OSU LAWSUIT O'Brien plans to fight accusations of NCAA violations

His lawsuit against Ohio State wrapped up on Friday.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Former Ohio State basketball coach Jim O'Brien said Friday he will continue to fight accusations of NCAA violations surrounding his tenure with the Buckeyes while awaiting the verdict in his multi-million dollar lawsuit against the university.
O'Brien's lawsuit against Ohio State wrapped up Friday. Ohio Court of Claims Judge Joseph T. Clark said he anticipated having a decision by Feb. 15.
O'Brien, speaking in a hallway of the downtown courthouse, said he would continue to defend himself and the program he once headed.
"I'm going down swinging against all of that NCAA stuff," O'Brien said.
O'Brien sued Ohio State saying he was improperly fired in June 2004 for giving 7-foot-3 Serbian recruit Aleksandar Radojevic a $6,000 loan. The ex-coach, who led the Buckeyes to the Final Four in 1999, is seeking salary and benefits of at least $3.5 million. With interest and damages he could receive up to $9.5 million.
Another case
In a separate case, Ohio State is facing additional sanctions to the men's basketball program for extra benefits allegedly provided to Boban Savovic, another O'Brien recruit who was on the Final Four team. Ohio State is awaiting a February hearing before the NCAA.
O'Brien said he will direct his attentions to fighting the NCAA's charges against him and his former program.
"I don't believe any of these NCAA allegations are accurate," he said. "That is something I feel very, very strongly about."
O'Brien, who lives in Boston, said he was unsure what his coaching legacy would be.
"I know how I feel about it," he said. "I hope the kids that played for me will understand what's going on because I know in their hearts they know what I am all about. I can't control how anybody else feels. I just want the kids who were on our teams to reflect on how we ran our program because we ran a very, very clean program."
Major point
One of the major points of the five-day trial was whether O'Brien admitted to violating NCAA rules when he first told then-Ohio State athletic director Andy Geiger in April of 2004 of the loan he had given to Radojevic's family almost 51/2 years earlier.
O'Brien, who coached the Buckeyes to a 133-88 record that included two Big Ten titles and a conference tournament title in seven seasons, denies he ever said he broke NCAA rules. Geiger said the minute O'Brien acknowledged he had broken rules, it was clear that O'Brien's job was in jeopardy.
"Ohio State fired coach O'Brien for doing something that Andy Geiger described as a 'noble act,' " O'Brien attorney Joseph Murray said in the opening sentence of his closing statement.
Ohio State attorney William Porter countered that O'Brien had broken NCAA rules and had declined to reveal them on numerous occasions. Chief among those rules was the taboo against giving a recruit money.
"Coach O'Brien knew the fundamental rule, Recruiting 101," Porter said. "He chose to ignore it."
Radojevic never played at Ohio State and never enrolled in classes at the school. After he signed to come to Ohio State from a junior college, it was determined that he had played professionally for a team in Yugoslavia and he was declared ineligible by the NCAA.
Previous testimony
In previous testimony, O'Brien's lawyers said the loan did not violate NCAA rules because O'Brien already knew the player had forfeited his amateur status. They also said the payment was outside the NCAA's four-year statute of limitations.
"The coach claimed five years after the fact, after the payment, that this was the right thing to do," Porter said. "It was humanitarian. 'After all, I had evaluated the NCAA bylaws and I had determined that Alex was a professional.' ... I honestly wonder, in light of that testimony, if he got his NCAA book out and tried to verify his conclusions while he was counting out the 100's and 50's [dollar bills] that he put into the envelope."
Earlier testimony revealed that the NCAA investigated a $5,000 payment by Geiger to a friend of player Scoonie Penn in 1999 for mentoring services, according to court documents.
Michael Glazier, a Kansas attorney advising the university on the NCAA's investigation, said in a deposition that the payment to Lucy Cormier would be a violation if the services were offered only to Penn because it would constitute preferential treatment for a single athlete.
Geiger said Friday in a phone interview that the mentoring was for several players, including Penn.