Kentucky Wildcats: Dan Dakich Accuses Kentucky of an NCAA Violation

Comes now Dan Dakich, former Indiana Hoosiers assistant and interim head coach after Kelvin Sampson was fired, to accuse Kentucky of a recruiting violation.

Yes, that's right, Dakich claims he was told that former IU commit Trey Lyles visited Kentucky during July, most of which is an NCAA dead period were contact is prohibited. Here's Adam Zagoria's report:

Tom Lyles called accusations that his son visited Kentucky in July "ridiculous," "retarded" and "dumb" and said he and Trey visited the Kentucky campus for the first time a week ago.

Lyles was responding to comments made by Dan Dakich of 1070 The Fan in Indianapolis indicating that Trey, a 6-foot-8 power forward, visited Kentucky in July prior to his de-commitment from Indiana.

Dakich claims he got the information from "a very good source," but adds that he had "no proof of the visit other than what his source told him."

Dakich is now a member of the broadcast media, and as such has some semblance of a responsibility to do things like confirm reports of NCAA violations before repeating them on the air. I know that in today's instant-communications world, confirming reports has become something of an anachronism (just witness the Chicago Sun-Times fiasco with Anthony Davis), but its always a good idea, and it should be incumbent upon a guy who is required to put on the "journalist" hat occasionally to make sure he is being fair to those who might be hurt by such a claim.

Make no mistake, Dakich has accused UK of a recruiting violation that, if true, would require them to stop recruiting Lyles. That would also be a black mark on our compliance, and could result in John Calipari suffering additional sanctions.

Lyles the senior was completely unambiguous about refuting the claim, calling it "ridiculous," "retarded," "dumb," "untrue," and suggesting that Dakich is telling "lies." I think we know what his opinion of Dakich is.

For the record, none of us knows if Dakich is lying, or merely repeating what he was told. I'd lean to the latter, although I can't rule out the former, because this is such a blatantly disrespectful act of self-aggrandizement that an outright lie cannot be ruled out. A truly honest and respectful man would have forwarded this information, including the name of the contact, to the NCAA for investigation, not blather it out on the public airwaves, at least not without confirmation. This could negatively impact both the University of Kentucky and the younger Lyles even if false, which appears to me, absent information to the contrary, to be exactly Dakich's intent.

In my view, this is unacceptable and unethical behavior on the part of Dakich, and places him firmly on my Bob Knight list, where he no doubt has always belonged. If Dakich does prove to be right, I will write an apology in this space, but based on the facts available to me in this article, I very much doubt that he is right. Calipari is a fool if he would have acquiesced to such a blatant and needless violation of the rules, and trust me, he knows the rules and is nobody's fool.

Well, it has been awfully quiet on this front for a while. I suppose it was time for this sort of thing to crop up again.

Update:

Dakich tells Peegs ($$) that he's " not trying to get anybody in trouble with a violation. I could care less where the kid goes."

I confess the possibility of having neglected to apply Hanlon's Razor to my critique above. Dakich suggests that he didn't know it would have been a violation for Lyles to come in July.

Then again, Dakich was a Division I head coach. What the heck did he do when it was time to recruit, send out snail-mail and hope somebody responded? Can we really believe that he was ignorant of the NCAA rules, which have been like this for some time now.