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NCAA Investigations

NCAA allowing Syracuse to count 3 scholarships this year toward penalty

Sam Maller | Staff Photographer

Jim Boeheim and Syracuse will be allowed to begin their scholarship reductions this year instead of next.

The Syracuse men’s basketball team will be allowed to begin serving its scholarship reduction penalty this season, according to a university release. The Syracuse Post-Standard’s Mike Waters first reported the news Tuesday afternoon.

The Orange currently has 10 scholarship players on its roster, three below the NCAA’s scholarship limit of 13, so those three will be allowed to count toward the penalty, per the release. Originally, Syracuse was docked 12 scholarships over four years as part of the NCAA’s eight-year investigation into SU but that was reduced to eight in the university’s appeal. Now, with three of those counting toward the 2015-16 season, Syracuse will forfeit five scholarships over the next three seasons. Two will come in the 2016-17 season, two in the 2017-18 season and one in the 2018-19 season, per the release.

While Syracuse’s appeal was pending in October, according to the release, Syracuse voluntarily forfeited a trio of scholarships for this season. The NCAA reduced the initial penalty and SU petitioned the Committee on Infractions to allow the three scholarships from this year against the new penalty.

“(Syracuse) has taken the recent major infractions case and resulting penalties very seriously,” Chancellor Kent Syverud wrote in a Dec. 23 letter to the Committee on Infractions, according to the release. “… applying the scholarship reductions as we have proposed will hold Syracuse University fully accountable for the violations that occurred without causing undue harm to student-athletes by withholding a scholarship unnecessarily.”

The Orange will lose two scholarship players after this season, fifth-year senior guards Michael Gbinije and Trevor Cooney. It currently has two Class of 2016 signees under its belt, Matthew Moyer and Tyus Battle.



Next season, Syracuse will have 10 scholarship players on its roster and will only have to forfeit two scholarships. That means it can offer four-star Brewster Academy (New Hampshire) forward Taurean Thompson, who SU has been tracking, without needing a current player to transfer or leave early for the NBA Draft. That has been the case since the NCAA rewarded Syracuse back with a scholarship per year in November.





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