NCAA announces former Eastern Michigan men's basketball players did not cooperate with sports betting investigation

Sports betting continues to dominate the newscycle. The NCAA announced on Friday that three former Eastern Michigan men’s basketball players — Jalin Billingsley, Da’Sean Nelson and Jalen Terry — did not cooperate with their investigation into potential sports betting conduct.

Back in September, the NCAA announced the permanent eligibility revocation of three Division I basketball players for betting on their own games. The NCAA also revealed that it was pursuing additional sports gambling investigations into 13 former men’s basketball players from six different colleges.

The NCAA did not name the alleged violators. But it did identify that the 13 former student-athletes were previously associated with Arizona State, Eastern Michigan, Temple, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T and Mississippi Valley State.

Per the release distributed on Friday, “the NCAA enforcement staff received notifications from multiple integrity monitoring services in early 2025 about suspicious first-half betting activity on Eastern Michigan‘s Jan. 14 game (against Central Michigan). Integrity services subsequently determined that abnormal betting activity occurred on two previous games that season as well. Shortly thereafter, the enforcement staff contacted the school and opened a collaborative investigation.”

NCAA says the three players would not participate in the process

“On Jan. 29, two days after consulting with legal counsel, the three student-athletes — who were in their final season of eligibility — had their phones imaged by an enforcement vendor,” the release continued. “The enforcement staff made numerous requests to interview the student-athletes through their legal counsel after their phones were imaged. On March 17, 10 days after the school’s basketball season concluded, the student-athletes’ counsel notified NCAA enforcement staff that the student-athletes would not participate in the process and instructed the vendor to destroy the images.”

This is becoming a growing issue around both college and professional sports. Just this week, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was arrested for his alleged role in an illegal gambling operation. Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was also taken into custody over alleged illegal gambling with ties to the mafia.

In the college sports landscape, the NCAA announced back in September it permanently revoked the remaining collegiate eligibility for Fresno State men’s basketball players Mykell Robinson and Jalen Weaver, as well as San Jose State‘s Steve Vasquez, for their participation in a coordinated sports gambling operation in which they “bet on their own games, one another’s games and/or provided information that enabled others to do so during the 2024-25 regular season.”

As the reach of sports gambling grows by the moment, more cases like these are going to keep popping up across the country. For now, it appears that three more young men who got caught up in gambling will face repercussions that could hold extremely serious implications for the remainder of their lives.