No team admits to it. Arguably it is the sort of thing that puts a collective chip on the team's shoulder to carry them to March. Go ahead, choose your cliche. Or perhaps it is just best to prepare for 2009. The Pacific Tigers might as well.A team expected to battle for the Big West title in the upcoming year, finds itself in a mess. A sexual assault investigation dating back to May apparently -- though not officially confirmed or denied -- led to the suspension of three players from the Pacific Tigers' squad for the 2008-09 season.
Pacific spokesman Richard Rojo said he could not disclose whether those players - senior point guards Steffan Johnson and Michael Kirby and senior center Michael Nunnally - were involved in an alleged sexual assault investigated by the school.One of the players, Steffan Johnson, is apparently not going to be with the team. Instead, he will be transferring to Idaho -- maybe.
The school's investigation and judicial review process of the reported assault ended last week, but the school did not release the names of the students involved, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting the privacy of student education records. No criminal complaint was filed, police said.
Sources said that the alleged assault involved three men's basketball players and a women's basketball player.
[Idaho Head Coach Don] Verlin wouldn't comment other than to confirm his interest in Johnson on Wednesday, a day after the first-year Idaho coach may have broken NCAA rules while discussing Johnson in an interview with the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. Verlin told the newspaper he has spoken to Johnson four or five times - most recently Friday - and hopes to add the first-team All-Big West Conference player to his team.Of course, Don Verlin has been recruiting at Idaho since March of this year. Not exactly a long stretch to judge his standards. Usually the punishment for this sort of premature public talking by a coach is an admonishment not to do it again. It's a secondary rules violation. This could be escalated given the fact that there could be a view of facilitating or extra influence with the fact that the associate head coach at Pacific is the twin brother of Idaho's head coach.
"As far as Steffan transferring to the University of Idaho, I would hope so," said Verlin, the twin brother of Pacific associate head coach Ron Verlin. "He's going through a situation where he's trying to figure out what he's going to do next. Has there been conversations between Steffan and us? Yes. But there's nothing official yet."
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"There's nothing going on in the legal aspect of it," Verlin told the Daily News. "It's just like every kid that we recruit and will recruit during my time at the University of Idaho - we've checked his legal background, and he doesn't have a record. From what I've found out, and (Pacific is) not able to comment too much on it, there's nothing there."
Verlin said his brother gave Johnson a favorable recommendation.
Of course the whole thing has become a complete mess. The victim did not file a criminal complaint, but the suspensions were issued by the school's judicial review board. The actual crime allege remains vaguely classified as "sexual assault." Something that Pacific classifies broadly as unwanted contact to sex without consent.
According to FoxSports.com's Jeff Goodman, Seffan Johnson is planning a lawsuit against Pacific for the one-year suspension that has him transferring. One of the suspended players is staying at Pacific, but let's just say he does not make himself entirely sympathetic when he talks about events.
"I definitely feel like my name has been hurt, but people know what type of person I am," [Michael] Nunnally said. "That's why I'm not trippin' about trying to plead my case. ... I have a lot of fans, and they know me. ... They already know what the deal is. I really don't care what the outsiders think."After comments like that, probably not as eager to have him back as before. Nunnally may feel that he is as much of a victim in the decision by the judicial review board, but to be so casual about any aspect that involves allegations of sexual assault only suggests that he doesn't grasp the seriousness of what it entails.
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Nunnally declined to specify whether he engaged in consensual or non-consensual sex with the alleged victim, but he insisted he had not committed one of the most egregious violations of the school's sexual assault policy. Under the school's policy, sexual assault can range from rape to consensual sex with someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
"If it was forcible rape, do you think I would be at this school?" said Nunnally, who was named California community college co-player of the year at Delta in 2006-07. "Do you think they would want me to come back?"
