When an NCAA investigator and a reporter from the New York Times book hotel rooms in your town and start asking questions within a small span of time, it's generally not a promising combination.
Cliff Ellis went to Myrtle Beach a few years ago when he decided to return to coaching. And now he finds himself in hot water ... again.
It seemed like a good way for Ellis to close out his career when he took over the basketball program at Coastal Carolina. He could satisfy his coaching fix while also relaxing and singing his beloved beach music.
But trouble eventually found Ellis, just as it did at Clemson and Auburn. The rich success enjoyed by the Chanticleers earlier this season was too good to be true, and now the athletics department and school find themselves sinking into the muck of NCAA scrutiny and general embarrassment.
The lead story on the sports front of today's New York Times is by Pete Thamel, who paid a visit to Conway and dug up this lengthy piece on the NCAA's investigation.
Renee Madison, associate director for N.C.A.A. enforcement, has been in Conway investigating whether Desmond Holloway, the team’s leading scorer, received improper gifts as inducements to transfer. Holloway was suspended last week. The university is awaiting the N.C.A.A.’s decision on whether he will be reinstated while the investigation continues.
Two other transfers have landed in trouble and are not playing. Mike Holmes, the most talented player, was thrown off the team in January after an altercation. He had transferred from South Carolina, where he earned all-Southeastern Conference honors in 2008 but was dismissed after a series of incidents, including a fight with a teammate.
Willie Kirkland, a reserve guard who transferred from junior college, is ineligible for academic reasons.
Sounds bad. But it gets worse.
Apparently Ellis loaded up on talent last spring and ended up with more players than scholarships available. That meant reserve forward Marcus Macellari found his scholarship revoked because he "wasn't keeping up to par with the team."
And now Macellari is not only presenting his grievances to the NCAA, but he's singing like a canary to the New York Times.
Oh boy.
Says Macellari: “What he really meant was that he recruited too many people and didn’t have room on the team for me. He kicked me and two other people off to make room for other guys.”
And there's more.
Macellari said he told the N.C.A.A. that Holloway got a “care package full of stuff” that included clothing. If true, that would be a serious N.C.A.A. violation.
“Coach Ellis has a reputation for giving money, and I really honestly don’t think Des would have come here if he wasn’t getting special stuff,” Macellari said.
This is serious stuff, of course, and at this point in the story you're really interested to hear what Ellis has to say in response.
Ellis doesn't directly address the allegations beyond saying "sometimes it's not a perfect system," and "I don’t know a president that hasn’t had a faculty member or some area that fell short somewhere." He also says he believes in second chances, and that "sometimes you have to take risks in order to succeed."
Well that doesn't sound good.
And neither does his defense for the major infractions that occurred under his watch at Clemson and Auburn.
Ellis said three times in an interview on Tuesday that he was never directly implicated in either case, although his assistants were.
When you're a head coach and you want to cheat, the first rule is to distance yourself from the cheating as much as possible. It's the concept of plausible deniability, and it's certainly nothing new; former Clemson basketball coach Tates Locke, who also left Clemson on probation, covered this concept in the tell-all book he wrote in the early 1980s entitled "Caught in the Net."
More damning stuff in the article: Ellis' rivals in the Big South conference ripping the coach to shreds, on the record.
“All the old clichés, what goes around comes around, you play with fire you get burned — all those kinds of things,” U.N.C.-Asheville Coach Eddie Biedenbach said.
There was a time this season when Ellis was figuratively getting fitted for dancing shoes. The Chanticleers were poised to make some noise in the NCAA Tournament, and it seemed like a good story.
Now, Ellis might want to check into purchasing some running shoes ... and get the heck out of town.
LW
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