It's been a tough two days for IU basketball.
A day after Maurice Creek underwent season-ending surgery on his torn Achilles, IU Athletics released a copy of the secondary violations report that said Crean had illegal contact with an unnamed 2012 recruit.
The statement said that Crean had been mistakenly told by IU Assistant Coach Tim Buckley that he was a day within the contact period for prospective recruits. Upon realizing he had mixed up the last day of the contact period with the first day of the evaluation period, Buckley reported the incident to IU compliance, who then reported it to the Big Ten and the NCAA.
Though the name of the prospective recruit is blacked out in the report, it is believed to be Gary Harris, the 6-4 guard out of Hamilton Southeastern who is currently ranked No. 10 in ESPN's top 100 recruits in 2012.
Yes, it was self-reported by Buckley to compliance and the NCAA the same day that the incident occurred. IU lost two recruiting days for the following school year and no major sanctions are likely to come from this.
Having said that, this cannot look good for Crean's recruitment of Harris. The Hamilton Southeastern guard has narrowed his list down to IU, Purdue, Michigan State and Kentucky, all of whom are obviously recruiting Harris like crazy.
Harris has already made his official visit to Purdue and is still scheduled to come to Hoosier Hysteria this Saturday, amidst the violation.
Who knows, the kid might be unaware of the swirling attention around the apparent mistake. But at the same time, it isn't often you hear about actual violations occurring before a recruit has committed to a school, then they end up signing with the accused school.
Obviously, the only one that knows what is going inside Harris' head right now is Harris. But negativity surrounding your recruitment cannot help the school in pursuit.
Whether or not this will have an impact on Harris coming to IU has yet to be determined. However, this is just more national headlines surrounding Crean's recruiting practices. After the allegations surrounding IU recruit Hanner Perea, this cannot bode well for Crean and IU's image, especially considering the program is still on probation from the Kelvin Sampson days.
Any time IU fans hear the words "Recruiting violations" their stomachs are going to drop. This appeared to be just an honest mix up of the recruiting calendar. We don't know whether or not Crean acted with malice by contacting Harris. But I'm sure this was not the prelude he and this program were looking for heading into Hoosier Hysteria on Saturday night.
