Huskies Tamed?

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, commonly known as the NCAA, has found 8 "major" rule infractions done by the University of Connecticut's men's basketball staff. These infractions include improper communication through texts and calls, giving recruits improper benefits, and giving high school coaches and others free tickets. The accusations are centered around a recruit that never played a game for the Huskies, Nathan Miles. Miles was expelled from UCONN for violating a restraining against a women she said he assaulted. Even though Miles is the core recruit cited in the infractions, other recruits were also named as the NCAA said the violations occurred from June 05 to February 09. It will be interesting to see what UCONN teams will be after the NCAA gives the school its punishment. The last major program to be accused of these violations was the the Hoosiers of Indiana under coach Kelvin Sampson. While the Hoosiers were not as big as they were under Bob Knight, it was still a pretty good program. The violations they committed and the punishments they took on completely derailed the program. Sampson was fired, and the team is now somewhere between obscurity and nonexistence. UCONN though is a team that recently became a major program winning all their championships within the last decade or so. The NCAA might give UCONN a lighter punishment than the Hoosiers who were slowly falling out of the limelight anyways, but then again you never know. Between the timeline of June 05 and February 09, the Huskies won 0 championships and it to only 1 Final Four, that being in 2009, so it is not like the violations led to success. I think the situation would be a lot worse if they had great success between the time period, but then again Indiana did not have any success either and the NCAA held nothing back, basically forcing the program to start from scratch. I personally think the NCAA will go harder on UCONN with its punishments. Why? Because the Huskies have become a big name program over the last decade+, and who better to teach a lesson to the rest of the programs than the Huskies who have been almost perennially atop the Big East, one of the toughest conferences in Division-I college basketball. The NCAA will make an example out of the Huskies, and I don't think you'll be seeing them much in the NCAA Tournament for years to come. I live in Connecticut and grew up loving the Huskies as well so it's not that I'm a UCONN hater, it's quite the opposite. For years I'm sure other programs scratched their heads and wondered 'How do we stop the Huskies?,' who knew that question would be answered by the Huskies. It is a sad day in UCONN Country, for the Huskies have been tamed...by themselves.

References

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5228593
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UConn_Huskies#Men.27s_Basketball