If Kentucky basketball players missed the FBI investigation, they need to get out more | Tim Sullivan

Courier Journal

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Hamidou Diallo missed the memo. He missed the news conference. He missed the headlines. He missed the seismic scroll on ESPN. He professed to be unaware of the scandal rocking college basketball, about the FBI’s probe of unscrupulous agents, complicit coaches and shoe company shadiness.

“What happened with Adidas and the FBI?” Diallo asked Thursday afternoon. “ ... I ain’t hear nothing about that.”

Where does John Calipari keep his Kentucky basketball players? In Mammoth Cave? Some of these guys need to get out more.

To hear the Wildcats discuss the federal investigation of conspiracy and bribery in basketball recruiting during their media day interviews was to imagine they had wandered into UK’s practice gym from a sensory deprivation tank. Player after player pleaded ignorance or irrelevance, as if they were oblivious or indifferent to the arrest of 10 individuals, the fall of Rick Pitino and the formation of an NCAA commission to address the corruption commonplace in their sport.

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Freshman guard Quade Green: “I don’t have nothing to do with that really. I wasn’t focused into all that. ... I just worry about myself. I worry about my destiny.’’

Freshman guard Jemarl Baker: “I haven’t followed it at all. It doesn’t really have anything to do with me. I’m just worried about our team, worried about the season, getting ready for the season. I haven’t really thought about it.’”

Freshman forward PJ Washington: “Honestly, I really haven’t been paying attention to it. Really trying to focus on what we have to do every day and get better as a team.”

Freshman guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: “It doesn’t really concern me at all. I knew coming here I was going to have to work every day, wasn’t promised anything. ... It doesn’t concern me. I don’t think about it.”

And so on. Some of the nation’s most coveted players would have you think they enrolled at UK not only untainted but completely unaware of the brisk black market operating just beneath the surface of their sport. They sounded coached and not terribly convincing, eager to change the subject from one that has dominated discussion in recent days.

Yes, it’s conceivable no member of the nation’s No. 2-ranked recruiting class was ever aware of or approached with an under-the-table offer. That said, such an anomaly would reflect an astonishing level of negligence on the part of the nefarious characters who populate the sport’s subculture. It would be easier to believe the homework-eating dog could also dunk.

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Yet while no one familiar with the landscape is likely to dispute NCAA President Mark Emmert’s claim that the “culture of silence in college basketball enables bad actors,” to speak out is to invite additional scrutiny and to risk being labeled a snitch. This helps explain Calipari’s efforts at evasion during Thursday's UK media day and his resolve to steer the conversation away from scandal (despite the persistence of Herald-Leader pit bull Jerry Tipton).

“Well, what's out there right now is a black eye,” Calipari said. “But here is the thing for everybody here: I don't want to come across as uneducated or dumb. None of us know where this thing's going. So for me to really comment much on it, I mean, I don't know where all this is going.

“Obviously, what's happened to this point isn't good. At this point, I don't think me commenting without knowing all the facts is the right thing to do.”

Fair enough. If a coach is unwilling to level specific allegations against competitors, shoe companies, street agents or AAU programs, broad generalizations can easily backfire. Though many Kentucky fans delight in Louisville’s misery – and there’s been a lot of that lately – few programs are so far above reproach as to presume piety.

“I’m definitely trying to avoid controversy,” UK sophomore Wenyen Gabriel said. “I’m still a young player right now, got my ambition and things that I’m trying to do. ... I’m just happy I’m not involved or (that there's an issue) here at Kentucky.

“That stuff happened over there (Louisville). Maybe there’s some other schools that might be going through the same thing. Maybe there’s some other people worried right now because they’re probably not the only school doing that.”

Maybe?

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com or @TimSullivan714 on Twitter.