The NCAA has banned SMU men’s basketball from 2016 postseason play, and has suspended coach Larry Brown for 30 percent of his team’s games due to a lack of head coach control.
Additional sanctions against SMU include nine scholarship losses over the next three years, a 20-day cut to off-campus recruiting, a reduction to permissible recruiting phone calls and three years of probation. Brown’s 30 percent ban means he will miss nine games in total.
The investigation that turned up the sanctions at SMU are related to whether a former administrator and ex-assistant coach helped Keith Frazier to become eligible to play at SMU. The NCAA found that the basketball administrator had access to Frazier's online course username and password, and completed coursework for him in order to keep him eligible.
Frazier missed the second half of last season after being ruled ineligible.
Brown and SMU officials met with the NCAA’s infractions committee in late June. Brown was said to not have knowledge of any violation as it occurred, but learned about it and did not promptly report it during his first interview with the NCAA.
"In fact, he did not initially report the possible violations in his program to the enforcement staff when they interviewed him," the NCAA report reads. "In addition, he initially lied about having any information about conversations he had with the student-athlete and the former administrative assistant about possible academic improprieties in his program, though he later corrected that information in that same interview."
This is the third time a program led by Brown has been hit with NCAA sanctions, with the others happening at Kansas and UCLA.
