As for Calipari, I find it ridiculous that people still try to defend this guy. I will give you that he has maintained (im-)plausible deniability. The fact remains that he knows who the infamous WWW is. He welcomed Wesley into his circle at Memphis, and allowed him to funnel players (including Rose) into the program. He knew things were not on the up-and-up, or he’s an idiot. Take your pick. Even worse, when he saw that the excrement was going to hit the fan, he bailed–just like he did at UMASS. And the absolute worst thing he did? He didn’t bother to warn Josh Pastner, his former assistant, before Pastner accepted the job at Memphis. Calipari knew what was up, because he discussed it with the admin at UK. However, he urged Pastner to take the Memphis job without disclosing that he would be facing an investigation as one of his first duties on the job. Pastner has stated that he did not know anyting about the accusations before taking the job. If doing that to a supposed trusted associate isn’t sleazy, I don’t know what is.

This academic issue is far from over with Memphis, because Derrick Rose was just the starting point of Calipari’s mistakes. In general, coaches can claim they were unaware of particular actions of a singular player who may have created a secondary violation. The coach can claim that he can’t watch every single player at all times, and this defense has worked for quite a few coaches before. It will probably keep working to be honest, as the NCAA can’t kill every program in the nation. What’s going to get Calipari is that there are/were multiple players involved in academic issues. In fact, 3 of the 6 leading scorers from the 2008 Memphis basketball team is currently under investigation by the NCAA for academic fraud; Rose for the ‘ol switch-a-roo, Dozier, and Mack for questionable jumps in SAT scores. Dozier’s score was thrown out, and I believe Mack’s was too, but I’m not entirely positive about that at the moment.

And that is just getting started with what Cal left behind at Memphis. Don’t forget Reggie Rose and his compensation. Memphis might be able to claim this was an “accounting error” or something of the like, but Calipari was on the planes with Reggie Rose and the other players in questions. I guess for now, we can all play naive and assume that Calipari was completely unaware of a single topic of interest while he was watching his stolen AASAA offense and AAU team run over C-USA only after the power schools previously in his conference defected to the Big East. As for me? I’ll just play naive as well and assume he was far too occupied with being the BEST COACH EVER, sporting that spiffy 24-25 record against the RPI top 50 in the last 5 seasons.

Just to clarify a comment made by Adam earlier in the piece, Solomon Hill did not ask for his “release in the wake of the Floyd scandal.” Originally an Arizona commitment who eventually de-committed and latched onto USC following the confusion and disarray of the Lute Olson retirement, Solomon’s heart was always with the Wildcats, a sentiment punctuated by his final LOI signing with Arizona after the stabilizing and rejuvenating hire of Sean Miller.

While SF Hill may have heard of some shenanigans on the part of the USC/Floyd program, he officially joined the Arizona family weeks before I, at least, heard anything of this Mayo-related mess on any of the blogs that I track.

For the record, I consider ZAGSBLOG as good as – and in most cases better than – any blog out there, despite some intellectually challenged comments to the contrary.