Harvard Hoops Recruiting Questioned

Some say school has lowered its standards, skirted NCAA rules

By Mitch Pritchard, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 1, 2008 5:03 PM CST

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Harvard Hoops Recruiting Questioned — Stanford's Lawrence Hill (15) struggles to keep the ball from Harvard's Drew Housman in the first half of a college basketball game Friday, Nov. 9, 2007, in Stanford, Calif. Harvard basketball is coming under fire for recent recruiting tactics.(AP Photo/Ben Margot) (Associated Press)

Harvard may have done some un-Ivy League like things to upgrade its basketball program, reports the New York Times. Harvard, which hasn't played in the NCAA Tournament since 1946, is coming under fire for its recruiting tactics. “We don’t know how all this is going to come out, but we could not get involved with many of the kids that they are bringing in," said Yale coach James Jones.

Harvard, like all other Ivy League schools, doesn’t have athletics scholarships, and the league uses a separate academic index for recruits. Other Ivy League schools have implied that Harvard has lowered its admission standards to allow Amaker to attract the top 25 recruiting class it has attracted for next year, and two athletes have described contacts by Harvard that at the very least skirted NCAA rules while recruiting them. (More NCAA basketball stories.)

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