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July 2009
Categories
| Cougars: February 2009Every story has two sides and now Cougars quarterback Marshall Lobbestael's side is coming out, at least according to cougfan.com. Wulff would not detail the facts of the case but Cougfan.com has learned from reliable independent sources that: 1) Lobbestael was not "passed out", 2) that the woman he was helping to walk was not unconscious, 3) that Lobbestael spoke with police on two occasions just prior and was not arrested. It'll be interesting to see becomes of this case. Here is Monday's story about Lobbestael's arrest. You can also read Deadspin's "alternative" take on the 19-year-old's trouble with johnny law. . Cougars guard Taylor Rochestie earns PAC-10 Player of the Week. The senior guard averaged 24.5 points per game against USC & UCLA. Rochestie did most of his damage against UCLA. He scored a career high 33 points and played the entire 40 minutes against the Bruins. It's Rochestie's first P.O.W. award.
The McDonald's All-American game invited three high schoolers with ties to Washington. Bellarmine Prep's Abdul Gaddy, former Bell Prep star Avery Bradley (he's now playing at Findlay College Prep in Nevada), and Franklin's Peyton Siva were selected to play in the April 1st game in Miami. Here's the website for more info. It's the second time that 3 players with Washington ties have made the list. In 2005, Martell Webster, Micah Downs, and Jon Brockman were McDonald's All-Americans. The very first from Washington was Mercer Island's Quinn Synder. ...Cougars athletic director Jim Sterk and (I believe it was) Assoc. Dir. of Athletics and NCAA Compliance Steve Robertello did a teleconference with reporters. The Cougs say they were pretty surprised by the severity of the penalties. Sterk felt that Paul Wulff really had no oversight during the time of the violations. He went through 5 Athletic Directors and 3 school Presidents. Also during that period, Wulff didn't have a compliance person or academic advisor. Sterk also said he knew about the violations as he put Wulff through a job interview. When they hired him, the Cougars put in a support system to help Wulff. Sterk claims that saved Wazzu & Wulff's butts for any kind of severe punishment. You can hear Sterk's & Robertello's teleconference right here. ...As you may already know, Eastern Washington's football program got hit with a bunch of penalties by the NCAA. Cougars coach Paul Wulff was in charge during the violations. Now the Cougars have fired off a statement about the infractions. "During Paul's hiring process he was straightforward about these allegations," said Cougars AD Jim Sterk. "We take these issues very seriously and believe Paul is a man of tremendous integrity and the situation derived more from a lack of institutional control at Eastern Washington, where limited compliance and academic staff were in place at that time. Paul was not found by the NCAA to have purposely violated NCAA rules in order to gain a recruiting advantage." Here's a snippet from Wulff's statement: "I understand the severity of the situation and at no time did I ever intentionally violate NCAA rules. As head coach I take responsibility for the mistakes that occurred and accept the NCAA's penalties." If you want to read the complete statement by Wazzu, click on the jump. It's has more from Sterk and Wulff. UPDATE: Both Sterk and Wulff will hold teleconferences tonight. We'll try to pass them all as soon as possible. The NCAA penalizes Eastern Washington for violations during WSU coach Paul Wulff's tenure there. Eastern will be on 3 years of probation, banned from post season in 2009, lose 2 scholarships, and be limited on recruiting and coaching. Among the violations announced Wednesday were allowing ineligible athletes to practice, having too many assistant coaches and failure to properly monitor the team. - associated press Wulff will be banned from coaching the Cougars for the first three days of the season. Here's the NCAA's news release. One of more disturbing things from that release is this: The committee found that the violations in this case were the result of the former head coach's inattention to certain aspects of his program. The committee stated it was most concerned that the former head coach did not report various violations to the compliance office once he learned of them. - ncaa report 2/11/09 To quote Ricky Ricardo, sounds like Wulff's got some 'splaining to do. I guess it makes the Huskies fog machine violation look pretty minor by comparison. You can read the whole news release detailing the penalities and more after the jump. ...The University of Tennessee has self-reported two secondary recruiting violations. One was for a mock press conference. Here's the funny or ironic part. Guess what happened for the second violation? Here's a hint, new head coach Lane Kiffin coached at USC with Huskies head coach Steve Sarkisian. If you guessed that it involves a fog machine, you are correct. Sarkisian and the Huskies recently got tagged for secondary violation for using a fog machine too. Now obviously there's no proof that they learned this trick from USC, but it's a little weird that both were assistants with the Trojans. ...It's been a long day on the recruiting front. Especially if you're coach for the Huskies and Cougars. Both sides can finally take a breather, at least until Spring ball and recruiting begins again. Here's the latest rankings. Huskies
Not exactly what to make out of the rankings. They seem pretty fickle and heavily favors the east coast. But the Huskies made quite the comeback. As recently as Tuesday, Rivals had them at 85th. Today, they jumped 17 spots. Scout.com bumped them up two spots from 66th to 68th. Still, it's the worst rankings for the Dawgs in the school's history, but not by much. That happened in 2005. UW ranked 66th by Rivals & 55th by Scout.
In case you didn't see our sports video section, here's our interviews. Huskies coach Steve Sarkisian
3:30pm UPDATE: Wazzu adds two more to the list. They've got 23 now. All but two are freshman
Jamal Atofau - S - Bellevue
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