The train wreck that is Binghamton basketball
September 29, 2009 by
John Stansberry
I thought the Washington State football team had the market cornered on athletes going wild. Their well documented problems the last three years have included no fewer than 25 Cougars being arrested, one of which involved a frying pan assault. A FRYING PAN.
Then along comes head coach Kevin Broadus and the Binghamton basketball team, an outfit that seemed hell bent on outdoing Wazzu. There had been grumblings around the program that maybe Broadus was taking too many chances on players with questionable character. Now it seems as if the worst fears of the Binghamton fan base have been realized.
Tiki Mayben, a key contributor in Binghamton’s first ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament last season, was arrested last week and charged with two counts of selling cocaine. Mayben was recruited by Syracuse out of high school but failed to qualify academically. Subsequently, the point guard’s path to Binghamton included stops at UMass and Hudson Valley Community College.
Tiki and Marlo
But Mayben’s attempt to moonlight as Marlo Stanfield from “The Wire” hasn’t been the lone recent appearance by a Binghamton player on police blotters. Guard Malik Allen was charged in November with stealing condoms from a Wal-Mart…when he could have gotten them free on campus. Hey, at least the kid is conscientious enough to practice safe sex.
Before that, forward Miladin Kovacevic knocked a Binghamton classmate out cold during a bar fight. He’s since jumped bail and fled back to his native Serbia, where he can beat up people in peace.
Should it be any surprise that this team wasn’t full of model students, either? An adjunct lecturer at the school, Sally Dear, said that her experience teaching three basketball players in her Human Development 304 class last year wasn’t exactly as positive as Mr. Kotter’s was teaching Epstein, Horschack and the crew. Whenever the players did decide to show up for class, Dear stated they pretty much disrupted the proceedings.
To make matters worse, Dear asserted that she was pressured to give the players (whose names cannot be revealed due to privacy rules) breaks that were not afforded to other students. Is that the ghost of Jan Kemp I hear?
Mayben’s arrest was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. In its aftermath, the university decided to take the most drastic of steps by dismissing five players from the team. In addition to Allen, D.J. Rivera, Corey Chandler, David Fine and Paul Crosby were given their walking papers.
Broadus has learned that it’s a very fine line you walk when you build a program with second chance kids. Hey, everybody deserves a second chance, but some college basketball players obviously deserve it a lot less than others. In the end, the blame for this mess can be laid squarely at his feet.
Where does the program go from here? There is no point guard currently on scholarship, and only one guard period on the current roster. If you’re making an early projection for the field of 64, I would avoid pencilng in Binghamton if I were you.
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