Forecast For The Parade: Rain!
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Why us? Does this happen to other schools? I’d guess it does, but seriously, this is ridiculous.
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This is how it is when you are a blockade runner.
Captain Rhett Butler can break it from time to time, but it gets harder and harder, unless his Confederacy can make strategic alliance with some one willing to fight a war to end the Union blockade permanently.
Blockades and embargoes take awhile to work but they slowly strangle an opponent.
KU has to join an alliance capable of breaking the blockade, or this is going to get worse, not better.
It joined the adidas alliance, but that has not worked.
It has tried running the blockade with imported weapons; that worked a little for a short while.
But now that approach is sputtering.
This could spill over into recruiting for next season, too.
Those that argue that if Diallo doesn’t qualify, then KU would just have more scholarships to give, just don’t get it.
The 3 long stacks have more 5-7 short to medium stacks.
This situation is getting worse, not better.
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The Big 12 does have strick rules on eligibility but I understand this isn’t a Big 12 issue at the moment. Remember Bmac & Mari & Anderson all being ruled partial qualifiers.
I just find it interesting that there was very little talk of his eligibility being in question way back in the spring when he was the hottest ticket in town. Yes there was some grumblings about his school, but not Diallo himself. I thought this would have been squared away by now but obviously the NCAA loves to drag its feet with Kansas athletes.
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@jaybate-1.0 Would KU joining up with the Big10 when the time comes, make any difference at all?
I havent read anything yet that Skal has been cleared for Kentucky… has anyone else?
Diallo Will be cleared by the start of the season.
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I would think SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE did the “homework” on what Cheick needs to qualify for a D1 education.
If he doesn’t qualify… MANY people let him down, including KU. If summer school can help him qualify, we should all think that KU “was on it” and put Cheick in the right classes to get him qualified.
And even though Cheick isn’t an expert at D1 qualification… at some point, responsibility has to be shared with the athlete, too. This is a personal responsibility and you can’t expect other people to take control of your own responsibilities.
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@REHawk According to Bragg himself he grew this summer and is now somewhere between 6’10 and 6’11? That came straight from his mouth. I am not going to have time to dig up the article but you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding it?
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This sounds like a nightmare. No Diallo would be absolutely crushing. I’ve heard of high school courses being able to count towards college credits but not really the other way around. Can that work? Hoping this gets resolved soon.
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I had initially thought maybe being enrolled in summer school was to help square away whatever issue is causing this but I can’t see that being possible. If his classes are in question or whatever then how is he taking college classes? He’d still be clearing that issue up at his high school if it was a lack of HS classes.
Something isn’t adding up with all this and I wonder how credible the information really is. Is this his HS that is in question or his classes/grades themselves. If its the latter then how is he enrolled in College? I know the school itself has had issues with kids qualifying and if kids are getting red flagged because of it then that’s a school that doesn’t belong in the system. Each kid has a unique situation, like Diallo who came from abroad so the exact details are always going to be missing. Hopefully some kind of decision is made before we get too close for comfort.
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@BeddieKU23 maybe they are waiting to see if he passes these summer classes?
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I think the last few posts are on the wrong track here.
The NCAA decides whether a freshman is eligible based on HS grades and ACT scores. Remedial courses in college don’t count.
KU can let Diallo enroll and give him a scholarship, but that has nothing to do with his eligibility to play.
Lots of incoming freshmen show up early and take summer classes, whether they have eligibility problems or not.
Diallo being in summer school has no bearing on the NCAA thing.
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Recruiting analyst Jerry Meyer had mentioned ineligibility as a possibiltly this spring befor Diallo signed with us due to problems other graduates of that HS had encountered with the NCAA. Meyer mentioned his thought that Cheick mite play overseas for a year instead of college because of it.
Am certain that KU and other schools recruiting him knew of the risk, but that didn’t stop any of us from pursuing him.
The benefit to signing him? If he clears he is on the court for US… And if he doesn’t clear the NCAA he isn’t playing for anyone…but assuming he signed an actual letter of intent (not a grant in aid paper), we control his future as it relates to NCAA DI basketball. We would have to release him from the NLI for him to play elsewhere.
