Arizona Athletics releases their Notice of Allegations

Following the Arizona Superior Courts’ ruling, Arizona Athletics has finally released the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations, and they’re what we expected. 

With the 2020-21 Arizona Basketball season officially over, it has been a busy and drama-filled couple of days for the Wildcats and Arizona Athletics.

As you’ve should have hopefully seen by now, it all started when an Arizona Superior Court judge sided with ESPN in suing the University of Arizona and the Arizona Board of Regents over the release of the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations.

Arizona Wildcats

Still waiting on the schools’ response, the Arizona Athletic Department finally released the Notice of Allegations on Friday evening, and for those that have been following this, much like us, you would have seen that the Allegations are pretty weak, and nothing was illuminating in there that we didn’t already know. in there that we didn’t already know.

According to Bruce Pascoe and the Arizona Daily Star, these are the Level One allegations the Arizona Basketball program is currently facing.

"1. Unethical recruiting conduct involving academic misconduct by former assistant coaches Book Richardson and Mark Phelps. The NCAA contends that the former Arizona Assistant coaches “engaged in pre-enrollment academic misconduct and/or provided an impermissible recruiting inducement when they knowingly arranged for false academic transcripts2. Unethical conduct by Richardson for accepting $20,000 in bribes (a charge Richardson admitted to and served a three-month prison sentence for).3. Unethical conduct by Phelps for asking a UA player to delete a text message thread relating to an impermissible $500 loan he had provided, and lying to investigators.4. Head coach Sean Miller is responsible for not demonstrating he promoted compliance.5. Institutional lack of control for Arizona because of the Men’s basketball charges."

I don’t know about you, but the allegations are pretty weak here, and again, there is nothing in there that we didn’t already know as fans. And if we’re talking about “wins”, this is about as much of a win you are going to get if you are Arizona Basketball.

The Allegations essentially establish that two assistants got caught in nefarious behavior, the school and program responded accordingly by letting them go, and there is no verifiable proof Miller knew what was going on.

Additionally, it also proves that no player was ever paid during this whole debacle, and it shatters the narrative about the “supposed” Deandre Ayton $100,000 phone call initially reported by ESPN.

Yes, the compliance aspect ultimately all falls on Miller, and there is a likelihood he could see some kind of suspension (assuming he is retained) a la Jim Boeheim with Syracuse back in 2015, but I don’t see this as being a fireable offense for the University. Sorry, Miller haters.

Overall, this is pretty weak stuff, and Arizona would be foolish to make any rash decisions following the release of the Allegations.