With most of the key figures from Wisconsin’s back-to-back Final Four runs now gone, the Badgers will be relying heavily on a crop of young players to step up this season.
However, there is at least one incoming freshman that Wisconsin could be without this season, Belgian forward Andy Van Vliet.
Last Wednesday, prior to the Badgers’ exhibition win over UW-River Falls, university officials announced that Van Vliet will be sidelined until an NCAA eligibility issue is resolved.
According to a press release: “NCAA rules state that prospective student-athletes have one year to enroll in a collegiate institution following their high school graduation or expected graduation date. Van Vliet played basketball as an amateur outside of that one-year window, which has resulted in the eligibility issue. Citing factors outside of Van Vliet’s control, UW Athletics filed a waiver with the NCAA. UW was informed Wednesday afternoon that the waiver was denied and UW plans to appeal as soon as possible.”
If the NCAA denies Wisconsin’s appeal, Van Vliet will not be able to play during the 2015-16 season and will begin the 2016-17 season with only three years of eligibility remaining.
UW officials haven’t been clear on what exactly the “factors outside of Van Vliet’s control” are, but there are a number of different factors that the NCAA will look at when deciding on the appeal.
“The type of thing [the NCAA] will look for is, for example, is whether the athlete had been educated on the rules or not, or if the athlete was in a position that a reasonable person would think they should have been educated about the rules,” said Rick Allen, a former compliance officer with Illinois and Oklahoma State. “In other words, if Wisconsin or other NCAA programs had been in touch with this athlete, if schools had been recruiting him prior to the end of that one-year grace period, they might look at ‘well, why weren’t you schools that were recruiting him letting him know that he was approaching that one year deadline?’ That would be one example of the type of information they’d look for.”
In addition to spending two decades as a compliance officer, Allen also founded and currently runs Informed Athlete, an advisory firm that, according to its website, “provides accurate information, education, advice and guidance to high school and college athletes and their parents on issues related to recruiting, eligibility, scholarships, and transfers for NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA rules.”
Allen said that the NCAA might also look at whether or not Van Vliet received misinformation regarding the one-year grace period.
“They might look at whether he received misadvisement; if there was, perhaps, an assistant coach who misunderstood the rule who gave him bad advice,” he said. “They might take that fact into consideration also.”
When asked about the pending appeal following last Wednesday’s exhibition game, head coach Bo Ryan indicated that the team had previously been aware of Van Vliet’s potential eligibility issue.
“His is an unusual circumstance, but that didn’t stop all the other teams in the United States from trying to get him,” Ryan said. “We’ve been dealing with it all along, but why worry about it if we’re not competing yet?”
UW is expected to hear a decision on its appeal within two weeks, so it’s unlikely that the Badgers will have Van Vliet to start the season. Though it’s tough to guess what the likelihood of Wisconsin winning its appeal is without all the details, Allen stated that since the initial waiver was denied, the university is likely fighting an uphill battle during the appeal process.
“Hard to predict without knowing all the details and so forth, but if the first waiver was denied, then I think that winning on appeal is going to be difficult,” Allen said. “I think they’re going to have to meet a high standard to get that overturned.”