This is especially relevant since as we know from the McClemore/Traylor/Anderson story that even if Cheick is cleared by the NCAA he could still be declared a partial qualifier by the Big 12…meaning while he might not play for us, he could still be playing for a team outside the Big 12 if the NCAA ok’d him and their conference had less stringent standards. (Note that Anderson was eligible immediately for the school in California he went to instead - was it Fresno?)
I would rather pursue and land him - as we did with McClemore - than pass on him and end up competing against him when he is playing for Calipari.
Any ineligibility on his part is in no way a bad reflection on us, unless we play him when we shouldn’t have. It is a reflection of his HS’s ability to provide him with the credentials he needed for eligibility at the school of his choosing. We can’t control that. And we shouldn’t shy away from a game-changing recruit on a “might” or a “maybe” unless it is a moral or corruption issue…
Our only downside is if he signed with us and us then being out of scholarships kept us from signing someone else who could have contributed.
If he has to sit this year and plays for us next year, I think it is still worth the risk.
If he sits this year and heads to the NBA next year, then you have to decide whether signing him despite the possibility of ineligibility (and keeping someone else from getting him) was worth losing someone else that could have contributed. That is a difficult argument because it is all based on could would shoulda with no facts to consider.
Just my $0.02.
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I still think we need some clarification of what exactly they are looking at. He graduated from his HS so to his HS he passed their standards.
Is it his school because of the classes he took? Or is it his grades/ACT SAT scores?
Now he’s enrolled in Summer School which was delayed because of paperwork from his school.
Now the NCAA is looking into his eligibility.
Either he passed High School or not correct? If he didn’t wouldn’t he need to go to prep school to complete his HS courses that are found to be ineligible for College standards. As far as I’m concerned you can’t take College classes whether summer, fall or spring unless you’ve actually graduated and been approved for College.
Honestly I don’t know the real answer so if I’m wrong please explain to me how that whole process even works where a kid graduates but is taking college classes only to have his eligibility in question. I thought kids went to prep school if they had grade concerns, not be taking College courses which cannot correct whatever issue is present. Wouldn’t that be a waste of both the kid & College’s $ and effort.
If I understood, BMac & Mari qualified by the NCAA but the Big 12 deemed their core classes to be insufficient which rendered them partial qualifiers. It wasn’t whether they passed HS & needed additional HS classes but whether their overall body of work met the Big 12’s min standards which was found to be no.
The downside is exactly what you said, not having a player who can help us this year in the post. That was his 1 job that everyone is banking on him doing. If he’s not eligible we now have 2 post players sitting on the bench who can’t do squat for us this year.
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I agree
But consider we had 2 scholarships available for awhile after Diallo signed and before Vick and Colesby (sp?) signed.
By the time Diallo signed the options were scarce and there weren’t many - if any - desirable bigs left in this year’s class so we had resorted to looking for transfer Bigs (Charlotte guy and the 7’2" guy from Providence…neither of whom could have played this year eithe)…
There were a few Wings/guards left in this year’s class…but we didn’t need any more of them…especially after Vick signed and before Colesby sigbed.
So the question then becomes, what quality big man that would have contributed immediately did Diallo’s signing cost us?
I have pondered it, but I couldn’t come up with one…especially one that makes me feel as though signing Diallo was a mistake.
Just my opinion. And it is completely subjective.
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I haven’t seen anything other than that blurb on CBS about it. I’m not worried about it - even if he misses time, I think this team can win without him. I’m going to remain optimistic whether he’s there game 1 or not.
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There are three major academic hurdles that must be cleared to be eligible to play D1 sports.
The first is test scores. Those are pretty straight forward and easy to understand. The only issue comes if the test has been taken multiple times, or if there are questions about the legitimacy or authenticity of scores. If that isn’t at issue, the test scores are easy to clear.
The second is HS GPA. This is a bit fuzzier because there is a wide variance in how different schools grade throughout the US. An A at one school might be a B or C somewhere else. Some teachers grade on a curve. Some do not. Some give extra credit, some do not. As a result, there is a lot of investigating that can take place when it comes to HS grades to make sure the grades given were legitimate and that the work was done. I believe this is where Traylor had problems.
