Banished guard leaves UNC
The attorney for suspended North Carolina guard Jalek Felton said the freshman has withdrawn from school and won’t return to the Tar Heels.
Kerry Sutton said Thursday that Felton has received his release to talk with other schools, though he’d have to sit out the 2018-19 season under NCAA transfer rules.
North Carolina announced in January that Felton was ineligible to participate in any university activities, though it didn’t release the reason or the suspension’s duration because of federal privacy laws. Felton isn’t facing criminal charges and doesn’t have a pending case listed in an online search of state court records.
Sutton has said Felton was suspended on an “interim” basis from the Chapel Hill campus while the university sought additional information instead of serving as a punishment. In a Thursday interview with The Associated Press, Sutton said his status never changed; she said they attended a hearing and appealed a decision to maintain the suspension, but never received a response.
Felton is the nephew of former UNC point guard Raymond Felton and headlined this year’s freshman class as a top-30 national recruit by Rivals and 247 Sports.
“He had UNC’s back when they were up against the wall,” Sutton said, referencing years of uncertainty as to whether the school would face NCAA sanctions tied to its long-running academic case that ultimately reached a no-penalty resolution in October. “No other five-star recruit would talk to them. ... And yet it turns around the other way and nobody has his back — not saying anything about the basketball program, just the university and the institution.”
Missouri
Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said 6-foot-10 freshman phenom Michael Porter Jr. will be a gametime decision for the regular-season finale Saturday against Arkansas.
“It really comes down to how Mike feels,” Martin said. “We’ll go from there.”
Porter was cleared to return to all basketball activities Feb. 22 and didn’t play in either of the Missouri’s past two games despite appearing in warmups. The Tigers lost Saturday at Kentucky and beat Vanderbilt on the road Tuesday to further solidify the team’s case for an NCAA tournament berth.
Porter played two minutes in Missouri’s seasonopening win against Iowa State and scored off a putback layup before asking to come out. He had back surgery days later.