HARVARD CHEATS IN BASKETBALL

by Brian P. Foley, The College Baseball Blog

There was a large contingent in the Boston community that put pressure on Harvard University to hire an African American coach last spring for their men's basketball opening. The Crimson saw former Michigan head coach Tommy Amaker without a job and offered the position to him. They hoped that a big name in Amaker could bring them to the NCAA Tournament in the coming years.

The New York Times reported this weekend that one of Amaker's assistant coaches broke several NCAA rules by playing pickup games over 400 miles from campus against potential recruits even though it was a dead period in recruiting. The Harvard assistant coach was not a member of the coaching staff yet when he was playing in these games but tried to get them to head to Cambridge. Amaker was also cited for running into a potential recruits parents at a grocery store during this dead period. The student-athlete ended up going to Penn over Harvard.
Amaker's coaching rivals have made multiple complaints to the conference office as the academic standards of Harvard have been dropped so they can get some of the best recruits in the nation into one of the best schools.

How can the Harvard Athletic Department allow this to be going on and hurting the image of the
University by letting in some lesser students to play a sport. I have attended a bunch of games from Lacrosse, Football, and Baseball games where the student-athletes are really playing for the love of the game and not for a professional sports career.