MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A federal corruption case involving college basketball assistants alleges Oklahoma State coach Lamont Evans was paid for setting up a meeting between an agent and a Cowboys player last February in Morgantown.
Evans was among four assistants indicted Tuesday, along with Auburn’s Chuck Person, USC’s Tony Bland and Arizona’s Book Richardson. Each coach faces multiple counts of accepting kickbacks from an Adidas representative and agents in exchange for steering players toward their professional services.
Oklahoma State upset then-No. 7 West Virginia 82-75 on Feb. 4 at the WVU Coliseum, a victory that ultimately helped the Cowboys earn an NCAA at-large bid. The day before, inside a hotel in Morgantown, a cooperating witness from the Justice Department allegedly paid Evans to arrange an introduction with one of OSU’s pro prospects. (The player’s name was redacted from the indictment.)
The meeting would have occurred around the same time then-OSU head coach Brad Underwood was appearing at Bob Huggins’ charity fish fry.
The charges claim Evans received $2,000 before the meeting and $2,000 afterward, among a series of payments for which the assistant pledged to influence the player and limit access from competing agents.
Federal agents claim three men brokered the payments: Christian Dawkins, a business manager who had worked as a runner for a sports agent; Munish Sood, a financial adviser; and Jonathan Brand Augustine, the operator an AAU basketball team backed by Adidas.
During a March 2016 meeting near the campus of South Carolina, where Evans coached before Oklahoma State, Dawkins allegedly explained to Sood how paying assistant coaches guarantees a steady pipeline of players “every year.” In the recorded conversation, Dawkins said head coaches “ain’t willing to (take bribes) ’cause they’re making too much money” and that assistants allow direct access to athletes.
Among those indicted were Jim Gatto, director of global sports marketing for basketball at Adidas. Gatto and other defendants allegedly funneled $100,000 to the family of a high school basketball prospect in hopes of luring him to sign with Louisville, identified in the complaint as a “public research university” in Kentucky. Last month, Adidas and Louisville agreed to $160 million contract.