news.

Bernie Miklasz, an excellent reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote that Matt Painter was going to go to Missouri, which ended up being incorrect. To his credit, he owned the mistake gracefully.

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Otto Porter is a great get for Georgetown. Along with DeAndre Daniels, he is one of the two best players that had remained uncommitted in the class of 2011.

Georgetown now has one of the best incoming classes in the country, which includes 6'9" Tyler Adams, 6'9" Greg Whittington, 6'8" Mikael Hopkins, and 6'5" Jabril Trawick in addition to the 6'8" Porter. Porter had an official visit lined up with Kansas for next weekend, but he will not be making that trip.

Of note for Hoya fans -- Georgetown will have at least one scholarship player transferring out of the program. Porter is their 14th scholarship player.
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