Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Guilt By Association? Not At Mercer

Paul Johnson has been added to the coaching staff at Mercer.

Like new head coach Bob Hoffman, Johnson was an assistant coach for a team hit with NCAA sanctions. While Johnson was at Louisiana-Lafayette, two seasons worth of records were vacated because of academic violations that rendered a player ineligible.

The NCAA found that neither Johnson nor any other member of the basketball staff knew about the violations when they happened.

Mercer head coach Bob Hoffman was in a similar situation when he was on Kelvin Sampson's staff at Oklahoma. There, the head coach and other assistants were flouting NCAA phone call rules. Like Johnson, Hoffman was cleared, but the resulting house-cleaning left him looking for work somewhere else.

Leave it to the A-Sun to attract coaches who play by the rules, even as those around them don't.

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