Wasn't IU tied to that shadiness at some AAU Hope program thing or something while Crean was coaching there?
Absolutely, and DeAndre Liggins was caught up with these shady people:
Mark Adams - Head of AAU Indiana Elite and A-HOPE (African Youth Opportunities & Education for overseas players coming to USA).
Adams' son was given a job on Crean's staff.
ESPN looked into this:
What about Adams' ties to Indiana University basketball and about how his son got a job under coach Tom Crean with no prior college coaching experience? What about whether Adams stops communicating with African basketball players if they don't follow his advice when selecting a college? What about Indiana Elite, which has evolved into a pipeline for top players to IU, punctuated by future verbal commitments? What is going on with his nonprofit's donations and expenditures? And what about gifts bestowed upon Colombian-born forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea, a top IU commitment for the Class of 2012?
Adams will have none of it, saying ESPN.com is asking the questions only at the suggestion of rival coaches and that it is "manufacturing" a story. He declined multiple interview requests before agreeing to answer a set of questions in email, but he ultimately told ESPN.com not to contact him again.
After Drew Adams, the son of Mark Adams, was promoted to director of operations/video coordinator in April 2010, Crean signed or picked up commitments from eight players with ties to A-HOPE and/or the Indiana Elite program. According to summer team forms on file with the NCAA, the younger Adams previously coached three of the players with Indiana Elite, and his father acknowledges that two -- 2012 commits Perea and 7-foot-1-inch Peter Jurkin, part of a class ranked No. 1 in the country by ESPN -- lived at his Bloomington, Ind., house last summer while he was their coach at Indiana Elite. Drew Adams' original hiring in September 2009 as IU's coordinator of basketball systems came just before an NCAA rule change that would have prohibited IU from signing players he previously was associated with for two years.
Amid questions about Adams' ties to his father's foundation and the Indiana Elite program, the 26-year-old left his hometown program May 6 for a same-titled position at New Mexico under former Hoosiers star Steve Alford. Just two weeks prior, IU compliance officials declined to address specific questions posed by ESPN.com about Adams' role with the Hoosiers, offering a general statement through an athletic department spokesman that their office "engages in active monitoring and educational efforts focused on a broad range of areas for all Indiana University sports programs our institution has reviewed our relationships with other educational institutions, non-profit foundations, and non-scholastic teams and organizations, including A-HOPE and Indiana Elite."
• A-HOPE paid for Perea's round-trips to Bogotá, Colombia, last summer and this past Christmas -- the latter not long after he verbally committed to the Hoosiers in October. Mark Adams also has provided Perea a cell phone and pays the bill, gave him a used iPod and bought a $400 laptop that Perea shares with another A-HOPE player. Such treatment potentially violates NCAA extra benefits bylaws and thus could impact Perea's initial NCAA eligibility at Indiana.
Other notes:
"It seems to be this recruitment tool for the [summer travel teams]," says Chet Marshall, an administrator at Culver (Ind.) Academy, the first of four private schools attended by Perea. "And during the year, by the way, 'We'll find you a private school so you can stay out of trouble and no one else [in the basketball subculture] can find you.'"
Indiana Elite founder Mike Barnett is accused by multiple sources of having raised the possibility of adopting former Indiana Elite player
DeAndre Liggins, without his mother's permission, to influence his college selection. Four people familiar with Liggins' recruitment claim that Barnett, who professes close friendships with prominent college coaches and in the past has represented coaches in contract negotiations, also promptly discontinued Liggins' cellphone service when he committed to play at Kentucky rather than a Barnett-preferred school.
Further, two of the three Indiana Elite founders have strong ties to Hoosiers basketball, as does Adams (IU class of 1980). Criss Beyers, another IU alum, is a onetime graduate assistant under Bob Knight. And Barnett, an adidas consultant based in Rochester, Ind., has a son playing for IU as a walk-on.
It keeps going...
http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=6587668
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