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.