A Mess Up in Binghamton

Read here for a headline. And read here for more details. And if you want more detail, click on some of the linked articles that appear next to the articles that I highlighted.

It's all hard to figure, to a degree. After all, a few years back Binghamton hired Kevin Broadus, formerly an assistant to John Thompson III at Georgetown, to become its head basketball coach. Now you've all read probably more than you wished about the Princeton coaching family, from Pete Carril to Gary Walters, the late Bob Dukiet, Armond Hill, Bill Carmody, Joe Scott, Chris Mooney and, of course, Thompson, about Carril's insistence on integrity and excellence, honesty with one's self and doing things the right way. And this is a pretty outstanding group of guys, not perfect, but very good. So, it stood to reason for Binghamton that Broadus, as a distant relative of that family tree, would bring the same principles to bear in Binghamton.

Except things didn't turn out that way. Last year, there was controversy in Binghamton's league, when rival coaches refused to vote for guard D.J. Rivera as player of the year because they didn't like Binghamton's recruiting practices. And then, as the second linked article points out, Binghamton recently dismissed a bunch of basketball players from the team. So, as the investigation will determine, either a bunch of kids with questionable histories somehow passed through the filters of the admissions office, Broadus had some dumb luck, there was awful communication between Broadus and the admissions office, Broadus deliberately pushed the admissions envelope to win, or a combination of the above.

The whole thing is a mess, and one that you traditionally wouldn't expect to see at a school like Binghamton or from a coach like Broadus, given who his most recent mentor was (Thompson III). It's a story that's hard to believe, and now former John Chaney favorite Mark Macon is the acting head coach in an most unenviable situation.