Updated April 2022: Ohio State Self-Imposes Postseason Ban on WBB

Ignatius L Hoops

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 9, 2015
Messages
10,173
Reaction score
3,115
Points
113

Ohio State has self-imposed postseason bans for three of its varsity sports teams due to NCAA infractions.

Ohio State's women's basketball, women's golf and fencing teams will all be unable to participate in postseason competition for the 2020-21 season as part of self-imposed sanctions by the university in response to an investigation by the NCAA into those programs, the university confirmed in a statement on Tuesday.

“The Ohio State University Department of Athletics is currently working cooperatively with the NCAA Enforcement Staff on an infractions case involving three sports programs: fencing, women’s golf and women’s basketball,” the statement said. “Ohio State has self-imposed post-season competition bans for each of the sports for the 2020-21 year. As always, we are focused on supporting our student-athletes. NCAA rules and procedures prohibit us from sharing more information at this time.”

[...]

According to a report by Buckeye Sports Bulletin's Wyatt Crosher, who first reported the news of the postseason bans, former Ohio State women's basketball assistant coach Patrick Klein “violated Ohio State’s sexual harassment policy through text messages and social media interactions with at least 13 student-athletes.” According to the case report of the investigation obtained by BSB, Klein's behavior toward those athletes “consisted of a pervasive pattern of conduct that was reasonably perceived to be sexual in nature and that it interfered with the athletic experience of those student-athletes.” The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions found that Klein also provided gifts to certain athletes, including paying for meals and purchasing gifts
 





The outcome of the Patrick Klein violation:

The NCAA’s Division I Committee on Infractions announced Tuesday that Ohio State women’s basketball, women’s golf and fencing programs were all found guilty of committing NCAA violations “over the course of several years.”

As punishment, all three programs have been placed on four years of NCAA probation and Ohio State has been fined $5,000 in addition to 3% of the fencing program budget and 1% of both the women’s basketball and women’s golf budgets. Under the terms of the probation, Ohio State will be required to “continue to develop and implement a comprehensive educational program on NCAA legislation to instruct coaches, the faculty athletics representative, all athletics department personnel and all institutional staff members with responsibility for recruiting” and file annual compliance reports to the NCAA indicating the progress made with that program.

Those penalties have been assessed in addition to self-imposed penalties by Ohio State that included postseason bans for all three programs for the 2020-21 academic year as well as vacating women’s basketball and fencing wins in which ineligible athletes participated and scholarship reductions for those two programs in 2020-21. The Division I Committee on Infractions also imposed an additional 10% in scholarship reductions for the Ohio State fencing program in 2022-23.
Because Ohio State also had an NCAA infractions case involving the men’s swimming program in 2017, the NCAA also held a hearing to examine Ohio State’s compliance monitoring program. The NCAA concluded that a failure to monitor violation did not occur, though it did identify gaps in Ohio State’s compliance program that it has asked Ohio State to address.

The majority of violations found by the NCAA occurred within the fencing program. Former fencing coach Vladimir Nazlymov, who also received a 10-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA, was found to have “arranged, provided or directed other coaches to provide more than $6,000 in recruiting inducements to three prospects” and to have “personally provided or directed coaches to provide 18 student-athletes with more than $8,000 in impermissible benefits in the form of free access to his local sports club,” among other violations.

The women’s basketball program was punished as a result of violations committed by former associate head coach Patrick Klein, who also received a 10-year show-cause from the NCAA. Klein “initiated contact with student-athletes with the goal of forming personal relationships that exceeded coaching/student-athlete relationships” and “provided them with impermissible benefits, including paying for manicures, loaning money for rental cars, and purchasing textbooks for a student-athlete who was not on scholarship.”
 




Top Bottom