Arizona's Allonzo Trier practices as he awaits results of NCAA appeal of positive PED test

Experts unsure of Trier's Ostarine reappearance

Allonzo Trier is practicing this week but won’t play for Arizona against Stanford on Thursday unless he wins a potentially difficult appeal with the NCAA.

Trier was suspended last week after testing positive for Ostarine, the same PED that resulted in his 19-game suspension last season.

Trier’s attorney, Steve Thompson, said Trier didn’t take any more since he inadvertently ingested some before a positive test in 2016. But that may be a difficult thing to prove to the NCAA, since several pharmaceutical experts say Ostarine has a half-life of only one day, meaning half of whatever is left should keep disappearing every day.

James Dalton, dean of the University of Michigan’s College of Pharmacy and the inventor of a patent for Ostarine, said the drug usually disappears from the system in “about a week.”

Dalton said that led him to suspect that either Trier is still using Ostarine, that there is a problem in the NCAA’s testing, or that the drug somehow lodged in a tissue or cyst and was released before Trier tested positive last month during a random drug test — a theory the UA will likely use in its appeal.

Alan Wu, a professor at the UC San Francisco’s School of Medicine and chief of chemistry and toxicology labs at San Francisco General Hospital, said it was highly unlikely that Ostarine would be detected in blood or urine for over a year “without recent exposure.”

However, Wu said it would be difficult to rule it out entirely without data to review, and neither the UA nor the NCAA have released the results of Trier’s tests.

David Ferguson, professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Minnesota, said the fact that Trier tested negative in January 2017, ending his first suspension, and tested positive again in January 2018 makes it even harder to prove.

“It would be quite difficult for that consistent passive diffusion to just stop magically for a month, or two months, or a day — and then start again,” Ferguson said. “I’m a professor. ... We wouldn’t teach it that way. I can’t say positively because we don’t know the numbers, but it’s going to be tough for any of the scientists” to determine.

Thompson told Yahoo Sports that experts say Ostarine can be stored in fatty tissues “for a long time,” and the UA has been in the process of appealing Trier’s case. The NCAA’s drug testing policy says an appeal will be heard within 48 hours of a request if competition is imminent, though Thompson declined to say Tuesday when an appeal was or will be filed.

“Allonzo Trier is not a drug cheat and never has been,” Thompson told the Star last week. “The NCAA has found that to be true in the past, and the idea that the reappearance of this drug in his system is somehow creating a competitive advantage and requiring him to be suspended is absurd.”

O’Neal commits to UCLA

Former UA signee Shareef O’Neal committed to UCLA on Tuesday, according to 247Sports, just three days after he decommitted from the Wildcats in the wake of ESPN’s bombshell Sean Miller report.

O’Neal withdrew his commitment to the Wildcats on Saturday afternoon, one day after ESPN reported that Miller allegedly discussed a $100,000 payment for Deandre Ayton with agent Christian Dawkins.

The UA’s remaining 2018 commit, guard Brandon Williams, remains committed to the Wildcats but his father, Chris Wright, says the family is closely following the news. Both Williams and O’Neal signed non-binding scholarship papers in November, leaving them able to easily back out of their commitments.

Pasternack won’t comment on report

Former UA associate head coach Joe Pasternack declined to comment on a Yahoo Sports story revealing emails from agent Christian Dawkins about his relationship with Pasternack.

A UCSB spokesman told the Star that Pasternack will not be commenting on the story, while a message left on Pasternack’s cellphone was not returned. Santa Barbara television station Pasternack told television station KEYI in Santa Barbara that he is allowed to talk to agents, provided no bribes were involved. Pasternack declined to give an on-camera interview.

There are no implications that Pasternack broke NCAA rules in the Yahoo report. The report explained how Dawkins “attempted to manipulate a powerful collegiate program like Arizona.”

Yahoo reported that on Aug. 15, 2016, Dawkins wrote a memo to his boss, Andy Miller, saying that Pasternack was interested in recruiting five-star forward Brian Bowen.

Dawkins wrote that Pasternack told him he didn’t direct players to the Bill Duffy or Octagon agencies, and also wrote that, “now I can’t promise that this kid that they want (Bowen) is going to Arizona, but Joe told me verbatim he will help us get all the Arizona players so put his feet to the fire.”

Thirteen days later, according to Yahoo!, Dawkins told fellow agent Andrew Vye that “if you have to make a call to these guys (Arizona coaches) the kid that they want from me is Brian Bowen … Arizona will do pretty much whatever we ask of them right now, until my kid decides on a school.”

Bowen committed to Louisville on June 4, 2017, but was suspended after news broke of an alleged payment between Louisville, Adidas and his father. He eventually opted to enroll at South Carolina.

Pasternack wasn’t named in the federal complaint released on Sept. 26, but the complaint said that a review of telephone records for financial advisor Munish Sood showed he “exchanged two telephone calls with a cellphone number that I (an FBI agent) know is subscribed to by another individual who was then an assistant coach for the men’s basketball team at (University 4),” according to the document.

University 4 was identified in the complaint as the employer of Book Richardson, then a UA assistant coach. At the time of the report, Pasternack was the only coach from last year’s staff who was no longer at the UA.

The federal complaint alleged that Sood raised the prospect of paying UA coaches with an undercover witness “beginning in or around February 2017.” Sood told an FBI witness on March 14 that “the (Arizona) coaches are interested in definitely working with us.”

“As of now, the coaches haven’t asked for anything,” he told the witness, “but I’m sure when the time comes, they will, right?”

There are no references to Pasternack being involved in bribery. Federal agents say Richardson took the bribes in June and July, after Pasternack left the UA for UCSB.

Richardson was arrested on federal bribery and fraud charges on Sept. 26. He was subsequently fired.

Lee remains out

UA forward Ira Lee did not practice again Tuesday after suffering a concussion in practice a week earlier and missing the Wildcats’ trip to Oregon last week. His status remains unclear for the UA’s game with Stanford on Thursday.

“He’s not ready yet,” Romar said after the Wildcats practiced Tuesday.

The UA’s concussion protocol has required players to sit out a week before doctors will test to see if they are fit to return.