LAS VEGAS β Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Thursday he stayed out of UAβs decision-making process while coach Sean Miller spent five days away from the team in the wake of an ESPN report saying he discussed paying Deandre Ayton $100,000.
Speaking at his annual state-of-the-Pac-12 media conference Thursday,Β Scott said he tried to βprovide advice and counselβ to Arizona but that it was the school's decision. Miller stayed away from the Wildcats for five days before returning on March 1 to rebut ESPN's report and coach UA against Stanford that night.
βI know that the (UA) leadership takes the issues very, very seriously, spent a lot of time on it,β Scott said. βThey are spending a lot of resource on outside expertise and lawyers and trying to get as much information as possible. I know they're very focused on trying to do the right thing.β
The Pac-12 assembled a task force to look into the issues around college basketball after the federal investigation was announced last September, and Scott was asked how he would feel about a possible UA-USC championship game in the Pac-12 Tournament.
Both USC and Arizona had assistant coaches arrested on federal charges, while USC kept out De'Anthony Melton this season after a family friend allegedly accepted $5,000 in exchange for directing Melton to a sports agent for professional representation.
UA suspended assistant coach Mark Phelps for two games and Keanu Pinder for one game because of NCAA rules violations, but wouldn't say which rules were violated.
"I'm not really concerned about that," Scott said of a USC-UA matchup. "You can only deal with the information in front of you. I know both the schools are, at the highest levels of the university, treating the allegations very, very seriously.
"Both those schools have taken concrete steps with assistant coaches, in the case of USC a player, that they deemed ineligible to play the whole year and has since left the school. Arizona obviously sat out their coach while they were investigating and looking into the situation."
Scott said he planned to discuss recommendations of the task force with conference presidents and chancellors on Saturday and that he couldn't speak to the specifics.
But he said that the Pac-12 was looking toward recommending a baseball-style rule requiring players to turn pro out of high school or stay in college for three years. Scott also said the conference would push to take its coaches away from the AAU recruiting system, to βliberalize" the restrictions over contact with agents and to beef up the NCAA enforcement staff.
The Pac-12 is "trying to get more back to an education or scholastic-based environment for recruiting," Scott said. "An environment where there are college coaches, high school coaches working on skill development where they can evaluate there. We think important progress can be made by changing the environment within which coaches are recruiting."
Meanwhile, Scott said again that the Pac-12 Networks and DirecTV remain far apart.
"I don't anticipate that we're going to be on DirecTV anytime soon," Scott said.
The transcript of all of Scott's comments can be found here.
