Hoosiers impose own penalties

Former Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson wants a chance to tell his side of the story.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana University told the NCAA Monday that its own self-imposed penalties should be enough keep the organization from having to punish the school for improper phone calls made by Kelvin Sampson before he resigned as basketball coach.

Sampson said he had been judged before he had a chance to present his side to the NCAA.

The Hoosiers still face a hearing in front of the NCAA’s infractions committee. Sampson resigned late last season, and new coach Tom Crean inherited a one-year extension of recruiting restrictions on phone calls and the loss of one scholarship for the 2008-09 season.

Indiana also limited Crean to 10 off-campus recruiting days before July 31.

“In light of the fact that the University had decided to impose significant sanctions that more than compensated for the number of impermissible phone calls and any recruiting advantage that may have been gained, Indiana University determined these calls did not warrant the imposition of additional penalties,” the school said in a 750-page response to the NCAA.

“Further, since the University now has a new coaching staff that was not involved in any way with these phone calls (or the other allegations) and since this staff already has to serve the remainder of the self-imposed penalties, the University continues to believe additional penalties are unnecessary.”

But in a statement addressed to the NCAA and reported Monday night by The Indianapolis Star and CBSSports.com, Sampson said he had “cooperated fully” with Indiana’s compliance program.

“I told my staff repeatedly that I never again wanted to go through an experience like I had in the Oklahoma case and that we as a staff needed to completely buy into the monitoring systems implemented by Indiana’s compliance program,” he said in the statement.

“I have been judged by many in the media and public to be a cheat and a liar, and I have lost my job — all long before I will have had an opportunity to present my case to you [the NCAA] and without Indiana University conducting a meaningful investigation into the allegations,” he added.

Sampson took the Indiana job in March 2006 and two months later was penalized by the NCAA for making 577 impermissible phone calls between 2000 and 2004 when he was the coach at Oklahoma. A second wave of charges emerged last October when an IU investigation found Sampson and his staff made more than 100 impermissible calls while still under the earlier recruiting restrictions, and that Sampson participated in at least 10 three-way calls, another violation of the NCAA’s punishment.

In the response, the university agreed that Sampson “provided false and misleading information” to Indiana and said it had done everything possible once the improper calls became known.