First of all, tremendous work by The NY Times' Pete Thamel, the Woodward and/or Bernstein of the Binghamton Bearcat basketball saga. And he's a Cuse guy. Double win.
So we know all about former SU commit and Bingo star Tiki Mayben doin' a little bit of naughty-business. Mayben was released on bail shorty-thereafter but found himself booted from the team nonetheless. It was just one more bad piece of news for a program already swimming in badness:
Mayben’s arrest is the third during Broadus’s three-year tenure, and the athletic department will again face questions about the basketball team’s behavior. In addition to the arrests, the university is dealing with a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a fund-raiser who asserted that two athletic department officials used her as a "plaything." And last school year, an adjunct lecturer, Sally Dear, said that she felt pressured to give breaks to basketball players that were not available to other students.
Bad times. And so, already up to their eyeballs in bad vibes, Binghamton Coach Kevin Broadus and the University did the only thing they could...they hit Ctrl-Alt-Dlt on the entire program.
D.J. Rivera, Malik Alvin, Corey Chandler, Paul Crosby and David Fine were released from the Binghamton University basketball team today, university officials announced this afternoon.
The reason why? According to Associate Director of Athletics for Communications John Hartrick, it was because "they are not toeing the line. Their attitude and behavior … is not what we expect from our student-athletes."
You might have noticed a familiar last name on that list. Fine. As in David Fine. As in son of Bernie Fine, assistant coach for Syracuse basketball. David had seen some limited action last season for the team but nothing substantial. That said, I'm guessing we won't be scheduling Binghamton anytime soon.
Just to give you some perspective on how this effects the team, Mayben, Rivera and Alvin were the team's three leading scorers last season. As for where this leaves the Bearcats, they have 10 scholarship players on the roster eligible to play. Even with those numbers, Pete Thamel alludes to the fact that they're going to have some issues bringing up the ball this season:
Binghamton returns one scholarship guard and has no scholarship point guards. Only one scholarship guy under 6-5.
If you can handle the ball and you've got some eligibility left, I'd say now's the perfect time to take that pottery class you've always wanted to take at BU.
H/T: Matt Gelb