NCAA looking into Bledsoe's eligibility at UK this season

[Russ Smith]

Bad week for some traditional powers.

NY Times is reporting that Eric Bledsoe's eligibility at UK was now being questioned by the NCAA who had sent investigators in to try and determine how Bledsoe qualified. Also allegations after changing schools for his senior year the landlord where his family moved insisted his HS coach, not his mom, paid the rent 3 or 4 times.

Jeff Goodman reported that virtually every college coach he talked to about Bledsoe said they didn't expect him to qualify and they were all suspicious when he got cleared at UK. I believe I mentioned her in April there was a rumor going around the Scout.com boards that Bledsoe's ACT score had been falsified and when UK found out they ordered him to leave UK immediately and they would "handle it."

Here's the NY Times article, it doesn't mention the rumored ACT score issue just points out with his ACT score his core GPA needed to go from 1.9 to just under 2.5 in one year which would have required essentially straight A's.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/sports/ncaabasketball/29recruit.html?hp

 

[overseascardfan]

Bad week for some traditional powers.

NY Times is reporting that Eric Bledsoe's eligibility at UK was now being questioned by the NCAA who had sent investigators in to try and determine how Bledsoe qualified. Also allegations after changing schools for his senior year the landlord where his family moved insisted his HS coach, not his mom, paid the rent 3 or 4 times.

Jeff Goodman reported that virtually every college coach he talked to about Bledsoe said they didn't expect him to qualify and they were all suspicious when he got cleared at UK. I believe I mentioned her in April there was a rumor going around the Scout.com boards that Bledsoe's ACT score had been falsified and when UK found out they ordered him to leave UK immediately and they would "handle it."

Here's the NY Times article, it doesn't mention the rumored ACT score issue just points out with his ACT score his core GPA needed to go from 1.9 to just under 2.5 in one year which would have required essentially straight A's.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/sports/ncaabasketball/29recruit.html?hp

Sounds eerily familar to Derrick Rose. Wasn't it DeMarcus Cousins who said at his draft declaration news conference that Pitino pratically forced him to not come back to UK. Some of those players not only Bledsoe were dirty, mark my words. If Cal feels the heat he will bolt for the NBA either this year or next ala Pete Carroll. This is probably one of the reasons why Knight & Jones did not sign LOI's

 

[Russ Smith]

Sounds eerily familar to Derrick Rose. Wasn't it DeMarcus Cousins who said at his draft declaration news conference that Pitino pratically forced him to not come back to UK. Some of those players not only Bledsoe were dirty, mark my words. If Cal feels the heat he will bolt for the NBA either this year or next ala Pete Carroll. This is probably one of the reasons why Knight & Jones did not sign LOI's

Patrick Patterson. UK announced he'd filed even though at the time he said he hadn't decided to file or not.

UK is doing the predictable thing here, the Clearinghouse cleared him so if he wasn't eligible it's not our fault, how did we know? Yeah his GPA was terrible going into his senior year and yeah his ACT score improved quite a bit but why would we possibly suspect that someone might be tampering with his grades or ACT to help him qualify that's unheard of right?

Bledsoe is a very fascinating story at one point his junior year in HS he was living in a car with his mom, you can certainly make the case for getting into an apartment and a private school totally changing his life and allowing him to improve his academics. The problem is you go from sub 2 GPA in core classes to almost a 4.0 in GPA in core classes as a senior apparently. Totally possible it's above board, but you can certainly understand why people are skeptical and with the reports of the coach paying his rent and demanding money to setup visits, you can understand why apparently several other schools just stopped recruiting him.

He may not have done a thing wrong, but given Calipari's past it's understandable that people will think he did.

UK fans are making the same argument that Memphis fans and USC fans used and it didn't work there.