Innocent congratulations or dastardly quick pitch?
Geno Auriemma, the sometimes Machiavellian UConn women’s basketball coach, placed a telephone call to Mo’ne Davis to laud her on her Little League World Series exploits — and was reported for a recruiting violation for his trouble. The tattle-taling rival school has not been identified.
“The conversation lasted like two minutes and we hung up,” Auriemma said, according to the Hartford Courant. “And then I was told a school turned us in for a recruiting violation because we are not allowed contact of July 1 before her junior year of high school. … That’s the world that we live in.”
Davis, the 13-year-old pitching sensation from Philadelphia, was vocal in interviews about her love of basketball and ambition to play for the Huskies, who have become the dominant women’s program with nine NCAA titles under Auriemma’s watch.
UConn claims Davis, an eighth grader, should not be termed a “prospective student athlete” subject to recruiting regulations until she hits high school.
“I have no idea if the kid is very good, kind of good, not good at all or a superstar or can even reach the basket,” Auriemma said. “How is that a violation?”
And then the coup de grace…
“There are guys playing college basketball driving around in cars worth more than my house and we’re worried about a phone call to a little girl?”