Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown is soldiering on in the wake of a Yahoo! Sports report that he is facing a “lack of coach control” charge from the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
The report said SMU appeared before the Committee last month for a multi-day hearing to address charges against the school’s men’s basketball and golf programs.
In a phone interview with SNY.tv on Thursday morning, Brown said he’s unable to comment on the current case but that he was not involved when his teams at UCLA and Kansas were hit with sanctions in the 1980s.
“We’re not allowed to comment on any of the NCAA stuff,” Brown said. “I will comment on the thing about UCLA, I wasn’t even involved in that and everybody knows that and yet they keep printing it. And they asked to hire me in 1988 again so I think that’s pretty cut and dry. That investigation went on long before I got the job at UCLA.
“And then the Kansas situation, my Chancellor at Kansas recommended me for the Princeton job and helped me in the Stanford opportunity so if I was sanctioned for doing anything wrong at all, I don’t think Stanford would’ve offered me the job or anything like that.”
He added: “Even here, why would they hire me here [at SMU] if there was any things hanging over my head?”
According to the Yahoo! report, the NCAA is alleging former SMU assistant coach Ulric Maligi and a basketball secretary helped former SMU guard Keith Frazier with his course work during his time there from 2013-15. Frazier was declared academically ineligible in January and Maligi took an indefinite leave of absence from the program at about that time.
“I can’t comment about anything in an ongoing NCAA investigation,” Brown said. “I won’t and I won’t give this guy [Yahoo’s Pat Forde] any credibility by doing that.”
He added: “It’s a process and we’re going to do what’s right and not comment on it. The University came out with a statement a long time ago, so I think that’s pretty specific.”
