UW employs assistant who belonged to FBI probe

SEATTLE– Washington coach Danny Sprinkle announced the hiring of 4 assistant coaches on Thursday, consisting of previous USC assistant Tony Bland, an essential figure in the 2017 FBI probe designed to tidy up college basketball.Bland was most recently

the head coach at St. Bernard High School in Los Angeles. Prior to that, he worked as the associate head coach at USC from 2013 to 2017 under Andy Enfield when he became part of the FBI examination. The FBI probe was targeted at rooting out an entrenched system of off-the-books payments to players and their families that, at the time, was against NCAA rules.Bland was one of 4 Black assistant coaches and 10 overall individuals who were apprehended as part of the probe. As part of his plea handle federal district attorneys, Bland acknowledged accepting a$4,100 allurement throughout a July 2017 conference with monetary advisers and service supervisors in exchange for directing players to keep their services when they went into the pro ranks. He received 2 years’probation.Bland likewise got a three-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA that ended last month.”Coach Bland has incredible basketball understanding and a winning pedigree. He

has actually worked with and gained from a few of the best coaches in our game and our guys will appreciate his perspective as a former player himself,”Sprinkle said in a statement.Along with the addition of Bland, the Huskies added Andy Hill, DeMarlo Slocum and Jerry Hobbie to the training staff. Hill was with Sprinkle last season at Utah State and Slocum was at Utah

. Hobbie is the only holdover from the previous Washington personnel under Mike Hopkins.