Hoosiers to defend selves in Seattle

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana University is about to go on defense with the NCAA.

School officials are scheduled to go before the NCAA infractions committee Friday in Seattle over alleged rules violations by former basketball coach Kelvin Sampson.

They will be trying to avoid penalties beyond the scholarship and recruiting restrictions the school imposed when the allegations came to light last year.

The case against Sampson was detailed in a 96-page report sent to the university in May and made public last week. The NCAA accuses Sampson of providing false and misleading information to investigators about more than 100 impermissible calls and knowingly violating NCAA recruiting restrictions imposed because of a previous phone-call scandal at Oklahoma.

What Indiana must do now is explain how all this happened while making the case it has endured enough punishment and made major changes through its buyout of Sampson’s contract and reorganization of its athletic compliance staff.

A decision is not expected from the NCAA committee until at least late July.

“I felt the penalties that were self-imposed were significant and, of course, that’s in addition to all the changes you just mentioned,” university trustees president Stephen Ferguson told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “Those are significant changes, and I don’t know what more the university could do.”

Among the self-imposed penalties were Sampson’s forfeiture of a $500,000 pay raise, the loss of one scholarship for 2008-09 and a one-year extension of the restrictions placed on Sampson and his staff. Indiana bought out Sampson’s contract in February for $750,000 and hired Tom Crean away from Marquette in April as his replacement.

According to the NCAA’s report, Indiana officials agreed with most of the facts laid out by the NCAA. But the university will likely have to answer questions on whether the alleged infractions should have been detected earlier and whether Sampson should have been fired when the allegations were raised last summer.

Sampson was head coach at Washington State for seven seasons, leaving in 1994.