Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Excessive phone calls becoming a headache for Iowa State

Fred Hoiberg

Iowa State head coach Fred Hoiberg argues a foul call with an official during the first half of their NCAA college basketball game against TCU Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, at Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Justin Hayworth)

AP

Two former men’s basketball staff members are at the heart of an investigation into the men’s basketball program that could cause a headache for new head coach Fred Hoiberg.

What happened was that Hoiberg walked into an AAU tournament to watch his son play and saw former graduate assistant Keith “Lefty” Moore in the stands. Moore wasn’t allowed to be at the game, as he was essentially recruiting, and when Hoiberg reported the violation, Moore was fired.

But it also opened up an investigation into Iowa State’s recruiting practices, and that created more of a problem.

From the Ames Tribune:
The ISU investigation found Moore to have made 160 impermissible text messages and 12 impermissible phone calls to five prospects he had coached at All Iowa Attack.

Moore isn’t the only one that could be in trouble, however. The staff, in total, made 158 impermissible phone calls, although 118 of them were simply the result of improper logging of phone contacts:

Twenty-one of the remaining “culpable calls” were made by [Daniyal] Robinson after he had already “made permissible call(s) to a prospect during the legislated time period,” the report said.

Members of the current staff were found to have committed nine “true” violations — calls that occurred at an improper time, after another coach had called, or after a previous call had been made during a legislated time period.

Hoiberg had three such calls, associate head coach T.J. Otzelberger five, and former associate director of basketball operations and current assistant Matt Abdelmassih one.

[Greg] McDermott, now the head coach at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., was found to have made four “true” violation calls.


Here’s the irony: none of these violations are still violations. While there are folks fighting the rule changes, as of right now, there is no limit to the number of phone calls that a coaching staff can make to recruits.

Robinson is currently an assistant coach at Notre Dame and McDermott is now the head coach at Creighton. The Cyclones have already self-imposed some sanctions, and they are hoping that the NCAA will leave it at that.

We’ll have to wait and see what the next step is.

You can find Rob on twitter @RobDauster.