The NCAA announced on Friday that Oklahoma State has been given a one-year postseason ban, effective for the 2020-21 college basketball season, due to violations that were uncovered during the FBI’s investigation into college basketball.
In addition to the one-year postseason ban, Mike Boynton’s staff has been hit with a reduction of three scholarships over the course of the next three seasons and a handful of recruiting sanctions, including reductions on the number of official and unofficial visits as well as in-person recruiting days.
The program will be on probation for the next three years.
Former assistant coach Lamont Evans, the coach that accepted as much as $22,000 in bribes from two financial advisors, was given a 10-year show-cause penalty due to a Level I unethical conduct charge. Evans was one of the ten men that was arrested in September of 2017 as a result of the FBI’s investigation, and was caught accepting bribes while on staff at South Carolina as well. He served three months in prison in 2019.
Boynton was not charged in the investigation and did not take over the program until 2017, after Brad Underwood left for Illinois. He had been an assistant with the program since 2016, working with Evans for a year before getting the head coaching gig.
These sanctions are particularly bad for Oklahoma State because of what they have coming in next season: Cade Cunningham, the No. 1 recruit in the 2020 class. This is the year that Boynton was supposed to be able to change the narrative and the fortunes of the program. Instead, he will not be able to play in the NCAA tournament, and will have to deal with an even tougher road on the recruiting trail as a result.