Bilal Batley, the Assistant Director of Basketball Operations/Manager at Kentucky who held the same post last season at Memphis, has left the team.
The reason why is unclear.
Officially, it is because Batley had to return to his Houston home to care for a sick relative.
Bilal Batley, a member of Coach Cal's staff, has left UK.But when you dig a little deeper, things get a bit murkier. You see, Kentucky self-reported a secondary violation last week. The cause? Batley was seen in a gym rebounding for a UK player after he had gone to talk to the player about an academic matter.
Seemingly innocent?
Yes.
An NCAA violation?
That too.
There are two ways to look at this. The first is that it is all coincidence; Batley just happened to leave a post alongside one of the best coaches in the country who had just taken one of the top five jobs in the business. Or, what will seem more likely to my fellow cynics, Batley was forced to leave by the scandal-prone Coach Cal once UK reported the allegations.
You can't really blame Coach Cal here, can you? Regardless of what you believe truly happened at UMass and Memphis, the fact of the matter is that he is the only coach to have two Final Fours wiped from the record books. It would be a terrible decision for him to leave a coach on the staff that had gotten in trouble for an NCAA violation, no matter how miniscule that violation may seem.
I think the biggest question here is how serious was the violation. The way Kentucky phrased it, one would be led to believe that Batley walked into the gym to talk to a player, and at some point chased down a few rebounds.
Sounds completely innocent, which leads me to believe that if it were really that cut and dry, UK would not have reported it nor would Batley have left the program.
So Batley was conducting illegal workouts over the summer?
Well, I don't necessarily believe that to be true either. That is a pretty brazen offense and while I'm sure it goes on all over the country, assuming that is the case here is unfair.
If I had to take a guess, I would say that Batley's violation was a little more serious than simply grabbing a couple rebounds during a conversation about academics, and that as a result he was asked to resign so both UK and Coach Cal could save a little face.
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Save a little face? If this were another program that didn't have Kentucky's or Coach Cal's history then it would most likely go unreported, and even it was reported to the NCAA, any journalist (read beat writer) who covered it would likely talk about what an over-board program that Coach X is running and what a prudent decision it was to let the coach go. How long does Kentucky and Coach Cal have to "save face" by making a prudent decision to let a coach knowing that the NCAA and every reporter in the country is begging for a chance to cut both down? There is nothing saving face about this, this is coach that got let go because everyone outside of Kentucky is waiting for the chance to say "told you so," and unfortunately it cost someone his job.
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