St. Joe's and Todd O'Brien

dtrain11

Interesting read.Hadn't heard this story. Anyone know why?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/basketball/ncaa/12/19/todd.obrien/index.html

RightAngle

Interesting indeed. Wonder if the publicity will help his case at all.

StevieY

dtrain11 wrote: »

Interesting read.Hadn't heard this story. Anyone know why?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/basketball/ncaa/12/19/todd.obrien/index.html

In his case, I don't know why but in his article, he claims exactly what St Joes put on the papers to UAB. Frustrated by lack of playing time, friend says why not get a grad degree and play somewhere else. That sounds like "more athletic then academically motivated." Yeah, that degree wasn't available at St Joe's but that's just to cover the bases. He could have went to another school that wanted him to play and found a different degree that St Joe's doesn't offer. They hand you a list of degrees not at your previous school and you choose the one closest to what you really want. Everyone does that, no rule states you can't do that, but to use that as a reason to leave is meaningless. It wasn't like he mattered to St Joe's though so it shouldn't have really mattered if he wanted to leave. The timing wasn't ideal and that would be my beef if I was St Joe's. Waiting until mi-late summer to decide to leave without talking to the coach is usually not a good idea if you want to leave peacefully, especially if you are on scholarship. That late just wastes it. You wind up giving it to a walk-on as a reward but coaches feel that is a wasted body. Piss off the wrong coach and he will make life miserable for you.

W Michigan has run into a couple problems with signing off on players or giving them time when they allege "personal" issues. Their expected starting center for last year said his mother was having health problems and he wanted to move closer to home(east side of state) to play. Western agreed to sign off for him if he transferred to a Division 2 school, they even arranged everything for him to transfer to Wayne St or Saginaw Valley. If the issues changed, he could always come back. He agreed to it. It was a gentleman's agreement, Western signed off, he transferred to Univ Detroit and got to play immediately. Over the summer, Juwan Howard Jr decided to take time off for personal reasons, told the coaches he would re-enroll for the winter term. A week before the season started, he was enrolled at Detroit. Western has always recruited Detroit well, currently have 3 starters from there, but it appears McCullum is taking his bullshit to a new level recruiting guys who are already at other places. Western canceled their series with them, unfortunately, would have loved for them to come back 1 more time.

TommyL

The word around St Joe's forums is that he irked Martelli in a few different ways. He was already in Martelli's doghouse as he got caught with a stolen laptop last season and they brushed it under the rug. Then, after last season, Martelli asked him about his intentions on returning. He said that he'd be back, so they saved a scholarship for him. He was a few credits short from graduation, so he took summer classes to graduate. At this point, once he was enrolled and taking the summer classes, he told St Joe's that he wanted to leave, knowing that he was in the clear and would have his siploma. Martelli had a beef that he'd use them like that, taking up a scholarship for the summer to get his college paid for, and then jetting out of there after the fact.

This is all info coming from St Joe's fans, so take it for what it's worth. But I've always seen Martelli as a pretty stand-up guy and this seemed very out of character for him. Surprised that SI didn't try to get the other side of the story before printing this (or maybe they did but St Joe's woudln't talk).