NCAA Punishes Massachusetts, Connecticut

Massachusetts’ 1996 Final Four finish--its best ever--was stripped by the NCAA on Thursday over former star Marcus Camby’s acceptance of gifts from a sports agent. The NCAA Executive Committee, meeting in Pebble Beach, also determined that Massachusetts must return $151,000 in tournament money.

The committee also stripped Connecticut of its run in the 1996 basketball tournament and ordered it to return $90,970 of its postseason money because players Kirk King and Ricky Moore accepted plane tickets from an agent.

Camby’s agent, James Bryant, said his client “deeply regrets having done anything to discredit the University of Massachusetts.”

This marks the sixth time a Final Four result has been vacated. The others were St. Joseph’s (1961), Villanova and Western Kentucky (1971), UCLA (1980) and Memphis (1985).

Both schools’ violations are reportedly partly linked to John Lounsbury, who became a certified agent in 1994 before getting out of the business earlier this year. The Boston Globe reported this week that Camby secretly repaid $28,000 to Lounsbury after Lounsbury claimed his life was in danger from loan sharks.

At Connecticut, the NCAA had suspended Moore, a sophomore, for five games this season and ended the career of King, a senior, after Connecticut reported in January that both players had accepted airline tickets in the fall of 1995 from then-agent Lounsbury.

The NCAA previously had determined that athletic department officials had no way of knowing of the infractions. But King and Moore have admitted they knew they were breaking the rules when they accepted the tickets.