Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway suspended 3 games for NCAA recruiting violation

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Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway will be suspended for three games during the 2023-24 season, the NCAA announced Wednesday.

Hardaway will serve his suspension for the first three games of the season, meaning he will miss games against Jackson State (Nov. 6), at Missouri (Nov. 10) and Alabama State (Nov. 17).

The penalty stems from two impermissible in-home visits with a recruit from Dallas during his junior year of high school during the 2021-22 academic year. NCAA rules state coaches are not allowed to visit a recruit until April of their junior year. According to the NCAA’s decision, a former Memphis assistant coach visited the recruit (who was not named) in September 2021. Two weeks later, on Oct. 1, 2021, Hardaway also visited the same recruit. NCAA rules require any in-person visits with recruits during the fall months of their junior year of high school to be made at the prospects’ schools, not in their homes.

Memphis Tigers head coach Penny Hardaway during the first half of the game between the Houston Cougars and the Memphis Tigers on March 12, 2023, at Dickies Arena.

Multiple sources told The Commercial Appeal that Cody Toppert is the former Memphis assistant coach who conducted the initial impermissible in-home visit with the recruit. The sources requested anonymity because some details of the case have not been made public. Toppert is currently an assistant coach at LSU.

According to the NCAA Committee on Infractions panel’s decision, Hardaway told members of the enforcement staff “that he believed he ‘could visit any student-athlete at any time.'” Hardaway later told the enforcement staff he would not have visited the recruit when he did had he known it would result in a violation.

Hardaway also, according to the panel’s decision, “blamed the error, in part, on the fact that the prospect’s year was not accurately entered into Memphis’ compliance software.”

The Memphis athletic department issued a prepared statement Wednesday, acknowledging that Hardaway…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/memphis-basketball-coach-penny-hardaway-160317961.html?src=rss

Author : The Commercial Appeal

Publish date : 2023-06-21 16:03:17

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