The other difficulty when investigating HS grades comes when evaluating classes graded on a curve. While the athlete may reasonably have invited the extra examination of their grades, the other students in the class have not. However, there is no way to evaluate a curve unless you have all of the other work to evaluate it against. There have been accusations of schools manipulating curves to make (or keep) athletes eligible, but it is always difficult to prove because you have to pull other students’ work in order to prove that.
The final hurdle is the stickiest. Required coursework. You can have the test scores and the requisite GPA, but you must also pass the NCAA mandated core curriculum. This is the area that tripped McLemore up.
Let’s say for instance that you start off by attending a school that does its academic year based on quarters, as many schools here in the midwest and plains do. Then, midyear you move to a school that does it’s academic year based on semesters. In the quarter system, the second quarter typically overlaps the Christmas holiday by a week or two. In semesters, obviously the semester ends at the holiday. As a result, some students may not get credit for a full load of classes.
Or let’s say a student transfers and they have a class at one school called Freshman English. At their new school, there’s a class called English 2, but the coursework is more or less the same as the work in Freshman English at their old school. They may not get credit for that class at their second school because it’s a repeat.
If either of those things happen, a student may be one or two credits shy because their classes are considered repeats, or may not qualify for some other reason.If that is the case, summer school may be able to remedy that, depending on how many credits are lacking.
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This is a copy of the forms Diallo had to fill out. I can only imagine that it is not easy getting some of this info from over seas.
http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Form 15-3a - Student-Athlete Statement.pdf
Not only that the NCAA has to review every one of these from every student athlete in every sport from every division 1 school. If I remember right HCBS said he was still working on these forms last weekend. Listing all of the different schools, records, and dates you attended and on and on is probably the hold up.
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I definitely don’t have a clue on this one.
I recall a few things from my days at KU. They taught 0-hundred level courses that gave no credits but were considered HS-equivalent classes. I had to take a couple of those because my HS advisers were more interested in smoking dope than helping kids advance to college. Those classes were not a part of getting me qualified to attend KU… they were part of the core necessities needed to achieve a diploma, and those beginning classes were typically completed in HS.
I can even see how students might be able to take these classes without being accepted into KU.
What I don’t understand is the grant money. Cheick is in Lawrence now… he has a roof over his head and meals provided and he is in summer school. All of that happened on his Grant-In-Aid. How did he qualify for a grant without being qualified at Kansas? The grant is connected to athletics… so how could he get the grant if he wasn’t qualified for an athletic scholarship? It seems that everything is working backwards.
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Exactly why I’m confused on this issue.
I’m holding out hope that its just the shear amount of paperwork that is the holdup and verifying all of his coursework (basically crossing all the T’s & I’s of some checklist) and now that he’s finally sent all that stuff to the NCAA’s that its just a matter of time before we get the good word.
I do have the slightest amount of doubt just because of the amount of hope that has been bestowed on Diallo to be our savior in the post.
thank you for the in-depth analysis. Required paperwork or required min curriculum seems to be where he would most likely fall short if he does.
Hard to quantify what big or bigs we could have gotten. Up until getting Diallo it was the sky was falling if we didn’t get him. We put in about 2 years worth of recruiting with him to sweat out his decision (at least from a fans perspective). We don’t know if Self had a silent verbal all that time.
But you have to assume KU did its homework into his eligibility after losing players in the past to academic issues that could have helped that years team (ala 2012 B-Mac & Mari). If they took the risk assuming he was just a bunch of paperwork away then its a no brainer. If there is some undercover issue we don’t know about or the NCAA has a decision that seems out of left field then its unfortunate for both the school and Diallo.
This could end badly for us, but until more information is available we can only speculate what’s happening. I will try and resort from freaking out until news says otherwise.
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@BeddieKU23 My point was that KU is judge if Diallo can come to KU and can get a scholarship (athletic or otherwise). The NCAA is judge for his eligibility to play.
Diallo is “approved for college” by KU.
He is not (yet) approved to play by the NCAA.
There is not one process; there are two processes.
I wasn’t aware of what @justanotherfan wrote above, that summer school may be able to remedy lacking credits. I stand corrected on that point.
