Big Trouble in Storrs

This should have been a week for the celebration of Connecticut basketball... the men's team is a top seed in the NCAA Tournament and rolled through the opening weekend of March Madness. The women's team is undefeated, and in the Sweet Sixteen for the sixteenth straight year.

Instead, all eyes are on Storrs... for all the wrong reasons.

A report by Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! sports indicates that UConn violated NCAA rules in the recruiting of Nate Miles.

At the very least, it appears that Connecticut staffers made more phone calls to Miles than were allowed under NCAA recruiting guidelines... which is the same problem that initially got Kelvin Sampson in hot water at Oklahoma.

If that were the only issue, the Huskies would probably be looking at a slap on the wrist -- a restriction in recruiting days or something similar. But there's another angle to Wojnarowski and Wetzel's story that is far more troubling. Josh Nochimson, a student-manager on the 1999 NCAA Championship team turned NBA player agent, was apparently involved in the recruiting of Miles in a variety of inappropriate ways, providing for food, lodging and travel expenses. As a UConn booster, Nochimson would be strictly prohibited from providing anything of value to a potential recruit. Further, according to phone records, the Connecticut staff was in contact with Nochimson on a daily basis -- which could indicate they were using him to steer recruits to Storrs.

Nochimson has also been accused of embezzling funds from his NBA player clients, including ex-UConn star Richard Hamilton of the Detroit Pistons.

The university released an official statement in response to the article, which stresses the fact that Miles never actually played for the Huskies. While true, that's actually irrelevant. Miles was expected to be a big contributor on this year's team, but was expelled before the season began after violating a restraining order.