ANTHONY GETTINO
Assistant Sports Editor
This past week, the men’s basketball program at the University at Buffalo was handed a one-year probation by the NCAA along with more sanctions to be followed after a former assistant coach was caught forging recruiting documents.
These sanctions are not to the levels that have been bestowed to programs in the past, such as the sanctions handed to Syracuse University in 2015, where the school lost eight scholarships over four years, along with the loss of over 100 wins over a 10-year span.
The other sanctions that UB will face are the loss of five days of recruiting in the 2020-21 academic year, a two-week ban on all recruiting communication in the 2020-21 academic year and a $5,000 fine to be paid to the NCAA.
The reason for the severe difference in penalties that these schools face is due to two factors.
The first is the difference in offenses. Buffalo was found to forge recruiting documents, which compared to the academic scandals that Syracuse faced are almost of no consequence to the NCAA as an organization. Syracuse was also found to give improper benefits to a total of five student-athletes in the time that the violations took place.
The second and more prevalent reason for the disparity between the two schools’ punishments is the response time. The University at Buffalo staff did a very good job of finding this violation and self-reporting it to the NCAA as soon as it was found. Syracuse, on the other hand, had these violations going on at their institution for a decade, with no self-reports being sent to the NCAA.
What does this news mean to the basketball team now? The team will have less time to recruit in the 2021 cycle and the 2022 cycle, but as a mid-major program, they should be able to recover rather quickly. The team’s recruiting has recently centered around bringing in transfers of either Community College standouts or players from Power 5 schools that weren’t getting as many opportunities to play as they were hoping for.