Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway suspended 3 games for NCAA recruiting violation

Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway will be suspended for three games during the 2023-24 season, the NCAA announced Wednesday.

Hardaway will serve his suspension for the first three games of the season, meaning he will miss games against Jackson State (Nov. 6), at Missouri (Nov. 10) and Alabama State (Nov. 17).

The penalty stems from two impermissible in-home visits with a recruit from Dallas during his junior year of high school during the 2021-22 academic year. NCAA rules state coaches are not allowed to visit a recruit until April of their junior year. According to the NCAA's decision, a former Memphis assistant coach visited the recruit (who was not named) in September 2021. Two weeks later, on Oct. 1, 2021, Hardaway also visited the same recruit. NCAA rules require any in-person visits with recruits during the fall months of their junior year of high school to be made at the prospects' schools, not in their homes.

Multiple sources told The Commercial Appeal that Cody Toppert (now an assistant at LSU) is the former Memphis assistant coach who conducted the initial impermissible in-home visit with the recruit. The sources requested anonymity because some details of the case have not been made public.

Multiple sources also told The Commercial Appeal that Toppert was interviewed by the NCAA and it was determined that no allegations of NCAA rules violations would be brought against him and, therefore, he was not a party to case and will not face punishment.

According to the NCAA Committee on Infractions panel's decision, Hardaway told members of the enforcement staff "that he believed he 'could visit any student-athlete at any time.'" Hardaway later told the enforcement staff he would not have visited the recruit when he did had he known it would result in a violation.

Hardaway also, according to the panel's decision, "blamed the error, in part, on the fact that the prospect’s year was not accurately entered into Memphis’ compliance software."

The Memphis athletic department issued a prepared statement Wednesday, acknowledging that Hardaway exercised his right to contest his portion of the case and work it out directly with the NCAA.

"We supported Coach Hardaway’s right to work directly with the NCAA on his portion of the case, and we strongly believe Coach Hardaway never intentionally committed a violation," Memphis' statement reads in part. "The University of Memphis is committed to compliance. We will learn from this incident and be even more diligent in our education and monitoring. Now that the entirety of this case is finalized, we will move forward in support of Coach Hardaway and our men’s basketball program, as we do all our programs."

"Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse," the Division I Committee on Infractions panel said in its decision. "The head coach's inattentiveness to compliance — particularly at a time when his program was under scrutiny related to a different infractions case — resulted in careless violations. Head coaches must remain diligent in monitoring their staff and promoting compliance at all times and cannot delegate those responsibilities to compliance staff members and administrators."

Separate penalties levied against the program were already handed down last December. It received one year of probation (on top of the three years' probation from the IARP punishment), a two-week ban on all communications related to recruiting, a reduction of in-person recruiting days by four, the loss of two official visits, and a $5,000 fine.

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Coaching suspensions due to NCAA violations are not overly rare.

Last season, Kansas' Bill Self sat out the first four games of the Jayhawks' schedule. New McNeese State coach Will Wade − who remains under the IARP's microscope due to alleged recruiting and inducement violations while he was coach at LSU − will miss the first five games of the season. In 2015, former Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim received a nine-game suspension for failure to monitor his program.

Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @munzly.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Penny Hardaway suspended 3 games for NCAA recruiting violation