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Thanks for the clarification then. You would think that KU the judge in giving him a scholarship and accepting him to KU did its homework on his past coursework and was found to be okay. I know Self was very upset about McLemore’s & Mari’s decisions when they were deemed partial qualifiers. He seemed very shocked that they weren’t eligible and has probably used that as a guide to recruiting guys that have been to multiple schools or are from oversea’s.
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I can see it now -
"September 19, 2015. Lawrence, KS - Cheick Diallo, a freshman basketball player for the University of Kansas, has been declared eligible to play basketball for the Kansas Jayhawks after his early education records were discovered, intact, near Kayes, Mali. Kansas head basketball coach, Bill Self, was growing skeptical with each passing day without hearing a peep from the NCAA.
According to reliable sources, part of Diallo’s early education near Kayes, Mali, was in question because of the lack of proper record keeping. Diallo’s classwork and grades had been written into a ledger that was buried in 2012 underneath a Baobab tree to protect villagers’ identities because of the threat of Tuareg rebels moving in the area during their efforts for secession and the creation of an independent State, Azawad.
There were fears that the school records were washed down the Senegal River during a flash flood in May, 2013."
SOURCE: Flubbottomless.com
The answer is “YES, that is a real Baobab tree from Mali!”
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@Statmachine Yeah, I remember reading those comments by Bragg. And somewhere during the WUGs I saw him standing alongside Perry, and he looked much taller. If he does, indeed, reach 6’11" before departing Lawrence, he should be in line for a major pro contract, esp. if his midrange and long jumpers fall for us. Gotta hope he stays two years. If Perry stays healthy, and if Diallo qualifies, Carlton won’t have to play so many minutes this season. Then, hopefully, will get his chance to start and star as a sophomore.
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It would be much better if it could happen, but the effects of joining the Big Ten would unfortunately cut a number of different ways for big power interests in Kansas and that makes it unlikely to happen.
I would think that both adidas and Nike would be willing to spend sharply more to have KU under contract were it in the Big Ten.
KU could never be as sexy as UM and MSU in the Big Ten, but KU would become especially desirable to turn into a long stack in basketball for the Big Ten, if it were in the Big Ten. It would be a very desirable alternative to Indiana and Purdue, because Indiana is politically basically a rogue state in the midst of the Big Ten. The state of Indiana itself is a thorn in the side of blue state interests in the Great Lakes Basin. It is essentially a long north-south potential transportation and pipeline and canal corridor from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River and on to the South that many Great Lakes interests would never want to see opened up.
To digress a moment, Indiana is, if anything, a redder state than Kansas. And if Kansas were to join the Big Ten it would likely occur only if it had decided to move back toward its centrist, main street republican roots, which would make it a preferred alternative to many Big Ten power players to Indiana’s continued red state stridency. But of course with local Big Oil and Big Ag players heavily supporting red state stridency in Kansas, Kansas Republicanism for the foreseeable future seems unlikely to shift back to center and so KU seems unlikely to join a blue state dominated conference.
There is more complexity to it of course.
Contrary to popular belief, it appears to me that certain elements of Big Oil and Big Ag might at least consider KU and KSU joining the Big Ten, but only if they were able to build their influence in KU and KSU to the point that they did not have to worry about KU and KSU getting off the leash once they got into the Big Ten and grow more independent because of the implied political economic alliances that become possible with such membership. The Big Oil and Big Ag interests from the Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas alliance reputedly worked hard for political regime change in Wisconsin and Michigan the last few elections, so injecting a KU and KSU into the Big Ten conference to go along with a strident Red State Indiana might well be appealing to them on some levels. But only some.
All the oil interests at play in Kansas always have to keep in mind keeping the state of Kansas staunchly in the Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas oil and gas and pipeline right of way alliance. And one of the crucial levers in any state that a player must control to control that state is its major universities. Controlling those universities creates tremendous economic and political economic clout. That clout translates to getting regulatory control of the state government and control of the senate and congressional voting from that state in Washington, D.C. The end game is always preservation and extension regional infrastructure and political economic interests.
