The Kansas Jayhawks basketball program waited years for their NCAA case to reach a resolution, and that day finally came on Wednesday with Bill Self evading the harsh punishments that many around the game expected to see.
Six years ago, an FBI investigation into corruption at some of college basketball’s top men’s programs led to schools like Arizona, Oklahoma State, LSU, Auburn, Louisville and Kansas coming under intense NCAA scrutiny. Among those cases, the NCAA charged Kansas with five Level I violations for corrupt recruiting practices with Adidas and a lack of institutional control.
The charges concerned three players – Billy Preston, Silvio De Sousa and Zion Williamson. Only one of which (De Sousa) appeared in a game for Kansas. Rather than arguing the case through the NCAA, Kansas went through the Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) in hopes of a more lenient punishment.
Those hopes were realized on Wednesday.
From the IARP: #KUbball 2018 Final Four banner will be coming down along with all the 2017-18 wins vacated due to Silvio De Sousa playing while ineligible.
Here all the details on the penalties for both #KUbball and #KUfball pic.twitter.com/qBsz5V1rMb
— Shreyas Laddha (@shre98) October 11, 2023
The most serious of the penalties had Kansas vacating 15 wins from the 2017-18 season and taking down a 2018 Final Four banner as De Sousa was part of that team in the second half of the season. That would also drop Kansas back to second in the all-time wins list behind Kentucky. Kansas was also hit with three years of probation.
But given how Kansas could have been looking at postseason bans or a show-cause for Self, the lenient nature of the penalties had plenty of college hoops fans shocked.