Indiana responds to allegations of NCAA recruiting violations

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana University told the NCAA on Monday that its own self-imposed penalties should be enough keep the organization from having to punish the school for improper phone calls made by Kelvin Sampson before he resigned as basketball coach.

Sampson said he had been judged before he had a chance to present his side to the NCAA.

The Hoosiers still face a hearing in front of the NCAA’s infractions committee. Sampson resigned late last season, and new coach Tom Crean inherited a one-year extension of recruiting restrictions on phone calls and the loss of one scholarship for the 2008-09 season.

Indiana also limited Crean to 10 off-campus recruiting days before July 31.

“In light of the fact that the University had decided to impose significant sanctions that more than compensated for the number of impermissible phone calls and any recruiting advantage that may have been gained, Indiana University determined these calls did not warrant the imposition of additional penalties,” the school said in a 750-page response to the NCAA.

“Further, since the University now has a new coaching staff that was not involved in any way with these phone calls (or the other allegations) and since this staff already has to serve the remainder of the self-imposed penalties, the University continues to believe additional penalties are unnecessary.”

But in a statement released by his publicist Monday night, Sampson said the most serious allegations against him were “not substantially correct.”

“I have been judged by many in the media and public to be a cheat and a liar, and I have lost my job — all long before I will have had an opportunity to present my case to you (the NCAA) and without Indiana University conducting a meaningful investigation into the allegations,” Sampson said in the statement.

Sampson also questioned why Indiana’s compliance staff didn’t alert him to the allegations sooner.

Sampson took the Indiana job in March 2006 and two months later was penalized by the NCAA for making 577 impermissible phone calls between 2000 and 2004 when he was the coach at Oklahoma. A second wave of charges emerged last October when an IU investigation found Sampson and his staff made more than 100 impermissible calls while still under the earlier recruiting restrictions, and that Sampson participated in at least 10 three-way calls, another violation of the NCAA’s punishment.

In the response, the university agreed that Sampson “provided false and misleading information” to Indiana and said it had done everything possible once the improper calls became known.

It said “numerous inconsistencies” were found in Sampson’s interviews with the university, as well as “his direct contradiction of credible statements by individuals who had no motivation to provide inaccurate information.”

Athletic director Rick Greenspan called the violations secondary and imposed the one-year extension of the NCAA’s restrictions. However, an NCAA report released Feb. 13 by Indiana claimed Sampson provided false and misleading information to investigators from both the university and the NCAA, failed to meet the “generally recognized high standard of honesty” expected in college sports and failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the program.

Sampson denied intentionally providing investigators with false information, but he accepted a $750,000 buyout nine days after the NCAA alleged he committed five major recruiting violations. Indiana is scheduled to appear before the infractions committee June 14 in Seattle, and a decision is expected within 30 days after that.

Sampson, who is going to be an assistant coach with the NBA Milwaukee Bucks, and Crean are both expected to attend the hearing.

In the response to the NCAA, Indiana said most of the calls made from the home phones of former assistants were permissible under NCAA rules.

“However, it was determined that a significant number of calls were contrary to, or resulted in other calls being contrary to” the earlier sanctions.