Larry Brown just can't catch a break this year. The 74-year-old SMU coach lost one of the best recruits in the country before the start of the season when point guard Emmanuel Mudiay decided to turn pro in China rather than play for the Mustangs. Starting power forward Markus Kennedy would be ruled ineligible for the first semester a few months later. Now it's looking like SMU has even bigger problems than all of that.
Keith Frazier is ineligible, and SMU might be in deeper trouble than that
The Mustangs have won 11 of their last 12 games, but the program has suddenly found itself in hot water with the NCAA.
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Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
Sophomore shooting guard Keith Frazier is academically ineligible and is likely to miss the remainder of the season, according to ESPN's Jeff Goodman. The school has already reportedly been rejected on one appeal to salvage Frazier's season. According to Pat Forde of Yahoo! Sports, Frazier's eligibility issues could be the tip of the iceberg.
.@GoodmanESPN's Frazier report part of mushroom cloud situation at SMU. Assistant who recruited him put on leave. NCAA on case, per source.
— Pat Forde (@YahooForde) January 16, 2015 Frazier was a key recruit in the revitalization of SMU basketball under Brown. He was a McDonald's All-American and the No. 49 prospect in the class of 2013, according to ESPN. Frazier was a reserve on a talented team that finished 27-10 and just missed the NCAA Tournament a year ago, and had taken another step forward this season. At the moment, he's averaging 10.5 points per game on 45 percent shooting from the field.
This is how he committed to SMU back in the spring of 2013:
Ya boy a SMU Mu$tang lets get it!
— KeithKash (@Keith_Frazier) April 2, 2013 The assistant who recruited both Frazier and Mudiay is Ulric Maligi. Earlier this week, Maligi took an indefinite leave of absence from the program for “personal reasons”.
SMU has won 11 of its last 12 and is integrating Kennedy back into the lineup. With the American not looking nearly as strong last last year, it seemed like there was a good chance SMU could still find its way into the NCAA Tournament picture. Maybe that’s still possible even without Frazier, but it’s becoming obvious there’s a lot of smoke around the program.
SMU, more than any other school, knows how that story can end. For now, the Mustangs just have to hope a talented core of Kennedy, Nic Moore, Ben Moore and center Yanick Moreira can weather the storm. Brown has seen a lot during his Hall of Fame coaching career, but the way his team has come undone over the last six months must be unsettling. He's getting too old for this.
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