ESPN went swinging for the fences today by releasing a handful of stories about college recruiting and
the ties between a Bloomington non-profit, an AAU program and some major D-1 schools, most notably Indiana University.
The main piece is here and looks into Mark Adams, a man who runs the non-profit A-HOPE, which helps African basketball players get a chance to play in college, and also serves as the head coach of prominent AAU program Indiana Elite. The story is lengthy and well worth the read, but for our purposes, it's the side story about DeAndre Liggins that's the most intriguing.
According to
this article, Liggins was caught in
a battle between Indiana Elite founder Mark Barnett and former Kentucky assistant Glen Cyprien. According to the story, Barnett admits trying to steer Liggins away from the University of Kentucky and according to Liggins and his mother, went as far as to try to adopt him. Here's an excerpt:
"DeAndre is the only kid ever in our program where I opened my home to the point of saying, 'I'll do whatever I can to help you,'" Barnett says. "I will admit that I was fielding most of the [recruiting] calls because he was living here a lot."
As he tells it, Liggins' life back in the Chicago projects wasn't the best. Barnett would drive Liggins back and forth between Rochester and his home on weekends, a 120-mile trek each way. The teenager spent a Christmas with the Barnett family. Mike Barnett gave Liggins a part-time job in his screen printing shop. Barnett acknowledges that at one point he researched whether Liggins could transfer to a Rochester high school and move in with his family.
Barnett also took his son, Kory, and Liggins on an unofficial visit to Kansas. When he couldn't break from his own schedule, he paid a young friend gas and meal money to drive Liggins to a camp at the University of Illinois. He had planned another visit to Memphis. But Barnett, anti-Kentucky at the time, wasn't on the plane when Liggins, his mother and at least two high school coaches flew to check out the Lexington campus -- which infuriated him, leaving him to suggest Cyprien was playing loose with NCAA rules.
"Yeah, DeAndre is a great kid," Barnett says. "The saddest part of the whole thing -- the reason I use the word 'manipulative' -- is that is the reason Cyp [Cyprien] won this recruiting war is he got to the mom. And here is a kid who never saw his mom sitting in the stands, and all of a sudden she wants to be a part of his life. She wants to go on a recruiting trip with him."
Of the chief recruiter and Kentucky winning out, the Indiana Elite founder says it was "awful to see that happen." The battle between Barnett and Cyprien became an ugly sidebar to the recruitment of Liggins, who committed to Kentucky, then played his senior season at Findlay Prep in Las Vegas.
The story goes on to say that when Liggins committed to Kentucky,
Barnett shut off the cell phone that he allowed Liggins to use and essentially cut him out of his life. According to the story, that's not the only time such a thing has happened.
Perhaps the most interesting portion of the story, however, is the note that
Liggins was suspended for nine games in the 2009-10 season for his association with Barnett. You might remember that the young man did not play at all during the start of the season and Calipari remained very tight-lipped about the reasoning. Most assumed it was a player-coach feud. That now appears to not be the case.
This all reminds me, did anyone watch South Park last night?
Discuss This Article
Comments have moved.
Join the conversation and talk about this article and all things Kentucky Sports in the new KSR Message Board.
KSBoard