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USC hoops did its penance

Image (1) ss_070323_NCAA2_04_standard.jpg for post 65

Kevin O’Neill is a happy man.

USC’s self-imposed ban from postseason play, a reduction in scholarships and vacating victories from O.J. Mayo’s lone was enough to ensure the NCAA didn’t levy serious penalties on the men’s basketball team.

Then again, given what the NCAA did to the Trojans football program, maybe it just forgot about the men’s team...not that O’Neill cares. He’s simply glad the worst is over.

“I know this, had we been hit with another year of postseason ban, our program would have been in shambles,” O’Neill told Andy Katz. “I definitely was concerned that we might get another year, especially as long as it went [from Feb. 18 to June 10, long past the six-to-eight week timetable given normally by the COI]. That was my concern -- the time.”

The additional minor penalties include:

  • Four years probation (June 2010 through June 2014)
  • Prohibition of non-university employees, including boosters from traveling on charters, attending practices, participating or donating to camps or accessing locker rooms before during or after games.
  • No contact with Mayo or Rodney Guillory. (That sounds like a no-brainer, but it means no financial or recruiting help from Mayo.)

Oddly enough, Tim Floyd, the coach at the center of all this, emerged relatively unscathed. (Unless you consider this punishment.) So why’d he resign and take the heat for the Mayo mess if he was innocent? Who knows. Maybe he was forced out, maybe he wanted out.

Or maybe the NCAA forgot about him.

Mike Miller’s also on Twitter, usually talkin’ hoops.