So: while on the one hand, oil players operating through Red State political organizations might see some advantage to porting KU and KSU to the Big Ten alliance of state schools and states that dominate the Great Lakes Basin, as a means of interjecting influence, where vast crude oil reserves exist under Michigan and the Great Lakes themselves, and for other agendas, also, well, those sorts of agendas are birds in the bush so to speak. In turn, birds in the bush have to be weighed against birds in the hand. The pipelines and oil, gas, oil shale, and tar sands through out central North America have to be delivered to Texas’ Gulf Coast for refining NOW. The have to come through Kansas. No small amount of it has to come FROM under Kansas, too. The great sunk costs are in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and northwest Basin and Range and north Great Plains all the way to north central Canada. No moves can be made that ever jeopardize control of that system and those interests. NOTHING. Everything else is flank, not center. Given the way present worth of money discounting works, almost nothing, not even all the oil under Michigan, and the chance to extend the Super Corridor through to the Great Lakes, can exceed the importance of maintaining the existing sunk costs already in the Great Plains. Some day, under the right set of crisis circumstances, the oily folks in Texas and the Royally Chartered district of London, will get that oil in the Great Lakes, but it will be after most of us are gone. So: in this regard, KU is going no where fast, because the state of Kansas is joining no Great Lakes Basin alliance fast.
But hypothetically speaking, if the Big Oil and Big Ag interests would let KU move, Big Ten membership would sharply improve KU’s recruiting credibility throughout the Great Lakes states, with, or without Big Shoe, where KU is now viewed (wrongly) as barely a cut above U of New Mexico academically and in sports (outside basketball) kind of a nothing also.
KU would have to embrace an even more physical brand of bruise ball as the norm too.
Note: the bruise ball gap is now much smaller between B12 and B10, but still seems significant to me. Let me put it this way: some B12 teams now play as rough as the B10 teams, but all B10 teams play that way. Finally, Big Ten football is one helluva a big party and Kansas fans would love it as much as Nebraska fans now do. I doubt many closely involved with Nebraska football, even the fan base, in Nebraska looks back and wishes they had stayed in the Big 12, good season, or bad. And all the academics and grant whores are much happier in the Big Ten, where the academic esteem and granting pork is higher. For teams and fans, its fun playing in front of big crowds every game and most every town (except Minneapolis) is quite a fun campus and town to visit away. Those lovers of Prince and Minnie cut me some slack here. I don’t know that town and campus well. Maybe the Golden Gophers know how to have a good time. But when I was at UW, no one drove to Minnie the way they did to Ann Arbor, Iowa City and Champaign Urbana for games. Ann Arbor, Madison, East Lansing, Champaign-Urbana, Iowa City, Columbus, Bloomington, and University Park, these are great football happenings every weekend even in their down seasons. Some times they are even better in their down seasons.
So the long answer is above.
And the short answer is: yes, some of KU basketball’s current recruiting problems could be made some what better by moving to the Big Ten, but not fully resolved IMHO without a switch to Nike, too. Notice adidas UM struggles for talent just as KU does. And Nike MSU, before Izzo kind of appeared to go along to get along with apparent stacking last season and this, struggled, too. But for things to improve decisively, some fundamental shift in the Big Shoe regime that would favor adidas programs would probably have to occur.
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@jaybate-1.0 Makes sense I guess, in a convoluted way. But, what do oil companies have to do with schools, any school switching conferences? Arent they pretty much mutually exclusive? Why does an oil company care if KU moves to the Big 10, or Nebraska, or care if Fizzou moves to the SEC with Tx A/M?
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Big oil gifts money away… like the Koch brothers giving WSU money to upgrade their arena. Texas and OU get lots of donations from oil interests… and probably other teams in the B12, too, including Kansas.
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@drgnslayr Don’t forget wheat from Wellington. Year in year out in the top 5 donations.
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@drgnslayr Ohhhh yah, I forgot about that. Also T Boone Pickens at Okie State right?
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@drgnslayr So, Petro Oil co’s gift money to big schools. Would that gift increase or decrease if KU went to the Big1o?
Also, why would an oil company even care which conference a team is in or decided to move to?
I understand the connection between the shoe companies like Nike, Adidas, UA, etc in that regard.
