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Report: Baylor basketball teams facing possible NCAA sanctions over phone calls, texts

QuincyAcy

Jason King of ESPN is reporting that Baylor’s men’s and women’s basketball teams are facing possible NCAA sanctions, stemming from the results of an investigation that revealed more than 1,200 impermissible phone calls and text messages over the span of close to two and a half years.

The report from ESPN, released Monday morning, says that Baylor men’s coach Scott Drew and women’s coach Kim Mulkey, along with their assistants, were the ones who took part in the impermissible messages and calls.

The summary of findings from the NCAA, which was sent to Baylor in October, showed Drew and Mulkey, along with the institution had demonstrated a “failure to monitor” the assistants involved and the program as a whole in regards to the texts and phone calls.

Findings were not just limited to basketball, as the ESPN report points out, with impermissible calls and texts, “ranging from football to the equestrian program.”

Baylor has taken discipline into their own hands since 2008, when the probe began, with self-imposing penalties, but the committee on infractions is expected to announce next week if they deem more penalties to be necessary for the program.

Mark Morefield, a former Baylor assistant who resigned from the program in July of 2011, was found to have committed a major violation as a result of this investigation, as he, “attempted to influence two AAU coaches to furnish the NCAA with false and misleading information regarding a series of text messages,” the ESPN report states.

The report from the NCAA says that Drew, Mulkey, and the rest of the coaches involved have “acknowledged their involvement” in the violations.

The last prominent case similar to this arose in 2008, when Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson was found to be making impermissible phone calls to recruits, after already having been sited for the same violation while at Oklahoma. He then allegedly lied to the NCAA about his involvement, which deepened the problems at Indiana and ultimately led to the end of his tenure there.

To read the rest of the report from ESPN, click here.

Daniel Martin is a writer and editor at JohnnyJungle.com, covering St. John’s. You can find him on Twitter:@DanielJMartin_

[Post updated 9 April 2012, 5:26p.m.]