Moustapha Diagne Will Not Play for Syracuse

I reported last week that it was up in the air whether or not Moustapha Diagne would be on the Syracuse basketball team this year. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is no, he will not. It was reported late last night by syracuse.com that Diagne will be passing up SU for a two-year school. It is unclear if he will come to Syracuse after that, but the chances are much slimmer that he will ever suit up for the Orange.

As a writer, it is often difficult to be unbiased in situations like this, but I find myself having a very tough time accepting that this is a justified decision. Diagne, a Senegalese recruit, had three years of high school in the United States, and for all intents and purposes, appeared to be well above NCAA qualifications. Yet somehow, according to the NCAA, his year in a Senegal high school has made him ineligible to play at Syracuse. And, because it’s the NCAA, there is no more information available than that. Perhaps it’s just the conspiracy theorist in me, but this just reeks of the continual abuse of power the NCAA commits on a routine basis without ever releasing any factual evidence as to why it happens, and making rulings based on a whim.

“There were days when they’d evaluate his [Blair’s] credits and he’d have 15 credits,” Haas said. “There were days when he would have nine.” Eventually, the NCAA “wiped away his senior year,” according to Haas, claiming five of his courses were not adequate.

If you want a perfect example, look no further than this year’s football recruiting class, where incoming freshman Marquise Blair was denied entrance to SU for no other reason than he “did not meet course requirements”, even though according to his high school coach,

he did everything that the NCAA asked

. “There were days when they’d evaluate his credits and he’d have 15 credits,” Haas said. “There were days when he would have nine.” Eventually, the NCAA “wiped away his senior year,” according to Haas, claiming five of his courses were not adequate. And even that took them six weeks after he graduated to give a definitive answer, less than a month before the start of the Syracuse Football season. Even worse, the only way Marquise became aware of the ruling was because of the repeated inquiries by Syracuse. That’s right, he wasn’t even informed of the decision from them, he had to learn it from SU who was asking on a daily basis what his status was.

To be fair, I’ve never been a big fan of how the NCAA treats their student athletes. I mean, how is it acceptable that these athletes are given absolutely no compensation, yet the NCAA makes millions upon millions of dollars off of using their image in promotions, attire, broadcasts, and even their likeness in video games? Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA basketball player, even won a class action lawsuit against the NCAA for this exact reason, forcing them to cough up over 40 million dollars to 19 players who had never received a dime after their likeness had been used in video games. So excuse me if I don’t necessarily take the NCAA on their word that an athlete “did not meet requirements.”

So what does this mean for Syracuse Basketball? Basically, we are one rehabbed knee (Coleman) from having Chinonso Obokoh as the only player on our roster who is a true center. Obokoh played a whopping 6.8 minutes per game last year, appearing in a grand total of 13 games. It also means that our overall front court depth is now even thinner than it was last year, only instead of All-American Rakeem Christmas holding down the middle, we are relying on Dajuan Coleman who is coming off two years worth of injuries. I have big hopes for Dajuan, but the truth of the matter is that he hasn’t played significant college minutes since coming to Syracuse, and we have no idea what to really expect from him. We can all hope for the best, but to assume he’ll be able to shoulder a heavy load of minutes is incredibly optimistic and naive.

Dec 15, 2013; New York, NY, USA; St. John’s Red Storm guard D’Angelo Harrison (11) dives past Syracuse Orange guard Trevor Cooney (10) and forward DaJuan Coleman (32) during the second half at Madison Square Garden. Syracuse Orange won 68-63. Mandatory Credit: Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

In the end, there’s really nothing we can do about the situation. As usual, the NCAA is the law in these matters, and there’s no appeal process for this like there is for NCAA violations. They get to play judge, jury, and executioner and the one that suffers the most is Moustapha Diagne. He now has to go to a two-year college and basically re-do his entire recruiting process, if that’s even possible. He’ll now have to do it with a black mark placed on him by the NCAA, a mark that is questionable at best. Well let me just say, this is one fan that is really getting sick and tired of the NCAA treading all over student athletes. Enough is enough.