|
Welcome to this week’s Tigers Basketball Insider. Below you’ll find the latest news and analysis from The Daily Memphian’s Parth Upadhyaya, John Martin and Tim Buckley.
When Memphis took another sizable step toward finalizing its 2023-24 roster last week, it only increased Tigers fans’ anticipation of a potential DeAndre Williams return.
Coach Penny Hardaway received a commitment from Alabama transfer guard Jahvon Quinerly on Friday, July 14. The former McDonald’s All-American’s pledge made him the eighth member of what’s become a loaded incoming transfer class.
Quinerly joined former Louisiana center Jordan Brown, former St. John’s forward David Jones, former UCF guard Jayhlon Young, former MTSU guard/forward Teafale Lenard Jr., former Division II Nova Southeastern guard/forward Jonathan Pierre, former Florida State guard Caleb Mills and former Temple forward Nick Jourdain as Memphis’ offseason transfer portal acquisitions.
As stellar as those additions are, though, none are likely to be as impactful as Williams would be for the Tigers next season.
Williams, a 6-foot-9 All-AAC forward, announced May 31 through a statement that he’d request reconsideration from the NCAA regarding his eligibility status in order to play one more season for Memphis. That process got closer to a resolution last week when Williams’ lawyer, Don Jackson, confirmed to The Daily Memphian that he had submitted all documentation and other pertinent information for Williams’ case to Memphis’ athletics compliance office.
Now, Memphis will send those findings to the NCAA at an unknown date in the near future.
But how compelling is the evidence Jackson and Williams gathered? And when can the Tigers reasonably expect the NCAA to reach a decision?
Let’s take a look.
The findings
Williams — who, at 26, was the oldest active player in college basketball last season — played the past three seasons at Memphis after spending the two prior at Evansville.
Originally a three-star prospect in the Class of 2016, Williams joined Evansville’s program in 2018 but was forced to sit out the 2018-19 campaign due to the NCAA’s delayed enrollment legislation.
Jackson and Williams claim it was misadvisement from people in positions of authority that made it so that Williams couldn’t enroll at a Division I institution until 2018.
Williams was advised to leave Houston’s Klein Forest High ahead of his senior year in 2015 and enroll in the Sports Association of Texas for Christian Homeschoolers (SATCH). But SATCH wasn’t accredited by the NCAA as an educational institution, so none of the credits Williams earned through the association counted toward NCAA eligibility. Then, Williams was directed to another homeschooling program — one that was deemed to be “under review” by the NCAA — where he earned his high school diploma in December 2016.
Unable to enroll at a college while the NCAA Clearinghouse sorted through his eligibility case, Williams spent the 2017-18 season at Nation Wide Academy, a prep school in Oklahoma City, before ultimately starting his collegiate career in 2018.
Items Jackson gathered over a six-week span and sent to Memphis as evidence of misadvisement include “a whole range” of emails from 2015 through 2018 and written confirmation of misadvisement in the form of a sworn notarized affidavit from one of the individuals who misadvised Williams.
“This is not ‘he said, she said,’” Jackson told The Daily Memphian. “This is not DeAndre’s word against anybody’s word. These are objectively established facts that were established contemporaneously by emails between the summer of 2015 and the time that he enrolled at the University of Evansville.”
What’s next?
Jackson had already expressed a great deal of confidence throughout this process that Williams would eventually regain his lost season of eligibility.
After now having sifted through various findings, his belief in the strength of Williams’ case has only increased.
“I’ve been able to find out things about the level and the degree of misadvisement that I didn’t know at the beginning,” Jackson said. “It’s one thing to hear it or to be told it; it’s something totally different to see it in writing. And it’s something totally different to have the person that was responsible to confirm, to acknowledge, ‘Yeah, this was my understanding. I communicated it. I was wrong.’”
While Jackson said last week that there was “no definitive timeline” for when Memphis would send the compiled materials to the NCAA, he added that it would be “sooner than later.”
Despite how clear he feels the evidence is, Jackson expects the NCAA to ask questions about any “specific issue” in the documentation once it is received. He’s aware that a resolution likely won’t be reached before the Tigers head to the Dominican Republic on Aug. 1 for their week-long summer trip, which is a deadline he’d initially set in early June.
“There’s not gonna be a rapid decision,” Jackson said. “This is a decision that’s likely going to play out over the course of days or weeks.”
But Jackson still has full belief that an outcome will be determined regarding Williams’ eligibility status before Memphis begins its fall semester with the first day of classes on Aug. 28.
And he’s optimistic it’ll be a favorable one, too.
“The focus is to have him enrolled on the first day of classes,” Jackson said. “Preferably to make that (Dominican Republic) trip, but the real focus is to have him enrolled in the fall and have a determination made by the fall.
“I think it’s quite reasonable to expect a decision before that time.”
More from your Insider:
Name, image and likeness high on SEC commissioner’s mind.
A game between the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee will happen this upcoming season, and newly hired Tigers coach Alex Simmons will be coaching against her alma mater.
Quinerly, a point guard, averaged 8.7 points, 3.6 assists and 1.9 rebounds in 21.2 minutes per game in 2022-23 and took home co-SEC Sixth Man of the Year honors.
In 2008, a kid from Chicago helped lead the Memphis Tigers to the NCAA championship game. Now he’s back in town to play for the Memphis Grizzlies.
In the summer before his first season in charge at Whitehaven High, former Memphis point guard Willie Kemp will coach the Beale Street Boys in The Basketball Tournament.
Williams, a four-star signee in Memphis’ 2023 class, has his preliminary hearing postponed for the second time in less than a month.
..... |
