HAUNTING WORDS
Tough for Boynton to distance himself from Evans
One scandal after another. Lack of success. Lack of interest. Lack of common decorum. Lack of continuity, after things seemed to be finally on the upswing with [Brad] Underwood. And now OSU’s fingerprints are all over a scandal that threatens to blow the top off the sport. Berry Tramel
STILLWATER — Just minutes earlier, Mike Boynton had been announced as OSU’s new head basketball coach, an introductory news conference if ever there was one. And Boynton singled out Lamont Evans, who had been named associate coach.
“He could just as easily be standing right here,” Boynton said that March day in Gallagher-Iba Arena. “He's a brother that I never had, a great friend and a tremendous coach and he will be standing here one day. I love him, and he knows that. That's my co-coach.”
Uh-oh.
Hard to distance yourself from the “brother that I never had.” Boynton needs to be as disconnected as he can from one of the faces of the college basketball inferno, but that seems impossible now.
Boynton and his program are in the eye of a storm that trumps just about anything we’ve seen since the point-shaving days of the 1950s. The NCAA knocking on your door is one thing. When the feds come calling, it’s something much more serious. The FBI announced Tuesday that Evans was one of 10 people arrested as part of a two-year investigation into bribes and corruption in college basketball.
Evans is charged with taking at least $22,000 in bribe money to steer athletes to a certain financial adviser and passing along some of the money to prospective recruits. The investigation began when Evans was at South Carolina and continued after he joined Brad Underwood’s staff in March 2016.
Under advice from OSU officials, Boynton is bunkered down and not talking, which is not terribly different from his previous status. Boynton was the ultimate stealth hire when he was promoted in March after Underwood left for Illinois. Most of us — fans, media, basketball insiders, even some athletic department employees — were hard-pressed to know Boynton’s name or face. He was just one of the many suits on Underwood’s bench last season.
But now Boynton is the man in charge of the program that hired Evans. Boynton is the man who called Evans the “brother I never had.”
This is a cataclysmic development for Cowboy basketball, which has been swimming upstream since Eddie Sutton’s alcoholinduced car crash in February 2006. One scandal after another. Lack of success. Lack of interest. Lack of common decorum. Lack of continuity, after things seemed to be finally on the upswing with Underwood.
And now OSU’s fingerprints are all over a scandal that threatens to blow the top off the sport.
Boynton was a stealth candidate but was immediately intriguing. It was real-life Cinderella. One March, Boynton was an assistant coach at Stephen F. Austin; the next March, Boynton was in the seat of Sutton and Hank Iba.
It took no time to see why athletic director Mike Holder was captivated. Boynton was personable and charming, without any sign of slickness. Boynton was without pretense. Genuine was the prevailing word.
Boynton had his critics, of course, who wanted a higher-profile coach. But those of us who have gotten to spend some time with Boynton have been impressed and quick to pull for his success.
But now where does OSU basketball go? The Cowboys have a coach who declared his allegiance to a colleague who has been indicted by the FBI for a variety of fraud and conspiracy actions that boil down to selling out players.
There’s no reason to believe Boynton knew of Evans’ bribes.
Most college basketball coaches are smart enough to know how the game is played in this cesspool of a sport. They don’t know what’s going on and don’t want to know.
But even ignorance is not enough of an excuse. Head coaches should know what’s going on, and at the least should know the character of the people they employ.
Other than the “brother” comment, it’s not apparent how thick Evans and Boynton were as Underwood staff members. They spent a year together at South Carolina, 2012-13, then were reunited at OSU last March.
Underwood’s sudden departure was a serious blow to OSU hoops momentum. Retaining Evans for Boynton’s staff was considered a coup, and it wasn’t just Boynton’s decision. Evans was given a salary of $600,000, among the highest in the nation for an assistant basketball coach, and that’s a total endorsement from Holder. Evans figured to keep OSU recruiting stabilized for the present and the future.
Now, of course, it appears that all Cowboy recruiting is stained.
And Boynton’s judgment is in serious question. Maybe he didn’t know about the bribes. Probably didn’t. But is his radar so skewed that he couldn’t detect character flaws in a man he had worked with for two years?
We can all be fooled by people. But that’s part of running a program. Knowing who you can trust and who you can’t.
Boynton, best-case scenario, was duped by Evans. That’s not comforting to anyone who cares about OSU basketball.