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Twitter error results in secondary violation for Memphis

Josh Pastner

Memphis head coach Josh Pastner is joined by the team mascot after beating Marshall 83-57 in an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Conference USA tournament on Saturday, March 10, 2012, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

AP

Twitter can be an easy avenue in which to make a mistake, especially for those who aren’t as well-versed in the social network.

And in the case of college coaches, some of whom don’t use Twitter as much as others, that can lead to problems in the form of inadvertent NCAA rules violations.

That’s what happened to Memphis head coach Josh Pastner, who made the mistake of tweeting the name of unsigned 2012 prospect Tony Parker late Tuesday night.

Pastner was attempting to perform a search of the Lithonia, Georgia native’s name on Twitter in hopes of figuring out the status of his recruitment but instead committed a secondary violation.

If anything Pastner, who is heading into his fourth season at Memphis, had too much on his plate given the departure of assistant Jack Murphy (now the head coach at Northern Arizona) and assistant director of operations Matt Dunn (now a part of Murphy’s staff).

Dunn handled Memphis’ recruiting database while Murphy was the one who took care of the program’s official Twitter account most of the time.

“We’re a couple men down and I’m very methodical in my hiring. Plus, you’re in a recruiting period and we’re making sure that we’re finishing up strong academically. So I was probably doing too many things at once,” Pastner said Wednesday.

“My wife was yelling at me because I was on the phone too loud. I was waking (the couple’s infant daughter) up and waking my wife up because I had the TV on. She was complaining that I not only woke my daughter up, but I also woke the baby inside her up because she’s pregnant.

“So I was waking everybody up, I was getting yelled at and on top of that I was thinking, ‘What’s going on with recruiting?’ and ‘Who am I going to hire?’ and I made a mistake.”


With the next two weekends being open evaluation periods Pastner along with assistants Damon Stoudamire and Jimmy Williams will be on the road, and along with that responsibility comes to need to make two new hires.

Pastner has a lot on his plate right now, which would probably make it more likely that the Twitter account goes silent for the time being.

Raphielle is also the assistant editor at CollegeHoops.net and can be followed on Twitter at @raphiellej.