BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The NCAA is investigating a basketball recruiting violation by two Indiana University assistant coaches that school officials said was accidental, a university report released Wednesday said.
The 64-page report said an error by a member of the academic counseling office led to an unintentional recruiting violation by Joby Wright and Ron Felling in trying to sign high school prospect Lawrence Funderburke of Columbus, Ohio.
Funderburke was to sign with Indiana early on the morning of the first day of the signing period last April. But Funderburke caught an early plane for Louisville, Ky., where he was to play in an all-star game. Wright and Felling followed from Columbus and attempted to sign him to a letter of intent, violating a rule passed last January limiting contact with athletes around the time of all-star games.
'The error was made in our academic counseling office,' said Haydn Murray, Indiana's faculty representative. 'The coaches were not at fault because they checked in before going to Louisville and were told they would not be in violation of Rule 13.1.5.2a. It's evident there was an unintentional violation of rule 13.1.5.2a, new legislation passed at the NCAA convention in January 1989.'
The report said Felling and Wright contacted school officials but were unknowingly given inaccurate information by Anitra House, an Indiana administrative assistant for academics in the athletic department since 1980. She did not know of the change in NCAA regulations because the information was accidentally not included in a memo from Haydn Murray to Bob Knight's assistants and the academic department.
Albert Velasquez, an assistant counsel for IU, spoke Tuesday with David Berst, the assistant NCAA director for enforcement, the report said. Berst told Velasquez that the school is not being investigated, but the NCAA is checking out the story with its own sources to verify the information.
Velasquez said, in a memo released as part of the report, that Berst told him the school would suffer no adverse effects if the story is corroborated, but could suffer penalties if the coaches' statements were found to be misrepresentations of what took place.
