| | CINCINNATI -- Freshman DerMarr Johnson, third in scoring for
No. 3 Cincinnati, was suspended for one game Wednesday for
violating NCAA rules on amateurism.
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Former MCI coach furious
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Former Maine Central Institute coach Max Good, now an assistant at UNLV, is angered over the insinuation that he ran a crooked program.
The NCAA has suspended two of his former players -- Oklahoma State's Andre Williams and Cincinnati's DerMarr Johnson -- and is looking into a third (Erick Barkley of St. John's) for having portions of their tuitions paid for by either AAU coaches or benefactors.
"There was no school that was as straightforward where kids busted their
ass as ours," Good said. "They're making it look like a bandit program. Kids
could have gone to places like Oak Hill or Mt. Zion for nothing. Yet, they
came to MCI where they had to pay a portion. I didn't know how much
anyone paid. I didn't recruit DerMarr. He recruited us."
-- Andy Katz, ESPN.com
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Bob Goin, Cincinnati's athletics director, said Johnson accepted
money from his AAU basketball coach to help pay tuition at a New
England prep school.
"This relationship occurred prior to us knowing DerMarr," Goin
said.
"This is not a university issue, this is not a basketball
issue; this is an amateurism issue. There is no culpability on the
part of the university."
The NCAA told the university to sit Johnson down for a game,
Brian McCann, the school's associate sports information director,
said.
The Bearcats, who have clinched the Conference USA regular
season championship, defeated Southern Mississippi 95-69 on Wednesday night.
Johnson, a 6-foot-9 guard from Riverdale, Md., has been
averaging 13 points a game.
Goin said Johnson accepted about $7,000 his senior year for
academic expenses not covered by his scholarship to Maine Central
Institute. One year's tuition is $22,500, Goin said.
"DerMarr didn't do anything wrong," Goin said. "He got
nothing in his pocket."
The amount Johnson will have to pay back was being negotiated,
Goin said, but Johnson was eligible to return to the Bearcats after
Wednesday night's game. | |
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