Bearcat attack
A Serbian that put a student into a coma. A cocaine dealer. A condom thief.
This sounds like the starting frontcourt of a pick-up basketball team that plays its home games at Attica State Prison.
But all three characters, at some point during the last two years, played basketball at Binghamton University, a school that prides itself on being the academic jewel of the SUNY system.
The question at hand: When does elevating a sports program’s talent level cross the line?
Binghamton’s athletic program became Division I in 2001 and retained rigorous admission standards for its athletes. But after a few years of modest success, athletic director Joel Thirer began focusing more on elevating the basketball team and less on academics.
After six seasons of mediocrity, Thirer fired seven-year head coach Al Walker in 2007 in favor of some new blood. He found what he was looking for in Kevin Broadus, who, as an assistant coach at Georgetown, was known for recruiting players without considering academics.
That’s when the influx of questionable personalities stormed the Parlor City campus.
The first and biggest issue made news when Milan Kovacevic, a 6-foot-9-inch sophomore, beat a fellow student into a coma at a bar in May of 2008. Kovacevic jumped bail and fled the country to head back to Serbia. The escape initiated a manhunt spearheaded by New York Senator Chuck Schumer.
Then, news from the Binghamton program hit the blooper pages. Guard Malik Allen, who transferred to Binghamton from UTEP because of academic problems, was arrested and charged with stealing condoms from a Wal-Mart in October of 2008. He was suspended for three games last year.
Ironically enough, the Binghamton campus provides students with free jimmy hats.
And just this week, guard Tiki Mayben was charged with distributing cocaine in Troy, N.Y. Mayben was a player who originally committed to Syracuse but did not qualify. He took a year to qualify for UMass before transferring to a community college and then Binghamton.
“We will not tolerate this behavior in our student athletes,” said Binghamton University president Lois DeFluer in a press release. “We appreciate that Coach Broadus has given second chances to athletes, but our program cannot take these risks and I have made this clear to both athletic director Joel Thirer and Broadus.”
This stand has been a long time coming.
Lowering academic standards for players is a common practice in the college basketball realm. It’s meant to provide athletes, many of whom lived below the poverty line before going to college, a chance to succeed in the real world.
But the aforementioned personalities on BU’s roster were not just players who underachieved in school; they were threats to everyday society.
And where is Broadus while all of this is going on? A head coach is supposed to be a father away from home for these kids. Where was his watchful eye when Mayben went back home, only an hour and a half away, to distribute his white powder?
I’m just glad this doesn’t happen in our basketball program.
E-mail: david.sanchirico@ubspectrum.com