Kansas basketball: Biggest takeaway from NCAA allegations response

Kansas basketball has officially responded to the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations that they received back in September.

Kansas basketball and football got hit with a Notice of Allegations (NOA) by the NCAA last September. Tonight, they fired back, and Kansas emphatically denied or said the NCAA was wrong about nearly everything the NCAA brought up.

It was fairly well known that the Jayhawks weren’t going to roll over for the NCAA once they announced the NOA. Bill Self made a statement claiming his innocence, and athletic director Jeff Long supported Self and the basketball program.

Here’s one of the key points from the University’s official response:

"“In this case, stemming from federal criminal trials in 2018, there are several facts that are in dispute; there are assumptions made; and, perhaps most importantly, there are unprecedented and novel theories put forward that, if found to have merit by the Panel, would dramatically alter the collegiate sports landscape in ways not contemplated by the Membership.”"

Kansas goes on to address many of the specific allegations made by the NCAA, including the Adidas scandal, failure to monitor, head coaching responsibility, and others.

Here’s the takeaway: Kansas basketball has a chance.

If the Jayhawks can somehow get out of all this nonsense without being scathed, it’d truly be a miracle, knowing how the NCAA operates. All in all, there’s still reason to expect some punishment. This is the NCAA we’re talking about. Still, this response does inspire confidence, and that’s a major win.

The response claims Kansas’ innocence multiple times and also makes it a point to say that many of the allegations are not based in fact.

Just look at the response in regard to Larry Brown. The NCAA NOA is trying to assert that Larry Brown is somehow still a representative of the university despite not having coached in over 30 years. The response by Kansas explains just how preposterous this is:

“…the enforcement staff alleges Larry Brown, the former Kansas head men’s basketball coach (1983-1988) is a representative of Kansas’s athletic interests even though he has not coached in Lawrence in more than thirty years, and since his departure has not promoted or recruited on behalf of the University’s athletics programs, and has never donated to the University’s athletics programs.”

Overall, this response looks like a really solid move from the Kansas athletics department. The next step is to see how the NCAA responds, as they’ll have a sixty-day window to do so. At some point after that, there will be a hearing, but that date is TBD.

The best thing Kansas basketball can do now is to win the title. It’d be quite a sight to see the NCAA handing over a trophy to Bill Self and his team.