Connecticut potentially committed NCAA rules violations in its recruitment of former guard Nate Miles, Yahoo Sports reported Wednesday.
The Web site reported that according to multiple sources, between 2006 and 2008, Miles was provided with lodging, transportation, restaurant meals and representation by Josh Nochimson, a former UConn student manager who had become a professional sports agent and formerly represented ex-Huskies star Richard Hamilton.
According to the report, one of UConn's assistants knew about the relationship between Nochimson and Miles as early as fall of 2006, and that phone records show UConn coaches made thousands of phone calls and text messages to Nochimson over the next two years.
The program may also have exceeded the number of phone calls allowed to Miles under NCAA regulations during its recruiting, Yahoo Sports reported, citing phone records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The NCAA allows a single phone call per month to a prospect or his family in a player's junior year of high school. Yahoo Sports reported that according to records, UConn coaches exceeded that limit over several months in 2006 and 2007 in the program's recruitment of Miles. In December of 2006 alone, former UConn assistant coach Tom Moore made 27 calls to Miles' guardian and a person Miles referred to as an uncle as well as three calls to Miles.
The Web site also reported that Moore, currently the coach at Quinnipiac, made Nochimson aware that UConn was recruiting Miles and that he knew Nochimson and Miles had talked.
According to records obtained by Yahoo Sports, over a two-year period, five different UConn coaches traded at least 1,565 phone and text messages with Nochimson, including 16 from coach Jim Calhoun.
UConn athletic director Jeff Hathaway and Calhoun declined comment through a university spokesperson, according to the report. Nochimson also declined comment.
Miles, who was expelled from UConn this fall after being accused of assaulting a female student and violating a restraining order by calling her minutes after the order was issued, is now at the College of Southern Idaho, a junior college.
According to the report, player agents have increasingly become involved in players' lives while they are still amateurs, in the hopes they can land them as NBA clients when they turn pro. The trend has grown to agents steering players to specific schools, with college coaches reciprocating by delivering the player back to the agent when he decides to turn pro.
"We're concerned in terms of agents steering certain kids to certain [schools]," Rachel Newman Baker, the NCAA's director of agent, gambling and amateurism activity, told Yahoo Sports. "We're concerned about agreements under the table between agents and even our college coaches."
In 2006, Moore was in Chicago watching Miles at a prep tournament when he told his former student manager, Nochimson, who was there to scout potential future clients, that UConn was recruiting the 6-foot-7 shooting guard. By that evening, Miles said he had met Nochimson, according to the report.
The fact that Moore knew Nochimson and Miles were talking was an NCAA violation, according to the report. Asked if he had lost sight of the fact that Nochimson was also a representative of UConn's athletic interests under NCAA rules, Moore said "Probably. I looked at him as a young professional working as an agent, doing what he does in his career."
Miles gave conflicting statements about his relationship with Nochimson, according to the report. After at first saying he'd never heard of Nochimson, Miles said he had been his adviser. But he denied that Nochimson had ever provided him with meals or other benefits. When asked if Nochimson had arranged for him to attend IMG's Basketball Academy and Pro Training Center in Bradenton, Fla. -- which the center's director, Mike Moreau, confirmed was the case to Yahoo Sports -- Miles ended the interview.
Nochimson has moved to decertify himself as an agent after Hamilton fired him and accused him of stealing more than $1 million from him, according to the report.
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