Radovic won't return to Rainbows
By Dayton Morinaga
Advertiser Staff Writer
The good news is the Hawai'i men's basketball team will have one fewer foreign player under NCAA investigation to worry about.
The bad news is Bosko Radovic has decided not to return to the Rainbows.
Hawai'i coach Riley Wallace confirmed yesterday that Radovic is not enrolled at UH because of "personal reasons."
Wallace said Radovic is in his home country, Yugoslavia, and is expecting to get married soon.
Radovic was one of three Hawai'i players from foreign countries under investigation by the NCAA. In July, the NCAA issued memorandums to 52 Division I schools questioning the basketball backgrounds of players from Europe. At issue is the eligibility of players who may have played with paid professionals in European leagues before enrolling at American schools.
Wallace said the investigation played no role in Radovic's departure from the team.
Radovic, a 6-foot-9 forward who would have been a sophomore, averaged 5.8 points and 3.4 rebounds in five games last season before suffering a season-ending broken leg.
UH officials still have not received word from the NCAA on the eligibility of the other two players, All-Western Athletic Conference guard Predrag Savovic from Yugoslavia and forward Mindaugas Burneika from Lithuania. Another, forward
LucArthur Vebobe from France, could also face eligibility issues.
In any case, the foreign players are receiving support from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which announced last week it will present a three-point plan to the NCAA concerning the issue.
Wallace was one of 57 Division I coaches who participated in a teleconference last week with NABC officials to discuss the plan.
"Every school has their individual cases to worry about, and each one is different," Wallace said. "But we tried to come up with the best scenario for everybody involved."
The three points:
• All foreign athletes currently enrolled in Division I schools should be grandfathered in to the legislation without penalty.
Last month, the NCAA indicated that any foreign player who played with pros, or in a professional league, would have to sit out a game-for-game penalty this season. In short, a player would have to sit out one game for every game he played with pros in Europe.
UH center Haim Shimonovich sat out 22 games under that guideline last season. If it is enforced this season, more than 300 players across the country could be affected.
• The definition of "professional" needs to be changed, or at least better defined, by the NCAA.
The NABC wants the term "pro" to be applied to a player who receives money for playing, rather than simply playing with pros. All of the foreign players on the UH roster said they were not paid to play.
"If (the NCAA) says that these guys were pros, then we'd like to see the contract that proves it," Wallace said. "None of these guys got paid, none of them had agents. They might have been playing with pros, but that shouldn't make them pros as well."
• Create a foreign eligibility clearinghouse for all schools.
"That way you know if a guy is eligible before he can even get there," Wallace reasoned.
The NCAA Management Council is expected to meet in mid-October to discuss the issue. If the NCAA declares players ineligible prior to that meeting, the NABC has informed schools that they could protest the decision through the Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee.
NOTES: Keron Wilkerson, a transfer guard from Oxnard College (Calif.), is enrolled at UH but will not play this season for academic reasons. He is still expected to walk-on to the team during the 2002-03 season.
