By Michael Swain, 247Sports.com
LAWRENCE, Kan. – After six years, KU basketball’s NCAA infractions case came to a close as the IARP announced its findings and final punishments for the KU basketball program. The formal findings are included in a 163-page document and the shortened version comes out to 10 pages.
In short, KU basketball head coach Bill Self was charged with one Level III violation while assistant coach Kurtis Townsend was charged with a level II and a level III violation. Neither had any additional penalties following their respective self-imposed four-game suspensions last season. As a program, KU will be on probation for three years.
Following the announcement, Self and Travis Goff met with reporters to discuss the news. Self began his comments with an opening statement.
“I’d first like to start by thanking the IARP for their professionalism and the fair review of the facts throughout this entire process. I also want to make sure I express my sincere gratitude to Chancellor Girod and to Travis Goff for their support, leadership and alignment that exists within our university and our athletic department. I’m very, very proud to be the head basketball coach here. As Travis just said, today is a good day for Kansas basketball. And the findings that the panel found reiterate that our staff acted with integrity and honesty and had no knowledge of payments to student-athletes. While this has been a very long process, I’m appreciative that it has ended and where it has ended and I am eager to move forward without this cloud hovering above our program.”
Of course, one of the big aspects of the punishments handed down on Wednesday was that KU will have to vacate wins. Because Silvio De Sousa was deemed an ineligible athlete during the 2017-18 season, KU will have to vacate the wins that took place in games that De Sousa played in. That will include eight regular season wins, three wins in the Big 12 Tournament and four wins in the NCAA Tournament.
According to the IARP document, KU will have to vacate, take down and return its Final Four banner and trophy as well as its Big 12 Tournament trophy. KU’s streak of consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances will also retroactively have ended in 2018 and KU’s streak of conference championships will end in 2016-17, with the 2017-18 title being impacted by De Sousa’s ineligibility too.
Self did not have a strong comment when asked about the punishments.
“I actually did feel like it was fair,” Self said. “And I actually felt like it should have been done. By the rule, we had a player participate while ineligible due to an illicit payment that we knew nothing about but he was still ineligible while participating. So the 15 wins that occurred while Silvio participated in the 2018 spring semester, I believe are warranted to be taken away, because that is the rule. And if you take away the wins, you naturally take away a banner because the banner wouldn’t have existed without the wins.”
After six years, Self is pleased to see the case in the rearview mirror.
“I’m certainly happy with the end results and at the same time don’t feel like a celebration mode,” Self said. “Because this is exactly what we thought the end result would be years ago and it’s taken such a long period of time to get here. But I am pleased with the findings because the findings are accurate.”
